the legend of Guillem d'Orange

CALM EQUILIBRIUM

The frail forsythia across the drive

is leafing now, sweet

milky gold.  Is life complete,

somewhere – some honeysuckle beehive?

The legend of Guillem d’Orange

seeped into the chansons.

Found its way to Stalin’s

cantons – Osip took an interest (étrange

poète – tel joie de vivre!).  Guillem’s

a distant relative, by way

of Negus ancestry –

West Branch an Ethiopia of idioms

& Quaker scattergood.  Small world

of planetary matrices…

– a world Guillem renounces

(adieu, Charlemagne) for cloistered

Provençal sea-cave.  Knight becomes

monk.  & shall Earth rest,

also? – quaint Jubilee bequest

someone foresaw, 3000 years ago?  Sums

multiply… an exponential calculus

bending toward vertigo.  Yet

Osip & Oscar Cullmann know

an elegant solution to the cul-de-sac (us

vs. Rus… general apocalypse).

The restoration in his Name

returns the Other to the Same –

after a darkened Holy Week’s eclipse

                     *

the Wolf shall lie down with the Lamb

& whom Jerusalem encrypts

shall meet Sophie – who skips

from sepulcher to Ghent (near Amsterdam)

to gaze from candid sheepish eyes

into the crippled stadium

(where waves of human tedium

crash against hate-riddled walls)… & rise!

I see that other monk, Franciscan-

Neapolitan Joachim – his spare

horsehair, daubing seraphim

& golden Thunderbird (tall plummet-plan).

Third Aeon of the Holy Ghost,

gyring… with restoration

in her wings.  A gravitation

from the grave – gift become host;

33 years of absolute devotion

(1099-1132)

framed by crane-bone flute

& Marsden’s Melville-crucifixion.

You wonder at my curious forgotten lore.

It isn’t hard to find.

Her golden fleece, refined

by fire, still shines from everywhere;

sheep in witch hazel, murmur-dove,

pearl beyond price… she is

forsythia of everlastingness –

calm equilibrium of Pax (justice & love).

4.8.20

ancient West Branch watercolor

CURVE PRONGS

Everything gets more simple

in old age.  Trust me.

Thanksgiving pumpkin pi =

two stone pillars, plus an ample

roof.  Henry Mewl, hee-hawing

NNW (out of Apuleius)

checkmates template Isis 

planted in West Branch (settling

in river-bronze).  Like that watercolor

Mary Negus limned

in high school – skimmed

from unlocked memory (her

Grant Wood brain, a dusty library).

The curve prongs back to earth

west of St. Lou. – Ft. Worth.

Van Cliburn Plumbs to Victory.

I was walking up from the Mississippi

this afternoon, & met

(in Voronezh sunlight)

an ancient babushka, smiling at me.

Thinking of Nadezhda, & of hope...

of Mary Magdalen,

who witnessed Russian

irony in the garden (roped-

off Gesthem – Tsarskoe Selo).

The dream song blinks

until your lighthouse winks.

Wry rosy Providence (all systems go).

1.11.19

gash of a calm current

CALM CURRENT

The daggers of the sumac (plum-

red, maroon) accent

the gash of a calm current

between these knotted forks of autumn

cottonwood.  The knot itself

an ellipse, like bole

of oak (hollow hole...

screech owl?) – for an emerald elf.

The Green Man in the green glade.

Prehistoric American?

Or an Irish cousin.

Gardener in the garden (maid

Magdalen’s Gesthemane).

The river is a strong

brown Gould.  Unstrung

out of New Hampshire (Alleghany?

Ohio?).  Or maybe Negus, Ravlin...

leading the flock mesmerized

to Iowa (West Branch, 

shepherd).  Buzzing a Quaker violin.

We have dawdled long enough

in Babylon, children.

The labyrinth (Parisian)

folds Theseus into a trough

much like a Mississippi mirror

dreamscape, umbilical

(& smoothly paradoxical).

We mumble into the interior.

10.29.18

wave-factor

ARBOR DAY

The wave-factor on a riverboat

differs downstream (or

up).  Rocking the shore

like thread of Agnes Martin’s Night

Sea.  & we are far from home.

Waves of corny grain,

of grass, of wheat... Main

Street.  Grant Wood’s metronome.

He lived four blocks from Henry Negus.

Farmer turned lawyer-

transportation czar

(bus co.) in Iowa City – is

my namesake (great grandfather).

Quaker-shlepherd genehaulogy.

American Gothic, see (flea!) –

straight from dry-humus bow-bent flower.

Arbor Day.  Planting families

of fanatics in the grass –

another word for pass

the ammunition, Grandma.  Crazies,

huh?  All-American.  Beyond

the scope of Scopes Trial,

Solomon... we’re all

afloat upon some stinkin’ frogpond

paddle-wheeler.  Gothic was light

pontoon (Jerusalem).

Grail-Sepulchre rim.

Gitchee-Pollen-Air, up & walkin’... right?

7.15.18

Womb in the cave-shade

ALMOND ARK

They were farmers & shepherds in West Branch,

cartwrights & blacksmiths, laboring

through pain... the rusty ring

of iron clamps, the thick stench

of horse manure, the pigs & cows...

yet took their time for quiet

in the Meeting House – let

runaways abide, lambs browse.

Their silence lodged in protest against

violence itself –

the insolence of Guelf

& Ghibelline, the gangs, the hunts...

the iron dream of domination

locking the brain-cave

in its frozen grave

(creak-echo of damnation).

There was a spring in Tuscan hills,

coiled like a rusty serpent –

green with moss, bent

into turtleshell... old Williams’

spiral (out of Coke, Blackstone).

Mules’ rustic rights

& supernatural delights

limp into leaves of a live-oak woman –

her heavy womb in the cave-shade

like a Negus by the Nile

hidden for a while...

almond ark of spring (oak-apple maid).

5.11.16

Quaker Meeting House, Scattergood School, West Branch, Iowa

from toward the very end of Forth of July. The "W" that Bluejay & Henry's wanderings etched on the Providence East Side ridge, took some odd turns.

 6
   
            The scene, refreshed, reroused, was never to be forgotten,
            the hen and crusader ever intermutuomergent...      
                                        – Finnegans Wake
  
  
 A cask of negus went barreling down the rhode
 whorled in a victory-fin into the foretimes
 buried in the midnight garden   one St. William's
 Day   where he rose (our W) and rows and rowed

  
 his henpicked galley   through gales of galloping
 gallic ages   alone, Gellone   (with 28 oarsmen
 and a red coxcomb   for a bully steersman)
 it was a barging line or ink-can sunship

  
 filled to the midnight brim with Orange   or
 honeyed yellow sweetings for the Bethel brew
 it was a skeevy chicken key V shield anew
 down the rustling river toward   a dey of fire

  
 on Study Hill   or in Byzantium   an axe
 set to the roots   of Oak Tree Day
 Newport summons   wedding for old El Rey
 old Johnny Atahualpa Hamlet's   summery X

  
 the omelet ovum all at last   of everywombin' man
 incalculate and calculate   with little pebbles
 small gray veterans from Black Sea pledge
 unto out of   the Son of Man   (here back to then)

  
 and like a hand-sprung iron spring   by
 golly Moses there it goes   an able nef
 into the winestained cupola's deep
 arrak barrel   diving for the ring

  
 of south-north stars' lamb-lamp
 beeW your myrrh, my Magdalen
 gleams in those double-emerald
 ships (aye-aye me dewfall-camp)

       
                             5.25.2000

Not on strike, yet anyway. Another shot from toward the end of July:


6

The Negus is king at the sources of the Nile
and as you watched the last light
glimmer through the black oaks and the steel
span glinted (through the wavering lines

of cigarette smoke spiralling idly
from the mou of a Petersburg Pawnee)
down the River Road wan bishops
and white knights looked on amazed lady

as the smoke stirred like steam
over a winter font and thick curtains
of the god of chance obscured your tracks
but today I know what you want: the massed

bells toll faintly distant across the river
their high Sophie argot a glassy lalala
in the frozen box of myrrh Lena
your magna vox my stem of reverie

is Hope anchored in a tiny throaty clef of
clay overalls an infancy cup-map of those
all-human hills so clear in Tuscany so the
Lenten font is tenderly wrapt in a cloverleaf

with the fiery lightweight tongues of the nef
of bluedom's Jonah azure aquamarine
and the beginnings of a North Star's requiem
are yoked with lastful measure in the marshy fen

where an arcing Yule of lincoln logs emblazons
a Jubilee return-ship rocked in Armenian
cupolas and a myrrh-leaf catches the singing ray
re-framed refraining reigning in your eye-of-palm

centennial and Florentine the man with you
resists and wins the trophy of the solitary vigil
his the power to oppose to the burning-glass
that blinds the pawns your gaze of steel

1.24.2000

[p.s. my maternal grandmother's maiden name was Negus]