Apollinaire lived in Paris, I live in Minneapolis (MN)

SNOW WHEEL

A little snow meanders down in Minneapolis

to cold November earth.

Guillaume, prince triste of mirth

was lowered from his balcony in Paris

two days before the Armistice.

Grandpa packed up his guns

one last time, near Verdun.

Spent rulers carpentered their peace.

Sacre du Printemps set the stage.

Russkaia Neva-sacrifice

summons her apotheosis –

leaps for the holocaust of banal rage

mounting to self-consuming poshlost peak.

Apollinaire was there

that night (under the sulfur-

flare, the guttering of Belle Epoque).

Grandpa field-marshaled the parades

on Armistice Day.  Lafayette,

we are here... the old print

over the dinner table (Revolutionary shades

trippin’ la gigue française, at Mt. Vernon).

My ghosts are here now,

in November snow.

The Rio fleuves inexorably on

down to St. Louee, New Orleans.

Jeanne spins with Jessie

to their Stagger Lee...

my snow wheel hums, Rose (oriens).

11.10.19

like Red Wing clay

Mary Ravlin Gould

SKIP-JUMPS

My mother moves toward silence now.

Short wobbly steps

like printemps stumps

of Red Wing clay remainders.  So

I follow along now, too.  Two lumps,

like those she spun once

on a wheel.  Immense

maypole of Mendelssohn skip-jumps –

the way Rembrandt became his painting

(like seaweed-coated plank

of slick driftwood, anch-

ored in sand).  Memory, fainting.

I used to topple to the ground

in school.  An epileptic

pine, almost.  A cryptic

minor character, utterly unfound –

unbound within some fictional expanse

of 19th-century steppe

sunburnt peace-pipe

smoky distances (autumnal trance).

We thread the needle in a mummer’s play.

Ariadne draws the skein –

Dante’s oriflamme ancien

Parisian labyrinth for Beatrice

Jessie Ophelia, remembering her father

Jackson Quick, the river-

pilot, sounding Mount Ever-

Rest (full fathom 5/29... 29...) – Mt. Purgatoire.

5.28.19

articulated bagpipes

CICADA SHELL

Last night, in the final French class

Charles explained to us

that intricate forest

of thousands of skeletal pieces

under the armor of the vast organ

of Notre Dame, somehow

surviving the late inferno –

a delicate spider of sound, within

the cathedral’s gray cicada shell

of feathery stone light.

Now, in my monkish hideout

of twisted cedar, a mid-May swell

of emerald sheen beyond the doorway

stretches toward Iona

or maybe Compostela

or Jerusalem... & scrawny face of Henry

lined like wood by age & foolishness

lifts to spring brightness

one wee dram of hopefulness,

mayhap – someone’s vernal Inverness.

It is the ordinary light of day

flashing through our human

imago, her chaste design –

what we might be, beyond dismay

in the conjunction of clear consciences

set toward a restoration

of the common good.  One

amid many – octave’s consonance.

5.15.19

you seek your inner Notre Dame

LUMBERING FLIGHT

This April sunset behind the trees,

like a rose & phosphorescent

robin’s egg.  Fundament

of natural radiance; architectural breeze.

On Île-de-France, in the river Seine

a throng of men & women

flung boulders toward heaven –

to celebrate the feast of their communion

& the miraculous feat of that

lumbering flight.  The chill

granite yawn in the hill

where the dead man lay (requiescat)

like a counterweight to their primordial

joy – its hollow barrow

(familiar dank & narrow

room) will serve as reconciling grail

when we have gathered for the wedding

in the flowery vale of Cana,

& amid the hubbub-haha

Mary murmurs – Now, my son, bring

out the wine...  We will not build

another Notre Dame.

& yet our rivers are the same.

The Rio del Espiritu Santo is filled

with rosmarine passion of light –

invisible, unchanging,

radiant, enlightening

fiery indomitable apex bright.

4.22.19

Good Friday poem

AMBER GLASS

The oak we put into the ground

last fall is budding now.

& on the third day... how?

On this I muse like Uncas Pound

here in my octagonal hut

of scrawny cedar. 8’s

for Easter, numerates

relate – Creation’s è finit;

when the dark goggles of infinity

stood upright (a snowman

merging into green

spring cloverleaf).  Might be.

They say they saved the high windows

in Paris.  Where simple light

grows warm, exfoliate

around the Lady of the burning Rose.

Wheels, wheels... the suffering peoples.

Is Providence intangible?

Life but a negligible

haze, wisping stark silo-steeples?

These sprinklings of amber glass

are darkened with maroon

shadows.  Limbs of someone

hovering so close... a beaming face.

Then I shall know, even as I

am known.  Even as

this acorn opens, grows...

sturdy communion of a melting sigh.

4.19.19

egalitarian cathedral

CEDAR HIDEAWAY

In this rough wooden octagon

in the backyard, wrapped

in frayed mosquito nets,

in mid-April, Henry will try again.

The anniversary of Abe Lincoln

rhymes with a shock in Paris.

Notre Dame no longer is

bedecked with lilies for communion.

Entourée de flammes ferventes

Apollinaire, at Chartres

peeks through his bandages

back toward her... makes his lament.

This humble cedar hideaway.

Chaste April light.

The massive stone takes flight

from every heart, with equal sway.

Like a fool in a mystery play,

a cloddish egalitarian

circus, is the Son of Man.

Anti-king, anti-autocracy,

he rides the shoulders of a donkey

(Henry’s stubborn mule

from Berryman misrule

locale) on Muddy journey to the sea;

he’s Jonah, prophet of humility

and poverty, flung to America

to give the motherland a caw –

lift a palladium for Lady Liberty.

4.16.19

only a sketch : Jozef Czapski

JOZEF CZAPSKI

Only a sketch, a drawing, a cartoon.

Scrawny shivering prisoner

reading a book (Siberia).

This upright Pole, from a dead platoon

survived, somehow (so tall, so

innocent).  Budding artist

from Paris, now of Tashkent –

following Proust into gulag, ghetto.

Somehow.  Like mast on frigate.

Colors mime sky...

Poland, we must die.

Yet he shows up (seraph, implicate).

Survives.  Grows old in Paris,

having kept his conscience

into Moscow (blessed

nonsense... bunks his paradise).

Grace is the sign of something human,

intelligence the trace

of civilization, Falcon-Ace

(O hoary Horus of the hunted men).

Isis (in West Branch) is your mother,

Belgium’s deep divide

the humdrum Hoover prelude

to a splenetic Grant Wood war –

Virgo, we know not who we are.

Speak of the grain of wheat,

Persephone.  Complete

your D.C. scan (Henry’s North Star).

3.3.19

from Jozef Czapski, Inhuman Land : Searching for the Truth in Soviet Russia, 1941-1942 (NYRB, 2018)

ballet russe

SANS SEINE

Along a cinder pathway

through November woods

Hobo, in one of his moods

murmurs a Mississippi lay.

Under his arm, his matryoshka

maiden – his mater within

mater, painted, wooden;

on his head, folded like Chippewa

canoe, an old felt hat

crimson as pileated

woodpecker.  Belated

prophet from Yehoshephat,

brown Mississippi of decision!

He mutters a woman’s name

under his breath (same

as under his arm) : Marion,

Miriam, Magdalen... Jessie,

Juliet... Beatrice, Jeanne...

Natasha... each one

enclosing the other (ballet

russe).  Sacre du Printemps.

1913, at end of May.

Pirouette, grand jeté...

Juliet, sans seine.  Lamps

are going out all over Europe.

Hobo yet knots his woolly

safety net – the glory

of the Lord, letter & envelope.

11.2.18

Tran-Van-Tay

NILE ROSE

                          for Tran-Van-Tay (i.m. Joseph Duemer)

The pomegranates on white linen

loom like autumn leaves.

A red that fades, grieves...

yet glows out of its midnight background

blue.  Like a chokecherry, or

some other berry, man.

Viet-American

(another long-gone war).

We were on honeymoon, in Paris.

Aphrodisiac,

that dried-up sack

of seeds (maroon, vermilion).  Osiris –

will he climb out of the grave again?

The grave of gravity

(1132 ft/sec) – for me?

One catenary arc (trompette marine)

– one thread cut from the labyrinth

of frightened Minotaur

(mother-nightmare).

One Ariadne-clue, one length

of yarn, your sheepish hermitage;

C-magnet of the knot-

king’s smoking calumet –

curled fringe of Jonah’s whale-image.

Out of the sea, the rudder swam.

Rhode Island... oaken

wisdom’s perihelion.

Rose Nile, set sail for gentle Vietnam.

10.10.18

plastic leaves & bottlecaps

SALTY DEW

This autumn wind-chime Sophie made

like El Anatsui (African

weaver spider-man)

from plastic leaves & bottlecaps, tied

with bright ribbons – a key, a table knife,

a silver keychain ring,

a crystal ball... everything

needful for the voyage into afterlife

(October & November, winter

ice).  I hear it now,

an echo from the prow

of gray stone mothership.  Your

Notre Dame of infinite mercy,

villain François.  Or Chartres,

Hen – where light chartreuse

rhymes with sky-blues, calm sea

of sunset rose.  On the scarred floor

a labyrinthine feedback

loop speeds Argo-carrack

by umbilical thesis to Ari’s door.

Arachne, Ariadne...in Rhode Island?

One subterranean Ocean

Stream, Atlantean

where every son of J sails home again

across Medea’s Méditerranée – &

where Medusa’s stone frown

melts, to gleaming crown

of salty dew... grail of compassion.

9.11.18

serpent ocarina

FEATHERED WHEEL

The king is carrying his cross

wearing his crown of thorns.

Only his mother mourns.

The restless crowd is at a loss.

So history plays out

on broken banjo string –

scratchy LP spinning

over & over the tethered Scapegoat

Song.  A narrow beam of rust-

red copper, through shade

of rock.  Copperhead

of light.  Serpent mouthing dust.

Tan sand (some Navajo camouflage).

Everyman, eaten

by ants.  Has-been.

Hobo, dreaming in a stream-montage.

Nobody.  Only air, flashing

like feathered wheel –

Thunderbird heel?

Lo, him – Kingfisher, splashing.

In the clay matrix, Morning Star

pirouettes in Paris

for Apollinaire.  Pax

lounges with Liberty, while from afar

twin pillars of a temple rise

in unison – an azure

octave, lifting her

amid dew-glittering, sea-breathing sighs.

8.10.18

looking out a window

HER STATUE

I’m getting older, while the day’s

becoming lighter.  As

in Mary Gould’s last

watercolor (Bardsey Island, Wales) –

looking out a window from brown shade

of cave-like room, toward

April greensward.

Frail hand... pale grass, overlaid

with stone outcrop... old walls, old cross

(Romano-Celtic maze).

Delicate spring promise

from an ancient vault (Natasha’s

limping that way now, with me).

Her temple’s labyrinth –

sea-goddess, Amaranth –

only a sheep-door, west of Galilee;

only this frozen winterworld

all thatched with foot-

prints (near that ice-hut

where Henry’s burr-man hurled

like a cedar waxwing to mistaken ice).

Crabapple food for golden

beaks... spiritual gates, folding

for abject mortals (Minnesota nice)

into a paper bird from Paris, maybe –

Apollinaire’s turban

or Marianne’s tricorn

mayhap – dancing a crane-dance (starry

                    *

sacrifice) with shuttle-pagination.

Ariadne on the golden floor

rhyming with Morning Star

east of Cahokia – her crown of corn

lifting like Liberty (or Spirit

of St. Louis) for a

constellation (Columbia) –

gray-winged Jonah of an old planet

molting to Thunderbird out of the new.

Each Troy-town so will show

her Julia, Iulus, Juno –

or Sophie, prancing here and now

across the parapet of innocence

like dew upon the brow

of childhood’s rainbow –

O bright helm of human sentience!

Behold a Union, fused in fire & light

of soul-transfiguration –

future-human-nation

people, ever-living, stony-bright!

You see that Gate as through an old

& shady window, in a bed-

sit somewhere (in the Hebrides?).

Old stones, light green, grass-emerald...

sprung out of the eternal vault

like Livingstone out of jungle,

where fiery spirits mingle

in a playful dance... – her statue, Walt!

12.27.17

O more than moon

LITTLE ROOM

90 years ago today

Papa was 5 weeks old.

Lindbergh took off, bold

Icarus... Spirit of St. Louee.

Daedalus built his labyrinth

to keep the Minotaur

at bay.  OK so far.

Only minor casualties – 8 millionth

civilian, 1913 (unknown

poilù).  Our engineers

built expensive tears

into delicate ships, Apollonian

on combers like phosphorus, behind

the shining cranium

(a sort of No-See-Um

mosquito zone).  Dear blind

(icky) Eddy posed this question

to himself : Who’s my father?

Phoebus compiled a rather

complex artifice (Olympic Stadion

to be Demolished Tomorrow)

in order to swim again

beneath Shoshone moon –

just 8 light-years away (somehow

we’ll get there, Apollinaire).

She’ll do her zephyr flute-

dance (Bonfire En Route)

as lithe fiery planetary star

                *

Stravinsky set for 8 août

– he had to settle for

the 4th (Madame Bouvier

demand) – juillet, or thereaboot.

Guillaume bowed to the plumèd crowd.

Jesus on autopilot

rose... began to float

over la Tour Eiffel (meek, not proud).

Lindy surrendered all his clothes,

like Francis (to his father

dead) – rose further

in mondaine esteem – only to close

that gap between our earth & moon.

Bright mother of reflection,

pearl of intellection

(pupil Christ within your black hole zone)

my jottos ink into Francescan gloom,

your caved-in grotto

on my kitchen plot.

Light tenders mercy in that little room.

O moon, your melancholy face

reminds me of my lost race

to perimeter of grace.

Mayflower, constant Falcon-Ace...

paternal covenant of trust.

O arrogance of youth!

To jettison the truth

like so much ballast (bursting dust).

5.20.17

green buds are just -

TROMPETTE MARINE

Giuliana opens a ceramic shop

on Ravenna back street.

The “Old Man of Concrete”

surrounded by gray pots of slop

paints himself into a nearby corner;

Giuliana’s little boy

paralyzed (Guillain-Barré?)

plays with his yellow gyroscope.  Her

lover mopes, lost... (ambivalent

professional).  Red Desert,

Deserto Rosso.  Hurt

blooms in the sea-salt spring (Lent...

Easter).  Lofty kind eyes in shadowed

stone (Pantocrator, &

Theotokos) still stare down

from hollow warehouses (A.D. 600).

Green buds are just emerging here,

Psyche, Persephone

in center of the country

(Center, N.D.).  Land mass, a sphere

from sea to sea (theoretically) –

a glop of potter’s clay

in solar roundelay;

Palm Sunday to Good Friday (bloody

travesty, Ford Theatre).  Then

the turtle at the finish line

emerges from the brine

reborn – Rabbit in acute cartoon

(Metamorphosis at Minnaheehee

Falls).  Dante, Beatrice

step through the sun (hey

ey yo) astride Dakota prairie

hoisted on stray lambswool thread

like Vallejo’s poncho

(wheat-gold Paris gaucho-

robe)   or galactic Temple shroud

woven from smoke of calumet

& Camels   (veteran

Guillaume   a crimson crown

swathed round his beaming pate)

so Theseus & Ariadne   circle-dance

the gold pavement   grey Chartres

                   *

matrix   womb of silence

&   clear light   joy of the makers

On an upward path, the labyrinth

becomes a spiral, &

the Minotaur’s command

the envy of a shadow (absinthe

green).  Your quipu-knot records

an anchor weight – the rings

of one stone, tempering

the river-sweeps... only soft words

like flute-sounds, scattered seeds.

Stricken Giuliana,

limping hopeful Natasha –

Nadezhda, too – resilient reeds

walk in solemn palm procession

round the sea-wall

& the sparse green hill;

the bald truth of clay   passion

& its aftermath   high keening

sea-bell   through   seraphic blue

the ultramarine   (Pacific

hue).  Jonah   always coming, going

always being born   out of the waves

of infinite agape

lifts old sails   away

for Columbia   & Liberty   she waves

the light torch   over homely harbors

mangers of refugees

fleeing plaited Caesars

(their cracked saucer seizures)

as the integral of   furnace fiddleheads

the deep-sprung source

of Everyland   smokes Morse

code goodness   penetrating sadness

like undying Hope   into the arms

of Osip   or Goldie the Finch

your friend   in the clinch

of Hart’s woe   John’s alarms

the desolation of a lonely child

a hearth-star   shines for her

the safety net   saves her

Love blazes from the center   wild

onlie-Begetter   mild   trompette marine

4.13.17

down by the Rio Espiritu

CAVERN-KITCHEN

Cottonwoods mime autumnal Golgotha

down by the Rio Espiritu –

Eli, Eli, why have you...?

– branching-out concavex vesica

(tree become history).  Now the mirror

of round Galilee reverts

as when murky Po River’s

backward film flows to Ravenna shore;

magnetic gravity of Mary

reels the molting dove

into the tumult of

new-found Columbia’s eyrie –

cavern-kitchen full of Piero’s light,

her mummer’s earthbound feet

tap blessings to the fleet

in spires of crane-dance patter-flight.

The almond is a little tree

whose acorn eye marks

spoken blooms – arcs

from a sparkling diamond sea

triangulating stainèd glass

from humped Cahokia

to Saarinen-eye.

A speeding Spirit of St. Louis

soars to Notre Dame & Chartres;

steep-waltzing Trinity,

one 1-3-2 will be

your eagle-masque (dive, mère-maître).

10.12.16

tricksters in the cricket cities

PATCHWORK SHEPHERD

The river sweeps by the bent cottonwoods

toward autumn.  Time

& history resolve to rim

their force into a wave, a wheel.  The goods

bob & drift downstream, with the detritus –

the tomb of Alighieri

& the other desperadi

all the tricksters in the cricket cities (Paris,

Petersburg, St. Paul) fiddling their gusli

merge into a chord

like an infant beechwood

or broken font in Florence – one little tree

of plumb transfigurement, beneath

the arms of a patchwork shepherd

(Sant’ Apollinaire).  One almond

word melds stars into a wreath

to crown that brow (who is Liberty) –

she mutters... You who incite

fools to violence, who delight

in murder & grief, know not Me;

you who terrorize your spouse, & oppress

your neighbor, know not Me;

the blind man can see

what you cannot see, the deaf woman hears

what you cannot hear, the 4-year-old child

knows Me better than you.

So the little tree (a beech, a yew)

marked X the spot (where Psyche smiled).

8.30.16

Occasional Poems

I write a lot of occasional poems.  This is one reason many (though by no means all) of them appear here, on me blog, hot off the brain-pan - because they are knotted to a specific date on the calendar or current event.  So this ongoing project, Ravenna Diagram, is a kind of crossweave of recurrent themes and motifs, with more spontaneous combustions, improvisations.  The result can be a sudden mosaic or collage of old hobby-horses and immediate happenings.

Today's effort, posted here, is an example.  What may seem very confusing on the surface is actually a tissue of old & new.  There's a nod to the late Bernard Jordan, a British WW 2 veteran known as "the Great Escapee", because not long ago he walked away from his nursing home in Hove, England to attend a memorial service at Normandy Beach (see article in NY Times today).  There's a reference to the "leap-second" process of setting the atomic clocks in Paris (see today's London Telegraph).

Then there are the recurrent motifs circling around Apollinaire, WWI, the "Rite of Spring" first performance (which Apollinaire attended, in Paris, on May 29, 1913), my cousin Juliet, who had her fatal leap from the Golden Gate (which opened to the public on the weekend of May 27-29 1937), and the French ship SS Normandie, which had its maiden voyage on May 29, 1935, and which sank in NY harbor in 1942.  A statue from the ship, called "La Paix", was rescued from the boat & now stands in Pinelawn Memorial Park on Long Island.

OK, got all that?  (There's more to it, but I can't tell you everything today.)  So here's the poem, fresh off the garage roof...

LEAP-SECONDS

Fresh snow crowns a fresh year

with infinite white

diamonds – even the summit

of that garage in back, a pyramid

of blinding hexagons, brilliant.

Don’t know if I’ll ever see

Mont Saint-Michel – may

have to cross that Jordan very ancient

& in secret, like Mayor Bernard,

Great Escapee

(of blessed memory).

Not Proust nor any Time Lord

in Paris can hold back the earth

entirely (though she’s

ralentir, apparently)

from wheeling pear-wise (O mirth-

cunning ham) toward her favorite

star.  Thus my mental

golden spider must recoil –

revert apsidal synapses, knot

quipu cloverleaf across

this bubble-octagon

(Emanu-El, the sun).

Apollinaire dreams toward his Croix-

de-Guerre; Bernard pops into PX

for a final cigarette;

Stravinsky’s Juliet

leap-seconds to St. Vitus rite (La Paix).

1.7.15

Finished The Underground City, by H.L. "Doc" Humes (published in the 50s). This book is what they call a "sleeper". Probably soon to be re-published, in tandem with documentary film coming out about Humes, produced by his daughter Immy.

A huge book, over 700 pp. Set in wartime & postwar France. Big panorama of Resistance fighters, Communists, US Embassy & military people, etc. Probably one of the deepest & most knowledgeable, subtle evocations of the French Resistance written (at least in English). The style has Gallic clarity and simplicity. But it's a strange, melancholy book. The protagonist, "John Stone", an American officer working with the underground who gets caught up in postwar scapegoating and political machinations, is a curiously affectless, absent personality. Maybe related to the literary atmosphere of the time (Camus, Sartre, Existentialism...). He's also in shock during & after his wartime experiences. Furthermore it's clear Humes is grappling with questions of American direction in the shadow of Hiroshima & Nagasaki. Striking foresight in the way he focuses on the relation between "security" and civil liberties. Humes brings his characters & their situation to life with tremendous, vivid realism. Questions of loyalty & betrayal are at the core of this novel steeped in war and soldierly values.