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

Ravenna Diagram Reading Guide #3

Notes for the long poem, continued.  Please refer to previous post for clarification on this project.

RAVENNA DIAGRAM READING NOTES #3

“UP NORTH” (p.5)

Change of scene.  In stanzas 1-3, description of wilderness lake (Vermilion) in northern Minnesota.  “Mnemosyne Point” : poet’s mother (Mary Ravlin Gould) christened family camping area after keynote word from Nabokov.

“Time’s wooden (4th

grade) ruler.  Not to break.” :  obscure reference to the history-pattern of the poem (contra Pound) outlined in the “preliminaries” section of these notes.  Pun on “wooden... ruler” : the metaphysical “ruler” (“King of Kings”) rules from “fleet of ragged little cedars” – or from the Cross.  Establishing hegemonic chronology (B.C.-A.D.) of western culture.

Also : the simple childhood memory (mnemosyne).  The wooden 4th-grade school ruler.

“Placeness of quiet places” : in this stanza the northern MN landscape is merged with the imagined landscape around Ravenna (cedar, pine swamps near ocean).

“One saturnine pedestrian” : Dante, also Mandelstam (who wrote about Dante’s “long walks”)

“snowbound wedding band” : Dante’s Commedia correlates, interrelates human and divine Love – the Orphic “wedding” with Beatrice (& divinity) in the Paradisal afterlife.

“stream’s bright ford” : the poetic “stream” is the passage between the two realms.

flesh-tone bridge

MAZY CHARTER

The wistful twirling of a yellow leaf

falling from a book of leaves

by the big river.  Waves

of leaves, infinite beyond belief

slanting down through a universe

beyond fall’s azure,

through its perfect mirror

of ineffable air.  The woodpecker’s

not waxwing, but a twin-bird –

matching Thunderbird

like third wing, or word

thing – in Red Wing, we’ve heard.

& they’ve buffed the naked concrete

of the Franklin Bridge

to warm flesh-tone (Wedge

whistling to Jay : almost complete,

they say).  Like hands arching across

the tingling serpent below

someone signals so –

right, all right.  The frail cosmos

is built of moss & dogwood leaves;

made like a dream-song

on a thread so long

from inner lining of young Osip-sleeves.

Hid in a nightfall of Apollon-wrath.

The child-heart trembles

when the chief dissembles –

ice winking in the barrel underneath

                   *

encompassing a land in shambles,

wasted by Behemoth

& Metheboss (cloth-

of-gold twin skimlords, crashing cymbals).

El-Moloch asked for the heart of your son.

For your son the king,

the bloom of everything –

Aztec football in place of the sun.

Apotropaic sign or mirror-pharmakon,

the murmured word of love

becomes a catcher’s glove –

inside-out Osip net (for rescuing someone).

You search the scryptics, yet you

do not come to Me.

Gold almond cider, see?

Where Mendelssohn defeats Deep Blue.

She’s by your side, a kelson, smiling,

spinnaker through gray wall

of seamless cloud – whale

of light fog, swallowing Jonah – a ring

of stone, becoming breathing feathers

for a child of Ocean River,

borne downstream from Neva-

Neva-Heavenland (all-planetary weathers).

Her green eye walks through doors, through gates.

That crossroad in the mirror

overwhelms birth-terror –

seals mazy charter (Liberty checkmates).

9.28.17

eclipse for equal lips

LOWLY COIN

Twilight at mid-day, then rain

after the eclipse.  Little

Sophie’s 4th.  A medal

made of bronze; a lowly coin

of copper green.  Absinthe air

around the monuments.

The sickly shade of dense

black sun... Monday’s gone Friday

everywhere.  Whisper it back

to me, slowly, slowly.

Parallax of late Dante,

his painful feet beneath a wrack

of Roman marble, winking tesserae...

only a rain in Voronezh.

Profile of a Chaadev pledge

to 4th estate – soul freedom, aye.

Vladimir – that other one, with

the unpronounceable name –

wanders Wyoming

(motels, mountains).  His Monarch myth,

his Morpho blues, his regal soul

from coal-speck diamond –

a parabolic almond

subtext (Rorschach mirror-bowl).

Lincoln-ghost, Vallejo cheekbones...

chaste sign of equal lips.

Sophie’s green foot trips

through her basilica’s midnight sunstones.

8.21.17

still life life still

STANDARD MODEL

So summer, Susanna, slowly, slowly

decelerates, among the weeds

& celery, the radish seeds.

&, painted into a corner, quietly

arrives full stop.  Like Peto

still life.  Or Adagietto

seeping on the Lido.

Gradually.  More things, Horatio,

than are dreamt of...  Plumb pleroma

if you can, Hobo –

speak what we feel we know,

somehow.  Premonitions (like a

wind-blown pennant toppling

at Little Big Horn).

Do not compare, Son

of the Morning Star (glass tippling);

you are the only one of a kind

Wakan Tanka.  To come

back from the grave... some

stretch, Hermione.  Out of your mind?

The Blue Morpho of Vladimir

eludes his abstract net –

yet he’ll catch a Hazel.

Bet.  Meet your double in a mirror

(is good luck, not bad).  The way

a doubting Peter folds

a king of hearts, & holds

the diamond.  One homing ray

                *

unlocks the elephant casket (gold-

lined interior, with keys

to inside story)

figured by Jonah, Susanna – double

coracles conveying chronicles

to Finland, now, for you.

Finis.  He’s us, too.

With eyes like Mirror Lakes

in Mendelssohn, down Arthur Street

(the once & future thing).

Two heavy charms, making

an up-quark reddish baryon, Snoopy –

hiccups of a Higgs bison, maybe?

Concerns which we cannot

discern at CERN, just yet.

Professor Nyet beside the Neva...

– Knock it off, Nobby.  That Large

Hadron won’t bunt the Standard

Model for 1000 millionths of

a billionth of a second, pard.  No, Sarge.

I was just napping by the meteor,

that’s all.  It rolled away

(under the elements, maybe).

Not Hobo, not Pope... Columbus, neither.

Those deep brown hazel eyes absorb

Persephone-phenomena...

monarchs on milkweed... ah,

she weeps.  Who spans her glistening orb?

7.7.17

compact Mayflower

ACCORD-HARMONIUM

Memorial Day.  The little flags

for birthday boys.  A vast

lime hillside park, just

north of Harriet.  My scraps & rags

of memory.  Twilight apartment

in the 50‘s (60 years

ago).  Mahogany.  Grandpa’s

brass shell from France.  The scent

of pipe tobacco.  Suntanned print

of Washington & Lafayette

skipping a minuet

après la Revolution... ancient

icons of a Constitution, hereby

animated (in the flesh).

How to start fresh?

For the remembrance of me...

for 1st Minnesota, Cemetery

Ridge (clumped there

after the last full measure).

Play with your toy soldiers, Henry.

Hawk-wrought republican scriptures

underwritten by compact

Mayflower... covenant

of friendly fellowship (yours,

mine, ours).  Underscored in turn

for soft flute melody

out of forgotten Gypsy

music-box, deep August forest (yearn

                *

for startled stars, green, coppery).

The absinthe reminiscence

of a Peto (Still Decades).

Time’s overrated.  It’s your history

that’s in your making, Liberty.

Out of Itasca spring

a major serpent thing

treads sinuous Welsh-knotty

tanglements, under lightweight bridge

(it’s only gravity) –

your shadow-play, Psyche,

Eurydice.  Reunion.  To the edge

of black-&-yellow double-eagle

eggshell canoe (viceroy

cocoon?) from stony

Petrograd (oscillate, seagull).

Black-orange monarch of your soul.

This little mustard seed

of pilgrimage (Venerable Bead

or Columbaa) will ravel up the whole

into an Okie safety catch of swinging

carousels – Francesca

slanting out of Rimini

(doggèd by Pound) is bringing

Beatrice in her wake – a hurricane

accord-harmonium,

an oriole some-hum bonum

renewing memories (Van Windowpane).

5.26.17

in the zigzag brambles

A GAP

The effect of insight is a sway

of blindness.  Hobo stumbles

in the zigzag brambles.

Fractured fractal frater Francese

camouflaged beneath the Franklin Bridge

(Brownian motion

through a brown mountain

of thorny lozenges & Persian sedge).

The little we see is like a microdot.

A pimple on an eager

pupil – light more meager

in the spokey distance than we thought

– a black hole at its vanishing

girdled with gold penumbra.

His hairs are all numbered,

Galla... fine fit for banishing.

& out of Purgatory rose the diamond

circled by dark chocolate figs

in Sydney.  Wisdom’s digs

are Solomon’s life-shade (moribund

quincunx in the quipu knot);

mild oil of Cyrus

poring shaky chess

wi’ Vladimir, in Paradise (not

Petersburg – Neva). & milky

black, El K arrays

6 ribbons in a Coke display –

the cosmic fizz is finished, Blackie

                    *

Pushkin (Abyssinian catastrophe).

I sense a communion

in an eyelid’s tear-borne

Rimini.  Her ruffled water-symphony,

her Moth Star – bracketed by wagon-

train or Charley-horse –

rose (by reverse Morse

code, or languish tombsk) to fill a flagon

slithered by play claw (dogwood

& oaken twig matter,

merged in a stream-mutter

toward Troezen crown).  Shivered

the Quaker grave.  Some Isis-ghost

of prodigal Ox-Iris lifted

Isaac from the scripted

crumb – some rose Mosaic host,

some chorus of arboreal grief.

Pacific prescience,

aquiline benevolence

ring from that innocence (belief

by kid in Hart’s magnanimous

Columbia-flow).  A simple

crossroad marks the ample

shadow every Geraldine or Uncle

Roger filed, & Dickey bird loves

just this – reciprocal

acknowledgement of all

a gap entails (Thanksgiving doves).

3.29.17

night sea journey

SALT-SPARK

                          I mean the bedrock of our freedom – a bedrock of our

                          freedom is the right to worship freely. – G.W. Bush, 2.27.17

A light snow fell the first of March.

Ash Wednesday,

Will Blackstone would say.

Antithesis to Caesar’s march,

this errant solitaire into Rhode Island.

Where his friend Rog Williams

established bedrock freedoms,

planting Providence to stand

all time to come.  Like some great cedar

rooted in the granite eye

of personal soul liberty –

Milk River journey (if you dare).

Dark night of Jonah’s foundering.

Black scar of raven-

knife, Earth’s oven-

kiln.  Poe’s ghastly pondering...

Job’s pain.  Pound’s acid bath of hate.

So take this flake of ash.

Solder hexagonal gash

ice red across your brow, ingrate.

Within the creaking iron rose mandala

where Time slowly, slowly

runs to stillness.  Sea-

rose, sea-bell... whispers, ephphatha.

When the Eternal comes, emerging

from Leviathan

like an infant infantryman.

Unknown soldier, Everyhen, merging

                    *

with your sunken sun... a crown surging

from Lake Vermilion

– soul-memoire’s pain

et vin (violet lilac, ever-urging).

So the shy brown hermit lends his Lent

for ghost dance baptism

to Roger’s freedom-rhythm.

Chaste kamen of Magdalen, arc-bent

in parallax beneath the surface –

retinal curve of stone

lifted, of death undone

by innocence... & you will trace

the light thread-path, proportional –

like hazel-wand, or Blue

Morpho – wing true

monarch (black-yellow jag, regal)

from Providence to Mexico.

Across the night sea

gulf, Psyche, Persephone –

along an agate spiral go

into your copper spring turned green.

Slow wheel in clay...

a simple Lincoln penny,

twirling planet on a mast of pine –

the fiery root – Cautantowwit

& Manitou – the Spirit

blazing perfect light –

salt-spark of snow – sun-chariot.

3.1.17

in Red Wing

JOY-DIALECT

The great apes crouching toward the east

to meet the light

Cautantowwit in flight

southwest, southwest (a raven-feast)

echo the caw-caw over Noah’s ark

(breadcrumbs for Elijah).

The future is for Jonah

or for Jeanne to bear (as oak

from acorn weathers Thunderer,

Earth-Shaker).  From these

enormous clay crocks

of Red Wing pottery (grain elevator,

stoneware casque) one Blue Morpho

or ochre-black Monarch

skims toward blind Psyche-

park (houseboat for mosey-Hobo) –

when Hero rises from the womb

of Nile or Mississippi

like Huck, like Jim (she

will be free!) across the loom

of frozen rim (Troezen or Petersburg).

In Red Wing, Frances Densmore

heard the drums pour

rhythm underneath the river – bug

slant like water spider’s perfect

pitch-black whispering

through tympanum – sing

beyond ice-frame (joy-dialect).

11.1.16 

Frances Densmore exhibit, Goodhue County Historical Society Museum (Red Wing, MN)

Rock Candy Neva-Neva trail

LIMESTONE PROFILE

The little white cabbage moth

& the dragonfly, following

Hobo down his bumbling

Rock Candy Neva-Neva path

beside the river.  Past the bridge

nearly finished, almost

restored... some ghost

dance out of Petersburg (knowledge

from chaste vision – redemption

blooming like a morning

glory – everything trembling

at the dawn of time – the Galilean

tacking in the wind across the lake

zigzagging like a monarch

slanting orange-black

over sumac, milkweed – to be forsaken

& his cup to take)...  So the dream of a girl

is the grail of a dream, when

startled Magdalen

beholds him (where fern-worlds unfurl).

Like a fiddlehead figurehead, a nettle

Beatrice, the dream ramifies;

what was there always

unveils, the whole sweet kernel-coracle –

as Hobo finds his bearings in the smile

of a limestone Ursus profile,

in the lofty Milky Whale

of a firefly Jonah (rainbow trail).

9.6.16

Princess K of the Milky Way

MORNING CAVE

Late August.  Royal touch of autumn.

Comfortable king

of tenderness, bring

me down to your brown river once again.

The cottonwoods are silver-green

but turning gold.  A monarch

speeds black-orange – sparks

up the path, to vanishment (unseen

morpho-sprint).  My chunk of lumber

floats off too.  Fine meteor

pumice, sanded to pearl –

gray weathered pebble, unknown soldier...

The State Fair’s starting up today.

Princess K of the Milky

Way will crownèd be.

Black milk of bitter history

we sipped... fed roots of almond tree.

Cryptic redemption

on knife’s edge... Raven

remembers (Hazel, breathing free).

The King of Milk is by the riverside.

He washes memories

like Papa’s hand – a breeze

murmuring, Everything’s OK.  I sighed.

A child is comforted.  The Earth

will be.  Like Magdalen

or Beatrice – when the sun

colors a morning cave (in Nazareth).

8.25.16

Concord, Columbia

KIEVAN ARK

This gazebo’s tilted octagon

of weathered, worm-eaten

cedar holds off the rain

in Minneapolis, again.

Again, Henry will dream his songe

like a train-hopping sponge

& let summer arrange

cloud-peaks of glory (strange

magnet, fourchette d’orange).  Concord,

Columbia – créatif

brain-fever of native

mer-wit – good Will’s three-cornered

cap of happiness (wasp Osip’s

honey-basket on the Hill

of Skull).  A game of skill

is Vladimir’s, & music too – the ship’s

a Kievan ark (turned right-side-up

beneath its choral dome).

Salt-azure breath of wisdom

streams from Maximus (one cup

of simple crumblevine); his prong

is set like Lebanon

cedar beside the chronic

faultline – earthquake birthpang,

epileptic flow.  & now one smile

reverses Golgotha

with OK light – it’s manna-

Madeleine (kneads pain into a grail).

5.25.16

Center of the earth

COCOON-SHADE

We were scrambling through an endless cave,

Mark Trail & I, in the

cartoon – wait – uh...

that was a dream!  Mind, now – behave!

There was an independent chap with spear

all gold, atop a globe-

sized turtleshell, adobe –

yodeling (with shimmering lyre)

Good Will I am Good Will...

There was a lowly, sketchy

mule, named Eeyore, following

his master, Donkey Haute, until

they reached the center of the earth

– a vernal O, encompassing

an M, a W (whelmelding

vertiblur upon a sunlit hearth

all rosorangled in Pacific dawn).

& then I felt wings purring

in my sleep... a chirring

flutter-by of monarch (milky-spun

cocoon-shade of the teeming soil);

a turtledove was crooning

too, for old George – leaning

on his scythe, worn with grave toil. 

The axle of the earth, the axle...

muttered he – of rusty

us the icon, see.

Light waves from Chartres pinnacle.

4.22.16

Jasper circumference

GRAY PAINT

The vast Flemish panorama

coheres in a raven’s eye.

Through haunted oaks, high

wind tosses bugle-calls (taran 

tara).  Bruegel’s gray paint congeals

on the perimeter

of the sea... Demeter

wanders like a Walloon reels

caterwauling, Persephone!

In Flanders grass, poppy-

purpura (like the sea

around a stubby Orizaba) –

only the poem is humble

enough to bear the yoke

of a poshlost rude joke.

She won’t let you stumble,

Psyche, in your edgy sundance.

That quatrefoil in the blue

mortuary was for you,

poilu (Apollinaire) – entrance

to complete volume of sibylline

Mnemosyne.  Pine

tree pantomime... a line

of sketchy aquamarine (shan shui).

A jasper circumference defines

our Atlantean task,

to reconcile each mask

of pathos (in a matrix of threadlines).

4.8.16

Vladimir's Mnemosyne

FLINTY SEAL

The little height of land, pasture

behind the slough, Heidi,

in Mendelssohn – where we

hunted fireflies together

as on a giant turtle’s back

in the dark – like sparks

or bees on a gloomride

puppy stars under the black

sky – sidling, sidereal

in sympathy, friendly

affinity, & simply

love (centripetal

North Star).  Vladimir’s Mnemosyne

within the hazel wood

only pure good –

Time the shady tall ash tree

that leaves its paw-print on your brow

today.  Miniature

meteor, or sepulchre

in microcosm, negative snow-

flake, flinty seal of Solomon;

emblematic passion-

flower, heart’s icon,

salt for a matrix-flame... O Queen

of the South, nightingale’s

bridegroom, at peak of

deep star-well – Love’s

rose-nest (crowning pregnant sails).

2.10.16