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
