the clay wheel of America

HARLORN NINT

The tiny Russian church on Franklin Avenue

like an Easter toy box

– St. Pantaleimon – is

slowly, slowly, expanding in size (cinnamon-blue

eggshell transept… more light from East).

& this is Sirin-Nabokov’s birthday;

my mother’s interest led me

to find him too; Pnin, Pale Fire, a kind of yeast

for hilarious risings into Harlorn Nint

(you sense what he meant).  &

never mind, supercilious gent,

that I myself am bumptious Pantaloon –

(hint, hint).  Her ocarina loon-call

from Petersburg bridge

stays here, with me; the edge

has never left my raven-knife; Hope’s all.

We saw the Pantaleon window, painting light

across the massive maze

at Chartres.  He was

a Nicomedian healer-martyr, “all-compassionate”;

the tromping Emperor (sick Pantalone

himself) despised his expertise.

Some judgement-grave (not nice)

whorls in a spiral from Big Muddy Zone;

the clay wheel of America is heavy

as concrete.  I set my seal

across him swamp-gray dollar bill –

the eye of Providence over the levy

*

dealt by Pharaoh.  Each eye shall be

flooded with Cairo salt

when Black Elk’s figure 8

echoes (6 ways) Ravenna’s quay Rhody.

& then the Isis-eye of that palm-print

curls into acorn coracle…

green glint of dovecote-oracle

(Ionian emerald, honey-gold & mint)

when two wheels meld in one almond

& a blood-red waxen overlay

(the shattering of JFK)

molts Newport ships to ancient Trebizond.

I set my seal there, in a double ring

where the canoe binds equilibria

– Gateway curving to Cahokia

& up & down, from Delta to the spring.

It is a Janus-face – past & future

reconciled there, pain

& hope.  Because the vin

et pain of his free-will suture

like that flint beak of Mandelstam, reaching

into the wound, to heal

will reconcile Love & the Real

with a Redemption already achieved (teaching

of Cullmann, as in Pushkin & Scriabin).

& so the grail-stone of the eucharist

whence the 4 Eden-streams will burst

marks twain upon our Mississippi spin.

4.22.20

April is the finickiest month

SMOKE PILLARS

April is the finickiest month, sunshine & snowfall

confusing the fiddleheads.  Atop the bluff

across from St. Paul, three tough-

soft Indian mounds are igloo-domical.

A little further down, the buried poet-man

dreams in Resurrection Cemetery.

& further yet, across from Eero’s airy

Gateway Arch, Cahokian terraces remain –

vernal ziggurat earthworks climb into sky.

The river moves in swerves… &

doesn’t move.  A copperhead,

unblinking, eyeing you… deciding – live or die?

Flanking that rushing flickering stillness

the mounds are more than motionless.

How… curious crowds can only guess.

Perpetual smoke pillars curse & bless.

Yet these temples are only an analogy.

Even the priests understood

that much.  The man tied to wood,

the woman in flames… perverse apology

in the bloodshed glass – recognition

forsaken.  Of the friend

nearby, who takes your hand…

(a glance to the heart, beyond perdition).

These vast mausoleums of bone & ash

frame unwavering grief.

Magdalenian memory, beyond belief.

& the light will not die (dwells in her eyelash).

4.13.20

Henry having a royal fit

ARIADNE’S CROWN

A limpid morning, Palm Sunday.

In the little woods

behind the Shriners’ (closed)

Hospital, gaunt oaks lift branches high

in anxious supplication (to an emerald

Acorn King).  Prince Hal,

scion of OK Gal, in his corral

of febrile & uneasy crowns, grows bold –

to place his father’s own upon his brow

in the Jerusalem Chamber

(where Huck & Jim clamber

aboard… that cardboard scow,

the trumped-up King of England’s dhou).

The river bends, reverent

& full of revery (blent

with the clay into its royal slough).

You boy, there!  Yes you, boy –

rivery O-buoy!  Come here!

King David shall appear

& dance – like naked singularity

or Solomonic wormhole, full of sacred

density – before the Ark!

& with the flicker of a quark

the center of the galaxy turns red

& churns like furnace of the cosmic kiln –

inverted mirror of MLKy

Y’Way – so massively

reflecting (like a missile-toed oak-gall)

*

that mauve & scarlet Rooster of the Day

who chants his clear call

to Event Horizon Wall

& leads the Magi home – another way!

M87 – black hole (multiplied

by 56, at least) –

from center of the feast

of lights – preternatural Virgo, Argo-eyed

Hagia Sophia – Isis of Ocean River

barge!  Prince Hal

trembles now, elliptical

epileptic – empty Apollo quiver…

overshadowed by that Thunderbird

shadow-of-shadows (el Rio

del Espiritu Santo).

His Ariadne’s Crown only a word

for the implicit eagle’s nest of silence

where the plague-eddies

of blind King Eddy

disappear into Big Muddy, & the dense

congregation of the Humble One

who rides a mule into town

(distance-divided by their own

disease, their wrangles for the crown) –

are suddenly hushed before those lips

mute-smiling, like a rose canoe;

those palms, encircling us now

in one speechless embrace… (love-clasp).

4.5.20

where the spring is found

ROBIN HUM

This plaintive spring, like a lonesome robin

piping his distance at the riverbank.

Out of The Tender Land, I think.

The vast bronze river is one serpentine

vibration.  A continental vernal sign,

stretching with catenary smiles

from Lake Itasca to the marshy isles

off New Orleans.  & Hobo sez – all mine.

Dotted with gravity of local bridges,

1132 miles (up & down).

Their almond arcs a pontoon

cascade… cavernous vector of ledges…

climbing toward a flimsiest first whorl

of fiddlehead crowns

at the source of sounds –

where the spring is found.  All shall be well

& all manner of thing shall be well

when the blazing rose shall dwell

at the matrix of clay wheel,

& Thunderbird boom his bronze bell.

& the cry of the mighty bird & the sigh

of the river sound one octave :

unison, played in the key of Love.

For though I sing like angels & men… & though I

have all knowledge – all prophetic wisdom

of stars & planets, capitals

& kings – yet I have not caritas…

I am but sounding brass.  Hear Robin hum.

3.19.20

print on linen by Grace Tagliabue & Phoebe Gould

grain in the hold in the Boundary Waters

Mary (Elvira) Ravlin Gould, Jan. 2020

BRIGHT ANCHOR

I was wheeling my mother Mary around

the old people’s home yesterday.

We came upon the Ash Wednesday

service, by chance, & rolled on in.

The genial priest lifted up the Book

& prayed for us all

& traced a cross of charcoal

on our brows (despite my mother’s look

of wary puzzlement).  & we rolled on.

Her father was an engineer.

Master of grain elevator

& sewage plant, he built his own

brick house along the Mississippi

back in 1929, or so –

Barnett & Record Co.

John H. Ravlin (everlastingly).

Granddad, your fathers came from Dublin

whirled by coracle & shamrock

to Vermont.  By hard knock

grace & cornucopia, they ventured in

to the interior.  You heard violins

of Verdi… Elvira

(some serene Barber adagio)

& in great lofty mountainous grain bins

of full, deep faith, one mustard seed

of your stern secret mother

glints – compassionate anchor

for Milky Way (ark’s cornerstone, indeed).

2.27.20

John H. Ravlin in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (1940s)

mini-Mississippi meditation

WINDY CURRENT

They found a body in the broken ice

upstream from Franklin Bridge.

Nearby, JB leapt the edge

50 Epiphanies ago.  Minnesota Nice

reminder of mortality, this cold

Ash Wednesday.  & who

shall rescue me from this

body of death?  You, Lord?

Let each one find you, mighty to save.

My own keeled-over Mardi Gras

diversions end Mid-Barataria.

O rheumy battery of barratry – behave!

Half-sunk, in debt to fraud… Old Ironsides,

our near-abandoned Constitution

drifts toward Mars Lagoon –

graveyard of hulking Liberties, Columbias…

I heard Brad Barth, & maybe Latrobe

have shaped a mini-Mississippi

en masse.  Delta recovery

with restoration of the entire globe

– at 1/65th scale, using simulated sand –

in view.  Musk-earthy angel

of Odetta, oversing y’all

sluiceways – my diversions too; your hand

stroking the banjo-strings, your voice…

one grain of sand.

Let not Pharaoh’s demand

deter you from your bitter cross

                    *

– a better choice, for man nor woman

noir nor blank, there be nought

but this flashing pivot –

fiery chariot, all-bearing, San Franciscan

stigma tattoo – all-loving happy ghost

& live-oak everlasting shade

reconciling all things made

& unmade (windy current, whirling host).

Water currents, pressure & flow

(scale-model of congregated

clover coracle, 200’ x 70’)

up to the Chapel of Eternal Now.

You just want to get in & start playing

with it.  We can (she sings)

no longer accomplish things

by damming things off.  What saying,

Great Spirit?  Hwæt?  There was silence

for about six hours

(prelude to thunderblast)

when ailing Alighieri, heart gone quiet as

a babe, asleep upon her mother’s breast

gazed up into the rainbow dome

at Sant’Apollinare.  You come

to me gliding, from Sabbath rest

in your almond canoe, Jessie-Jesu…

out of the gemstone casket

where 4 streams exit

like the Nile, from Ethiopia… O Hallelu.

2.26.20

from G. Ronald Murphy, S.J., Gemstone of Paradise, p. 187

at edge of Gulf, at Mardi Gras

MUSTARD TEAR

So ancient Carnival-time creaks around

Hobo, at winter’s nadir –

up & down the copper

serpent-river, ice to Gulf, from underground.

Seigneur Latrobe & son (masonic

architects) glide on

into their slanted lichen

tombs, below the levee.  Chronic

exploitations, born of lordly guile

condemn brother & sister

to the poorhouse – maybe

forever (never God’s will).  Meanwhile

Mardi Gras Indians from Cajun swamps

tiptoe, sauntering in beads &

feathers, vaunting weeds

beside Big Muddy… spin their vamps,

magnanimous & happy-go-lucky!

As Frazer phrased it once,

the Oak-King was dunce

for a day, scapegoat – to bind three

realms, to decorate the grim

reality of king-dom

(manacled to thrum

of male plumage, sly rhythm

of greed).  Meanwhile us tramps lie in our camps

the ciphered segregation

of a riven nation –

the politic paralysis of frozen clamps

                *

unbroken for a generation

yoking partisans

of limited taxation

with particles of airy explanation.

Yet lo, Hobo! the sleepy sleepwalker

still reigns under the rain…

King Virbius in blue vervain,

Osiris-man of verby us (dumb talker)!

One lone mustard tear of Isis

flowing down the dream;

knit-wit of Union, seam-

by-seam… Columbia, thy hum he is!

& out of one immense unspoken heart

on its wheel of suffering

flies this foam… a sparkling

shield of steely martyrdom – cart

of churl & Charlemagne, Big Bear,

Charles’ Wain – iron hinge

of Milky Way!  Melange

of pipesmoke sacrificial princes, there!

Martin, & Jack, & Abraham…

William & James… lights

winking from Astraea’s height –

sea-foam & flotsam of the cosmic Lamb!

At the edge of the Gulf, at Mardi Gras

Hobo floats to sea, to see…

out of wrath & misery

lamps of justice, liberty – her wings, Noah!

2.23.20

sketch by Benjamin Latrobe