the beginning of July:

 1 
  
  
 Gray skies on a late spring day.  A start.  
 In the parking lot.  Pawtucket?  Cumberland.
 Sound of someone hammering – what?
 Iron.  Waiting for my daughter there,

  
 her tennis lessons.  Nowhere.  Somewhere.
 Out in the open.  Gray skies, hollow
 hammering.  A hole.  A whole
 world (of lonesome rune-moss).

  
 Armor.  Wheel.  Hubcap.  Sky-
 scraper.  Redmen in moccasins
 on rooftops – cashmere
 lamb's quarters and yaks –

  
 kayaks – stitched all around again?
 Like a lake in a corral – your
 coracle – row, row, row
 we go.  I'd like to... snag

  
 you, elbow room.  A Huckleberry
 getaway somewhere.  Wide grass
 where the hurt surges – surges
 like active vitamin – Buick

  
 in high gear.  I leaned back
 against the health club wall.
 Low sub-suburb, lawless.
 Clouds moving, carboniferous.

  
 Spaces for eyes.  Flag in yard
 beside white aluminum siding.
 Farmhouse hemmed inside
 clutter.  Derelict, dreary.

  
 But that hammering was happy.
 I was going into the meadows
 again – lose myself for good.
 So long, Julius.  So long, Pap.

     
                         7.15.99 (St. Henry's Day)
 
             *

 
 Upstream from Egypt or New Orleans, 
 north or south.  Colors on a raft 
 blend – snow, or Afro-cat. 
 Coffin for Ishmael.  Snore awhile  

 
 on board, then wake with another start 
 or vociferous snort – was it a dream? 
 Blackstone, with feet in cow-merde
 of New World – slow golden apple-taster –

  
 or Berkeley, testing all ten toes
 on reality stones – and the air so
 gentle, and the noise so seldom – soar,
 dream...  no machine, but a knotted

  
 meeting, under the apple trees and
 sweet grape vines.  Arbor day behind
 the cottage where LaFarge, Degas
 hibernated – downstream, tender

  
 colors merging, a harmony
 of many at the brown delta, singing.
 A Niger of negritude,
 or tunes of an old rhyme nomad –

  
 tapping feet while they waited there
 for the beginning and the end.
 Laden ship in the Nile den-
 mouth – moon-moth wreath –

  
 so diaphanous, yet overlaid
 like a tablet of the future law
 or tables carven in the wall
 of every hut.  Love-dreidle,

  
 homespun doodle.  A shadow
 gouache from treelimbs all at once:
 a see-saw operation of the sun
 or evening ocean on a beachhead.

       
                         7.16.99

You want meaning, drummer-boy? Try to figure it out.

 5
  
 Cornered in a crossweave   of very pianissimo
 scales   tumbling down terraces   I learned
 a lot from him   I learned little things
 that mean so much in music   get the little
  
 things together   the way you build a house
 and then the whole structure will stand up
 get the patient on her feet and   Presto
 dancing the minimum   the minutest
  
 waltzing bee   across a waft so fa so fine
 handwoven llama threads   all manual
 cowpuncho Nilon Ship's Clothing   the map
 a tiny honey palm-lamp now   within a fable
  
 of the feeblest roost   or nest   beneath a
 river of Egyptian stars   one lone nut
 (almond, acorn) tunneled in the rivulet
 of a silky   milky   nebulae blanket
  
 and sheets of big muddy   scarab sound
 or terraces of rainbows  out of the cosmos
 of her sorrow   44 stitches to the cinch
 of a single googol [coined by a child]
  
 squared off on a grid of linked unchains
 twirling toward mid-April   Washington
 or Lafayette   leftover in a Thursday rain
 vale, Jo   it's a map of...   from a distance
  
 shielded   ink kenosi-shrouded crossroad
 or galaxy of frailest   grassblown wind
 a quantum myrrh held   in a widow-
 pain   a   microscopic   dust sirocco
  
 gleams there   dead ahead and   green
 kayak in a rocket in a yippie eye O kayak
 pi A-grid a-wool manually-done and   a.k.a.
 Mplmnde. Mojómemo Lt. Col. Greenègresham
     
                                    1.22.2000

from July:

 11

  
 It was a tawny copperhead   world-deep
 in a tangle of choking vines in the moist
 hanging gardens over babbling stems of
 moldering books in a greenhouse   a pen

  
 charcoaled your frozen forms   and a whisper
 wanted to embrace me   through the endless
 waste of frittering   time  (present stencilled
 intimate brakes)  until   a spare spear-spirit

  
 like a salience   in the armored swamps of July
 began to build for me   this doubled arc
 of a dangled   green or jasper   Dirac radio
 to carry its tacked-on   vernal missile

  
 and   it is possible to experience events now
 that will in part be an effect   of my future
 resolves   by making a round trip
 on a rocket ship   in a sufficiently wide   gnu-

  
 maison?   Mais non, Noé!  May we?   Wheee...
 bring the Jubilee   out of Willie's blues
 by way of a Technicolor Time Sub (used)
 or mobius clock   through a Birch Clump Cylinder

  
 down the River Road?  Through the stubby
 singularity pool of a snail's wombhole?
 The future is all hieroglyphical   lumbers
 ultraluminal   "Beep"   spooky but   sweet keen

  
 smell   pressed among advanced waves of a
 mad worldline cruise-saint looping close now
 as Buckaroo Bonzai's   old friends across time
 go   alley oop   a-brim with   dense evidence

  
 of the man who folded himself (asymmetrical
 rabbit) into a symmetrical hat and Hugo
 Gernsback and becomes her sylph.  Arghgh!
 Poe, again!  Whitman, attached! – helendrigauss!

       
                        2.8.2000

Something dated from July.

         1

  
         The secret of the Upper Midwest   under
 the cold winter snow   and by the lakes of summer
 is a cozy   gemutlichkeit   familial   merciful
 and so I remember your red nose,

  
         Grandfather   today   on Epiphany (your
 birthday)   how you leaned over the Christmas
 fireplace   stiffly (past 70 years)   to stir the sparks
 of last year’s evergreen   as the colored rays

  
         of the little lights   played   in your snowy hair
 and as the ghost of Mary Negus   dressed
 bright as a cardinal   drops deeper reds
 (Ethiopian   rubies and   sealed carnelians)

  
         across the snow   and as   the laughter of Florence
 Ainsworth   penetrates   like Minnehaha
 or mouth of Nile   through the endless   ach-ach
 peace pipesmoke   of Edward S.   (a censer-

  
         rifle)   and as the children gather by your feet
 they are ghostly now   as these ghosts gathering
 in my lines   when the front rolls in   like a wraith
 from the southwest   spreading a wide fan

  
         of shadows and rain   over the prairie
 maybe you’d be by the upstairs   window,
 looking out   through the big black bars
 of the oak tree   toward the gash   of the river

  
         moving there, hidden   between the steep slopes
 and Dad will get up   and put down the paper
 (ROOSEVELT SPEAKS TONIGHT)   where piano
 music   curls on the bench   and as rain   pulses

  
         down   and the storm finally breaks   maybe
 you’ll see the strange   incandescence   the
 last light   burning through beneath
 the storm and   your face like a



 
         smaller star,   leaning there
 against the   clear pane –

    
                      *

  
         Gemutlichkeit or no   it’s the story of a star
 I’m just a poor   wayfaring stranger
 and   the people don’t dream; they work
 a long, long way   from my home

  
         active, energetic, prosperous, practical
 the happy result is manifest all around in
 the substantial outside aspect of things,
 and the suggestions of wholesome life

  
         (but Marion City is an exception.
 Marion City has gone backward in
 a most unaccountable way.  Doubtless
 Marion City was too near to Quincy.)

  
         like Henry Clay Dean   if the ground had been
 sodded with greenbacks   scarecrow Dean
 in foxy shoes, down at the heels, socks of odd
 colors, relics of antiquity   a world too short

  
         small, stiff-brimmed soldier-cap hung on the
 corner of the bump of   a just audible ripple
 of merriment (forearm unprotected) which swept
 the sea of faces like   the wash of a wave

  
         and now the stranger stepped back one pace
 nobody listening, everybody laughing and
 whispering   (along here, somewhere
 on a black night   ran some exceedingly

  
         narrow and intricate island chutes
 by aid of the electric light.  Behind was
 solid blackness – a crackless bank of
 it   ahead   a narrow elbow of water, curving

          
         between dense walls of foliage   and here
 every individual leaf and every individual ripple
 stood out   flooded with a glare as of noonday)
 passed Prairie du Chien   after some hours

  
         progress   through varied and beautiful scenery
 reached La Crosse.  We noticed that above Dubuque
 the water of the Mississippi was olive-green
 rich and beautiful and semitransparent,

  
         with the sun on it.  And I remember Muscatine
 they use the broad smooth river as a canvas
 and painted on it every imaginable dream   it is
 the true Sunset Land   so good a right to the name.

  
         Go upstream   deeper into the green caverns
 as in all these Upper-River towns   the majestic
 bluffs   this region is new   blanketed with
 Indian tales and traditions   Draco

  
         and Romeo and Juliet of   White Bear Lake
 and the bear caught her   she and the blanket
 you get yourself all worked up about the
 blanket   snowed under   like a star in a Kali-

  
         black stoneboat   pivoting   he began life poor
 and without education   on the curbstone
 with his book   unconscious of the tramp of
 passing crowds   to let a dray pass

  
         unobstructed   there are many soothsayers
 in Scythia   but the class of effeminate persons
 called “Enarees”   use a different method
 take a piece of the inner bark of the lime-tree

  
         which they say was taught them by Aphrodite
 and cut it into three pieces   which they keep
 twisting and untwisting round their fingers
 as they prophesy when the king of Scythia

          
         falls sick   Lincoln had known only this quiet house
 he was six when his sister Irma flew in the door
 with the white man she announced   she was
 going to marry   “Later on”   Sioux

  
         Lincoln bolts   swoops   slams   out of the house.
 Until the unholy train comes tearing along
 ripping the sacred solitude to rags
 the locomotive is in sight from the deck

  
         of the steamboat   his clothes differed in no respect
 from a “wharf-rat’s”   except they were raggeder
 they retreated to other city haunts in shame
 since it was launched in Minneapolis on May 29, 1935

  
         Lester and Vera approached the train unnoticed
 they boarded the broken steps of the sleeper car
 the errant lights of the yard bosses sprayed the
 side (their rusted hulk star-manger   Hiawatha)


      
                                           1.6.99

... SO, poetry reflects that special embodiment, that embodied freedom-authority... & as such the messengers of that special space often come up against the other authorities. Thus July, the 3rd of Forth of July, ends on March 5th, the date on which both Stalin & Akhmatova (avatars of these two distinct powers) died.

& anyway, all this providential history is a work-in-progress. So the unpublished history poem In RI deals more directly with Roger Williams & his unique state-founding. & this has been translated, wonderfully, into italian by Anny Ballardini. I'll be a Dante yet.

& what I mean by this "embodiment", in part, involves all these threads I've been tying (plowing?) between my rows of verse, and the "rose" of Rhode Island. Thus I first came from the midwest to this state on the merit of my college application essay, which was a group of Ted Berrigan (of Cranston, RI) imitations. & though my roots are in Minnesota, I've discovered a lot of family background right here. There's a little island in Narragansett Bay called Gould Island, named after Thomas Gould, the nephew of my gr-gr-gr-grandfather Zaccheus. Tom Gould was a friend of Roger Williams, & rented him a field on that island, for raising hay.

Did you follow all that, all that I posted on Friday? The eyes blur over.

It's blurry, I know. The idea is that poetry is a special kind of "embodied" speech, analogous to incarnation. An end in itself, as well as a representation of something else.

& the concept of incarnation stems from a metaphysics, if you will, which includes both divine & human; not one without the other. A religious perspective which includes BOTH divine will and human self-will, human freedom. This is the general idea that underlies Renaissance christian humanism, Dante's polemic for a balance between Pope & Emperor, Roger Williams' demand for liberty of conscience and the separation of church and state.

When I look back at the poem (Stubborn Grew, etc.) I see it as expressing a position in the middle, facing 2 ways: first, by celebrating Roger Williams & echoing Dante in certain ways (the "octagonal" design described on Fri.), it represents this humanist stand for freedom of conscience & the separation of political & religious authority; second - especially in the 3rd book, July - it represents the distance between present-day dispositions of political power ("Julius" - military-state force) and a utopian future ("Jubilee").

What was the pith of what Pound found & celebrated in "tradition"? The same thing Montale found, that both found via Dante:

Provence, the love-song, the archaic-troubadour springtime mating-call, the epithalamion at the heart of Arcadia or Paradise, the Song of Songs...

the deep natural root of the grand epic-cosmic visions (Homer, Dante et al.). At the center of the Divina Commedia, Dante addresses his theme : What or Who is the real and proper goal of all our willing & desiring & loving (& the substance of our singing)?

[Actually, this forms the overall plot of my own grandiose effort in Forth of July, too, where the poem's path follows the transformations & coruscations of July, jewel-eye, Julius/Juliet, J-El, & so on. The "coming-forth of jewel-eye"]

from this day 4 yrs ago, doing July:

         12    

                                  i.m. Tom Fleming*

  
         You would have been glad to be here today
 Fleming   to read the Sunday funnies
 Aaugh!  as Lucy lifts the 12-millionth football
 and Charlie Brown flips   for the 13th time   Bonk!

  
         a little sad too   the way the everlasting ends
 this evening   light   limping so slowly   only lent
 limpid   toward the vague rim of   tonight's Milky
 Way   Sparky's wavery quickness trembling

  
         only lent now   Good grief!   While it's raining the
 Doctor is [IN]   and   you are uncommonly
 weird   like a Red Baron's   flying mach-lemon
 in the mind of a pup   and the rain it raineth

  
         every day   like frogs pummeling our   foolish blind
 shopping carts   ah   for I am sick of love   he
 cried   running down the street in Lisbon
 that twines with a tiny pulse   a nub

  
         like the distant crown of   Shakespeare's head
 a curvature this   pause or sigh   this dome
 between waves or   salient   mud-caked
 seed so small   set adrift   (centuries

  
         surrounded with fire   your burning bones, Tom
 a greenish Copernican   flame in the marrow
 planted   amid the avarice of the pilots   the raw
 and envious violence of Ahab   a mote

  
         that will grow limpid)   you know   there are women
 limping with this   cenacle   (like myrrh   afloat
 upon tears)   (chambered   in the upper tiers)
 (up the stairs)   helical   of their wombs

  
         unknown to us   but only a promise
 when the last full measure is poured out
 beside the shores of great rivers   the trumpet
 sounds into   the depths of that prairie   siempre

       
                                            2.13.2000

*[Tom Fleming, old Minnesota pal since childhood, died of AIDS about 12 yrs ago.]

from July, this time 4 tears ago:

         12

  
         The river moves so slowly   lentamente
 abrazo   over the infinite flatness
 of the plains   and this salient leaf
 of silence   this   Mile   Long   (mental

  
         Minnesota)   Bridge   is flat as the water
 spreading in lagoons of silt and sand
 lateral swamps   where mosquitoes dance
 in vast eddies   their wheezy route

  
         of squeaky violins   a muted accompaniment
 between yesterday's birthday   (when
 a little redhead railsplitter's new
 crown came crowning   a little Quito seed

  
         of egalité   a level plain fieldworker's hidden
 purl of water-born   horizon-bounding
 corazón   or   knot of clover-lava revery
 unraveling into   reverèd silver   undone

  
         yet   all done to be   to be   lent
 to the current   the way a catenary
 arching smile curves up   reticulate
 from my muttering clay   a talent

  
         worth   exactly one penny   no more
 mustered from the bottom of the well
 to bend from the flat surface of the wall
 into a sheep-Ravenna   or   a Roman

  
         adequate flowering   returning what was owed
 the debt of a lifetime buried   in the depths
 of lye   from the ashes   for washing   pith
 drifting from an almond shell   a dowry-

  
         dhow   returned   for a broken vow)
 and a yet deeper pulse:  that green child
 awaiting recompense   on the linchpin
 of   tomorrow's valentine   (crumbled Wovoka)

        
                                2.13.2000

Chris Lott finds my excerpts & explanations utterly confusing. Understandable! I warned they were obscure & eccentric.

It's a Song of Myself, a counter-Cantos [cf. Bluejay on Poe & Pound, EP & EP]. & still ongoing.

from July (chapter "A Catenary Arc"):

         – some star – like the articulate
 ghost of my fathers and of yours, who
 could not speak in life, but in the owlish
 afterlife – Ba, Ka, Crow, Lamb... tracked

  
         upstream to Ethiopia, the truth of it –
 manuscripted messenger, papyrus
 Pappy or Osiris sire, Moses ripened
 in the wilderness).  Mountain oak-tree.

  
         Cedar.  Pitch-black tar (for
 mordant).  Bebi, General of the Asiatics.
 Quick-runner, wasp.  Pharaoh's taxi-
 driver. He Who Controls the Rat-

  
         God's Offspring.  Latecomer,
 fast-talker.  Journalist for Delta
 Crescent.  Walker of the tiled
 ink-paths, typesetter.  Market-

  
         rent-collector, solitaire, free-
 speaker.  Literal, exact, exacting
 horsetrading slavestealing tax-
 gathering figure of a reefer-

  
         man, fearful, a-feared.
 Goes down ghost-trails
 under live-oak lairs
 of rattlesnakes... adrift

  
         in jagged eddies of nude alphabets.
 Murmuring to himself, saliva-
 white, spume-frothing blanched
 avalanche easily frozen, baffled, back-

  
         stabbed – easily beloved, won-over.
 And adhesive through the crane bone
 into the gravity waves (nacreous
 mob of carnelian nouveaux

  
         baubles all around the funereal
 sunken canopy of maudit covenants,
 rumors, glittering knives –
 ressentiment scripted into feral runes).

  
         A crossroad of aluminum tubing in the swamp.
 Ping from outer space, deflecting the rays.
 Silence, alligators, flamingos.  Yarns
 and picayune lagniappe – pommes

          
         de terreurs – spooks and voodoo queens
 if you're scared of the dark – a muttering
 broom delta, the sowing of the tombs
 beneath the Gulf.  Steal, sneak

  
         away now, Jim – Julius is sound asleep.
 We're going down the inky path
 toward a kid wrapped up in llama
 tarp and catnap tape, tripwired – peels loose

  
         at midnight – watch!  While my ghosts
 of keen-mauled, kill-skinned, tree-masted
 River-Sixties gather steam upstream
 like a money-caulked coot of wood-

  
         crocodiles, bobbing at the dawn levee.
 Watch – there go the shadows of the swallows!
 Soon the sun arrives, lifting over the lousy
 prism-blocks (Angola, Ethiopia veiled, unveiled).


      
                                           11.22.99

Jacket Magazine published a few of the more impersonal, "American" sections of July, here. And some sections from Grassblade Light, here.

& just to give you a sense of the difference in tone between Grassblade Light and July,
here's the opening segment of July:

         1 
  
         Gray skies on a late spring day.  A start.   
         In the parking lot.  Pawtucket?  Cumberland.
 Sound of someone hammering – what?
 Iron.  Waiting for my daughter there,

  
         her tennis lessons.  Nowhere.  Somewhere.
 Out in the open.  Gray skies, hollow
 hammering.  A hole.  A whole
 world (of lonesome rune-moss).

  
         Armor.  Wheel.  Hubcap.  Sky-
 scraper.  Redmen in moccasins
 on rooftops – cashmere
 lamb's quarters and yaks –

  
         kayaks – stitched all around again?
 Like a lake in a corral – your
 coracle – row, row, row
 we go.  I'd like to. . . snag

  
         you, elbow room.  A Huckleberry
 getaway somewhere.  Wide grass
 where the hurt surges – surges
 like active vitamin – Buick

  
         in high gear.  I leaned back
 against the health club wall.
 Low sub-suburb, lawless.
 Clouds moving, carboniferous.

  
         Spaces for eyes.  Flag in yard
 beside white aluminum siding.
 Farmhouse hemmed inside
 clutter.  Derelict, dreary.

  
         But that hammering was happy.
 I was going into the meadows
 again – lose myself for good.
 So long, Julius.  So long, Pap.

    
                                            7.15.99 (St. Henry's Day)

late late Fri night (harvest moon) reading J. Irwin's great & marvelous book, Mystery to a Solution. . . about the function of the mirror labyrinth double axe design of nature (the two halves of the body & their disequilibria) & Jorge Luis Borges. . . has anyone noticed the Minotaurean-monstrous (a)symmetry of Borges' own name? I'm sure.

"The idea of a house built so that people could become lost in it is perhaps more unusual than that of a man with a bull's head, but both ideas go well together and the image of the labyrinth fits with the image of the Minotaur. It is equally fitting that in the center of a monstrous house there be a monstrous inhabitant." (Borges)

Irwin describes how Borges' ambition for a South American literary origin shaped his design, his ambivalence/attraction to Poe, a fellow "Southerner"/military/alien from the "North" - yet a Northern (American) rival. . .

the amazing thing is the finesse & subtlety with which Borges played these games. . . & Irwin's ability to discern them. . .

my own affinities (as a North-Easterner from old New England North Star State military family) despite these glories tend toward Walt Whitman and Abe Lincoln. . .

but No-body in Maliceville will notice.

- some star - like the articulate
ghost of my fathers and of yours, who
could not speak in life, but in the owlish
afterlife - Ba, Ka, Crow, Lamb. . . tracked

 
upstream to Ethiopia, the truth of it -
manuscripted messenger, papyrus
Pappy or Osiris sire, Moses ripened
in the wilderness).  Mountain oak-tree.

 
Cedar.  Pitch-black tar (for
mordant).  Bebi, General of the Asiatics.
Quick-runner, wasp.  Pharaoh's taxi-
driver.  He Who Controls The Rat-

 
God's Offspring.  Latecomer,
fast-talker.  Journalist for Delta
Crescent.  Walker of the tiled
ink-paths, typesetter.  Market-

 
rent-collector, solitaire, free-
speaker.  Literal, exact, exacting
horsetrading slavestealing tax-
gathering figure of a reefer-

 
man, fearful, a-feared.
Goes down ghost-trails
under live-oak lairs
of rattlesnakes. . . adrift

 
in jagged eddies of nude alphabets.
Murmuring to himself, saliva-
white, spume-frothing blanched
avalanche easily frozen, baffled, back-

 
stabbed - easily beloved, won-over.
And adhesive through the crane bone
into the gravity waves (nacreous
mob of carnelian nouveaux

 
baubles all around the funereal
sunken canopy of maudit covenants,
rumors, glittering knives - 
ressentiment scripted into feral runes).

 
                        - from July

from toward the end of July

10

  
         A halting freedom   hesitant, grieving
 draws her on   she's limping
 on the empty earth
 toward a last vagrant

  
         flowering   the way the Yenisei flows north
 more slowly   under the rustling ice
 and the crackling of timbers
 the way a clay wheel   rotates

  
         more slowly   after your hands have
 gone away   the way he walks
 (the greenish iron   of a broken
 spring   Hans the yurodivy

  
         lifted to his lips)   the last ecstasy
 blooming so   invisibly but   sounding
 there   diminished   minor A
 15th Quartet   staggers so

  
         delicately   drawing on   does not want
 to end it or   to leave   the weeping women
 there   behind   as his   wind-dragged
 accomplices   (heart's magma  Opus   1-3-2)

  
         so in the myrrh within   her casket of acacia
 a pair of stones breathe   from-the-depths
 where   two lines of their footsteps
 meet and   her wooden pine-box

  
         makes an ark as Julius sees her
 yurodive (steel spoke di-ditched)
 a J-stroke (C-B fl. Shostakovich)
 from the C and sown   so recedes

  
         (just a kinetic holey furled seashell)
 into the mirror once again  (an easy-
 does-it Yenisei   or   seizure-salaud)
 (let us pray for them   sailing away)

       
                                                        2.6.2000

something to read from toward the end of July:

         9

  
         Snow on the sierra   in Colca
 a decrepit little stall on Commerce Street
 where   on the spine of a bent ash tree
 they nailed the Mammon-sign from Ecuador

  
         leading yokes of oxen into fallow fields
 dragging four-man threshers into great
 cocks of unthreshed wheat   tending
 irrigation valves all night long   saddling

  
         and unsaddling animals   reaping alfalfa and
 barley   grazing vast drifts of pigs   shouldering
 litters of foreign personages   being punched
 in the face and kicked in the kidneys   going down

  
         into mineshafts   doing time in jail making
 rope or peeling huge mounds of potatoes
 while manacled and chained constantly
 suffering from hunger and thirst   almost naked

  
         seeing their wives dragged off   as in the murmur-
 mirror   the antagonist   stands in your way
 until a wolfram tongue-stone's   iron rod
 sinks   magnetic   toward the confusion-room

  
         of rubies   heavier than lead and   4 degrees Kelvin
 in that oven   10 billionths of a meter away
 from your atomic doppelganger   the quantum
 cubicle or   quern-mirage   a little horn or   clover-

  
         leaf nudging several cobalt atoms
 to form the walls of   the elliptical
 corral 20 billionths of an M-prong
 on the surf-face of a copper crystal

  
         I left five cents buried in a corner of the kitchen
 and   because of them I can't be saved   throw in
 another 95¢   pay it for  mass   for my salvation
 scan-tunnels toward   orchard-narod (neglected)

Here's the "Russian bell" poem from July (incidentally, July was completed on March 5th, the anniversary of the death of both Anna Akhmatova & Stalin):

          7

  
         Maybe it is the belfry   of the Church of the Nativity
 of the mother of God   but it is still cold as Hades
 60 feet up a corkscrew staircase   shoulders
 brush the cobbled walls   the stumbling ascent

  
         a blend of dirge, railroad-crossing clanger and
 shattering wine goblet   a disharmonious sweetness
 makes a beeline   what they create and give away
 no Muzak peal can duplicate   It is peace in the soul

  
         said Mr. Dorokhin, 29   cacaphonous and
 hypnotic   the miracle is that they ring at all
 its bells were carted off   the vacant building
 (gagged) became a holding pen   for circus lions

  
         When it's cold like this, it sounds better
 Russian bells are stationary   the ringer strikes
 them by pulling the tongue with a rope   carefully
 tuned, but   harmony is coincidental   a tree

  
         of iron   droning   like a cork   within ethereal
 and capering fire   or an upside-down Higgs
 particle   afloat in a cup   of gegenschein
 or a grain of faith   profound and whole

  
         lifted overhead into   far-off   rooftop watercolors
 and a basil swell   where the turbulence began
 where a spiral snakes   into interior nègre
 like a turnstone   wheeling   Hamlet's cradle

  
         of inward sin   simultaneously   out into a hamlet
 of fate   at the navel of a rippling   font of sound
 where his father's   agenbite incuse   nostos
 just   rest   spins the will   toward Elsinore

  
         a cue for the angel   troubling the water
 in a maze of circles   with a rod of iron
 for restitution at last   this diorite
 horizon of my clay   you   turn. . .

     1.26.2000

More bing-bong from July:

         14

  
         A slow wheel turns   the law of the jade mountain
 the green J.D.   by the running mead   of the magna
 magma den   and life unwinds there   a gnomon
 month   diploid palimpsest   from ghetto time

  
         and the shield of d-d-d-domination   the doom
 of a damnation of the Ides   of many marches
 a bronze moonship   your deep   deeper   charm
 your debt   a gravid planet's   clayful mood

  
         (the slow boat moving   up the river
 a pair of calipers   in a feral light
 when   five times twelve   tolled
 over a shield)   is numb and veritable

  
         felix fate   from March Ides   to midway
 cruelfact   De qué tronco, el florido
 carpintero!  De qué perfecta axila, el fragil
 remo!   Into the maw   of an old idea

  
         the green spine of the jade that penetrates
 scything   (a Scythian)   through the fat
 of   every seedy masquerade   the stiff ice
 in the cup of masses   stirred by the departure

  
         of the mast   green cape pivoting
 in a punt   a cap mossed-over   a
 Lincolnshire summer's deceased
 footbell's footfall   furball's pnpt

  
         stirs through leaven 60 loaves
 stern to magnetic core's oaken
 coracle   breakthrough   kernel
 of frozen kelson   ice   D-selves

  
         to repay the whole burden of the debt
 government of shadowy quintessence
 weight of one green little one   ascent
 of myrrh and pennyroyal   Jubilato D

       
                                                  2.15.2000

Another section from toward the end of July :

5

  
         Cornered in a crossweave   of very pianissimo
 scales   tumbling down terraces   I learned
 a lot from him   I learned little things
 that mean so much in music   get the little

  
         things together   the way you build a house
 and then the whole structure will stand up
 get the patient on her feet and   Presto
 dancing the minimum   the minutest

  
         waltzing bee   across a waft so fa so fine
 handwoven llama threads   all manual
 cowpuncho Nilon Ship's Clothing   the map
 a tiny honey palm-lamp now   within a fable

  
         of the feeblest roost   or nest   beneath a
 river of Egyptian stars   one lone nut
 (almond, acorn) tunneled in the rivulet
 of a silky   milky   nebulae blanket

  
         and sheets of big muddy   scarab sound
 or terraces of rainbows  out of the cosmos
 of her sorrow   44 stitches to the cinch
 of a single googol [coined by a child]

  
         squared off on a grid of linked unchains
 twirling toward mid-April   Washington
 or Lafayette   leftover in a Thursday rain
 vale, Jo   it's a map of. . .   from a distance

  
         shielded   ink kenosi-shrouded crossroad
 or galaxy of frailest   grassblown wind
 a quantum myrrh held   in a widow-
 pain   a   microscopic   dust sirocco

  
         gleams there   dead ahead and   green
 kayak in a rocket in a yippie eye O kayak
 pi A-grid a-wool manually-done and   a.k.a.
 Mplmnde. Mojomemo Lt. Col. Greenègresham

     
                                                        1.22.2000

Somethin' from the poem July:

     13

         We looked for you   little Sheba
 at the source of the Nile   up the coptic
 streambed running   rusty   and we peeked
 quintessence is a very ghostly thing   (bashful)



  
         Dr. Lykken said   This is starting to look
 like real physics   and   what to do
 with the other six dimensions?
 The extra dimensions   in the Berkeley



  
         theory   stringy forces   and the ability of
 quintessence to flip   a particularly bizarre
 and bedeviling prediction   del heno rubio
 a él en la flexion   a ella en condicion aumentativa



  
         wriggling   incredibly tiny   superstrings
 Y exclamo entonces, sin cesar ni uno
 De qué deslumbramiento ofono, tinto,
 se ejecuta el cantar de los cantares!



  
         THEORISTS PONDER A COSMIC BOOST
 FROM FAR, FAR AWAY   while
 a low D-tone drones   weak field
 of energy   normally exists in a



  
         humdrum, unsurprising attractive mode
 It sort of shadows the behavior
 of the other matter   reverberating
 tenuous   diploid   dum-dee-doom-dum



  
         downward   repulsive quintessence
 accelerating the diaphanous   design
 like a J-drill spiralling   jade or gneiss
 pinpointed through permafrost   a sequin



  
         gone from gold to green to the hidden
 den in the well of do-well   as peers
 pierce the d-d-depth   a spear of
 delight   all manner of   (shall hind   be fond)

     
 
                                                   2.15.2000

something from the Orgone Box (of July) (with some spacings between phrases missing, as usual) for May Day :


4

Dr. Neil De Grasse Tyson is laughing
(kneeling in de grass) as he scampers down
a spiraling ramp of time in the renovated
heavens of the Hayden Planetarium (falls

the length of a football field at Victoria,
they say) (the ramp represents 13 billion
years of evolution) plucks a liberal
hair-width from his visitor’s head (cave

drawings to Now only one three-thousandth
of an inch on this walkway) but will
uncork a Chateau Latour 1900 (with a twinkle)
to celebrate the flow of time (south, north. . .)

as the Fidèle glides into St. Louee
with another boatload of Flying Fools
and the gyroscope oscillates between Wolof
Ndar (near the mouth of the Sénégal)

and that clay-clad fur-trading guest
at the mouth of a wild Missouri
(from Great Lakes to the Gulf) (we resume
on a raftered board of information, staggering

from Huck to Jim and back to Finn again)
and one lucky fellow from nearby St. Paul
debarks, he thinks, for Paris in 33 laps
a man in cream-colors sudden as a grinning

griffin doubly doubtful, you know
him best astride that albino fifth mare
riding into the incredible roll-call of the Ram-
rod ironclad hoarse hi-ho silvery clay-borne

moor. . . that sileage mariner or masked
moron who wins the day with a myrrh-bullet
that wounds but does not kill (tolerable well
I think you know him flighty Viking scam-

divine semi-bateau or smorgasbord)
his I.D. was an island donnybrook
for many a gnomon sheared from the corps
legion and foreign to us all, Cappy (Sargasso

is as good as mine, I guess) Swede?
Great Dane? Some serious kid on the lam?
With a side for existence (Bacon’s moll)?
Underneath the stones and ridicule? Deuce

or Jack? Demure, with marked cards on deck?
Dimly lit lying on a bed of ruses
severe (a little irritable devil –sure,
sometimes) still he wore the drastic keds

inside out, sprinting those finnish loins
around about a decade be-shipped at zee
spun back through a dawn-spout (easy)
countertop crisscrosswordwise (like a snail-

shell on a leash) and carrying the clay-
coated Mexicali canopy midnight to Monday
with one hand (an eyesore) One happy demon
parsed with another innocent city-of-lakes

gaudi-looped gondola our double-U
booted sunny dung-beetled scarabified
rosetta-scrolled Popeye-rusted fiber-
optickled ghoul on a bender

sabled and speared first to steal
forth from that gilded Juligan’s chest
of seven myrrh-dropped home-stretched
boxelder cicada shells upon the waters

and dance Babe the Blue Ox or Ruth
amid the corny aliens after a Homer run
(from big J-lie) (to Jubilee-rumor) (by
way of a tricksy prairie bee) to third.

And there through those heraldic bronze
St. Louis Cathedral western gateways
curled like swimming agates
inwards and signifying “monkeys”

my keys, my keys, O Mon through the
intolerable clashing of egos (and Mr. Gell-
Mann’s routine and obnoxious legendary
put-downs) through the seemingly

intractable symmetry-breaking dispersion
of theories and regular Regge poles and
so on on the throne experimenters (sloppily)
jockeying particle accelerators (up to 20 billion

electron-volts) and the cold fusion of wars
of words the privatical pride of little swords
and hoards of awards on family rudders
oared undergound the narrows of old saws

and sorrows of old Noah and all his waves
and drafty spoons in the inward parts
of the country through all the traps
and the satraps the unpropitiated vows

and the brown gods almost forgotten
implacable watching and waiting
there in the curl of two
crossed fiddleheads a target nef:

smaller and smaller in your palm
gleaming softly ruby and green
like a foursquared loop rung
from one ladder-stem and marbled

like the steps of Oz at the gates
of the Emerald City a handy green
houseboat toto in tornado and Grendel-
gloomed hidden and lucky as a stage-

coach for Atahuallpa on the 29th
slate footstep of the following month
(his octopus depth-grammar, submollified
and cupped for a last millwheel

in Cuzco) ah John John the piper’s son
playing his Andean crane bone
wingèd like a fluted nacreous nob
or happy cap of Shakespeare’s dad

a nonsense duo route of many-coated
rainbow ink across a sunny turtle’s back
aloft now Spirit of St. Louis Lucky’s toot
so sweet to Notre Dame decoded

ink incredible bibliothèque of farther queues
for young men should be old explorers, and
clovers, circling prairies of young bees
that’s my Danish nutshell, Socrates


12.31.99