like a phantom of spring

LAMBENT PRESENCE

Slouched on the couch, Hobo is

near the shortest day.

Earth’s winter way,

making her rounds – stoic old Miz.

The river like a froze French drain

her Via Francigena makes

past dirt-bent snakes

of old St. Lou.  Where Jackson

Quick, somehow, came from – pilot

on Yankee hospital ship, 1863 –

late father of Jessie

O. (caught fever, like as not).

Full fathom five, Jessie, thy father.

Like Jenny’s mother, too,

huh?  Little tree (cedar

or yew).  See my ghost dance gather.

The natural round is in the clay

& waiting for that Last Day

each grieving soul will say

O help me turn another way.

This lambent presence in the window

like a phantom of spring.

Persephone, in a ring-

dance, leapt over the fire, so –

lifted by droning hum of living

& dead, out of clay

wheel, through the Gateway –

wave-crest prow, loafer’s Thanksgiving.

12.17.19

Ravenna Diagram Reading Note #6

Ravenna Diagram guide for the Perplexed continues, page-by-page.  This poem appeared a few years ago in the journal West Branch.

R.D. READING GUIDE #6

BLACK PEAK  (p.8)

This poem has a nightmarish, abortive quality.  So many indecipherable personal references that one could make the argument it fails as a work of art.  But perhaps it stands as a kind of boundary marker, a warning of some real difficulties which lie ahead.  This poem was published in the journal West Branch.

“crows” and “oaks” : recurrent images

“Woods-Gerry” : the Woods-Gerry Mansion on Prospect St., in Providence, a couple blocks from the Brown University Library.  Imposing Victorian mansion on the crest of the hill, now housing offices and galleries of the RI School of Design.

“Persephone’s bee-day” : bee-day, birthday.  Bees of Persephone an image drawn from poems by Mandelstam

“Italianate” : we are back in the sphere of Ravenna

“archivo-kisses” : Orphic librarian-poet, with backward glance (fateful for Eurydice/Persephone)

“Marshland...” etc. : Ravenna pine-swamps

“Porta Aurea” : ancient ruins in both Ravenna and Constantinople – translates as “Golden Gate”

“twin black / brows” : a kind of montage of beloved faces sharing this feature of black eyebrows, mirrored/merging in a guilt-ridden occhio terzo (third eye)

sliver-orecchio : odd image of “sliver-ear” (wooden ear? moral deafness?)

“black omelet” : the eyebrows and the third eye merge in this apocalyptic sign of the “black sun”, with pun on OM – Osip Mandelstam, who wrote a poem alluding to the Pushkinian “black sun” of Russian (and Jewish) history.

“ghost of a memory” : the kiss in the Italianate mansion has multiple emotional strata for poet (ex-husband of an Italian-American, one dimension of many)

“who lifts / twin wings” : are we back to the redemptive owl-flight of Minerva/Sophia?  or something else?  “six, eight” wings signals a “seraph” (also a recurrent image in Mandelstam)

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)

a line in the road

GREY BIRD

Sarah found a baby turtle

this morning, inching along

a line in the road.  My song-

salience, or green volcano-yurt

on slow horizontal too... toward

her thorny rose-matrix;

my scrambled pick-up-sticks,

snarled with gold poncho thread

in limpid greys of dawn twilight.

This mutter-dome of whisper-

leaves, of zephyr-vespers

veils an agate lamp (magnet

for Blue Morpho & monarch flight)

pendant amid cedars –

like black-yellow flickers

gathered into marigold (O milky knight).

My abstract worming through its raving

scribble-babble, cartoon

peacock incarnation...

a myriad glancing-whorl becoming

the figure for your beaming face.

O the clear air of this

metaphysical silence!

Whose pause released one Finnish race

to lift her soaring steel mandorla

into lofty grace

planted in pivot-place

of riverine & prairie space – ah,

Psyche!  Sister Persephone!

I feel your sunny smile

now – lifting lilacs mile

on mile into an octave-harmony

                *

of active commonality –

Joy’s hero-trial!

Path P – Indian file –

thread-thin tattoo to Liberty!

So the little tree of J

is ever-living.  So

Jonah bee surfacing

tuned to your buzzing play,

high Sophie – through the fallen timbers

west of gray Verdun,

the world’s war-passion

settled in destruction.  Embers

from a wraith of spring, the sack of Prince

Henry’s royal oak...

one ashen acorn spoke

welded to purple wheel of Providence.

The crayon trembles in my hand.

The palm curves green

circumference – Iona

ray, from Ocean State (to every land);

the grey bird murmurs through the surf;

the Camelot of JFK

& blessedness of MLK

merge in the spray, resolve to turf.

So Thunderbird ruffles the stream.

The turtle is a Phoenix

swelling at the matrix –

agate child skipping (on waves of dream).

5.18.17

green grows the rusty O

GREEN RATION

Mighty Theseus was stuck in Hell,

strapped to a chair by Pluto.

Persephone’s no go.

Pennies clink in the wishing well.

The Blarney Stone’s a backward stretch –

cold kiss from pale ghost,

silky diner hostess

off the Isle of Man (unfinished ketch).

Snarled in the Underworld, Ariadne

warps him her cocoon...

a wee mummy pontoon

bridge, of air (soon, soon).  Erinye

Medea’s in the murk of crime,

stark raving grief –

Death offers no relief;

meek mercy must unspool this time,

unbind expiring rhyme.  Raven

Cautantowwit – wrathful

Coatlicue – skull-

wound knitting Golgotha-maven –

I ken your reddening woodpecker pate

all round our Oklahoma

home (green aura

martyrdom for scapegoat fate).

Because we won’t agree to disagree

we have to pick on somebody

small, like a refugee –

some poor kid cornered up a tree

                      *

who doesn’t sound like you or me.

Somebody will have to pay

for our settlement today –

it’s worth more dough that Proserpine

Hollow, or Bohemian Grove –

& that’s a fact.  Leaven

with mite of muddy heaven

this Martian clay of ours, O Love!

For the wars plainly disturb our sleep

& the mushy copper mirror

shows nobody anymore

way outa here.  Grave is the deep

wherein my friend is laid.  The blue

moth scatters, the monarch

flitters from the ark,

& they will not return until you

say : Blessed be he & she

who come to live with us

escaping strife, as guests –

may we tender hospitality

like theirs.  The whole Indian nation

has done as much for us.

When Thunderbird appears

as thunderstorm over the dry station

the rain might ease this drought

of reason & compassion.

Share the green ration;

pipe-skip the chilly serpent out.

3.10.17

an aria of Ariel

SAFETY NETS

On the vast floor of the nave at Chartres

a golden labyrinth

circles the square.  Myth

of primal clay, where everything starts

over... springs up from the ground;

even the epic poem

circles back toward home –

Thanksgiving hearth of heaven, lost

& found.  It is an Ithaca

where Daphne-laurel molts

back to Penelope – bolts

from the yarn, like Minnehaha

laughing upstream toward Itasca –

primeval Persephone

(O veritas caput).  She

looms at warp speed, like an aria

of Ariel – zips through the Gateway

Arch, to Providence –

races around, from Florence

to the Golden Gate, where she will play

out safety nets, & save the day –

& from Pacific to New York

lift up her blazing fork

of sea-green, Lincoln-penny Liberté.

She is the almond in a nest of nests –

a hollow echo-tomb

from which Columbia will bloom

again, spring-fed by Galilean breasts.

9.20.16

Pin dat, Pindar !

CIRCLET COMB

                                         to Flavia Saraiva

So light she could dance in the palm of your hand

diminutive Flavinha

16 yrs old (4’4”)

spins round a square in Rio-land

revolving figure out of Faery   circling

like Geraldine Fitzgerald

with redhead emerald

circlet comb   encompassing

a globe    within her seashell shallop

green mandala made

of hands  rosy mermaid

(see Phoebe’s sapient dewdrop

on linen frame   for navigation)

one palm in the hurricane

eye   Persephone

shows leaf again   becomes whole nation

wheeling   in the Great Bear dance

around an oak tree   acorns

reigning like   Golgotha crowns

skullcaps & elf beanies   the romance

of Mnemosyne   again, again

the early history

of Buffalo   or Rimini

Ravenn   or Petersburg   Pipestone

or Voronezh   or Minneapolis,

even   along a spiral

fiddlehead   springs tall

her heavy lightness   like   an Okie kiss

8.10.16 

Palm print by Grace Tagliabue & Phoebe Gould

of the clay peoples

PEACOCK’S EYE

Path P stretch in six directions

out of Cairo, Huck,

sez Jim – any way you look.

One of them north-south junctions,

I reckon.  There was a labyrinth

of red clay trenches –

dead men in its clenches

like flies hung in a spider’s tent

– heavy that clay, so heavy!

Like the bottom of the sea.

How could a little child be

dancing in such dismal gravy?

She’s Pueblo, of the clay peoples;

they put away wrath before

the sun go down, f’sure.

Lookee there.  & through the peephole

of his fingertips I saw (obscurely

as that garden of Sheba)

a lightning pathway – Sun-Ra

threshing floor – arisen merrily

from ripened Flanders wheat (so

melancholy).  Like Van Gogh

seized with a fury-glow

of happiness... Persephone?  O

yes!  Threading her crane-dance

through a peacock’s eye –

purple Hagia Sophia’s

woolly poncho-swirl (at cave-entrance).

5.24.16

A fleece of milky rain

KIND FARE

Like a brown wren building a nest

with twine camouflage,

or a Joan in the Stone Age

on her inexplicable quest

to sketch the lineaments of splendor

(milky star-field in a barn

or Jason with a ball of yarn)

– how the sea calls Jonas under!

The booming surf his Book of J,

the figure on the prow

with heavy eyes... mild Io?

coaxing him to low brown clay

in gloom, beneath an ancient bridge...

where a rose may lie.

An olive shade skims by

overhead (a palm sweeps its edge).

Between bullhorns, he marks the twain.

Gaunt Maximus, in Colchis,

ancient of days (his

beard like a fleece of milky rain)

burbles an almond-scent breeze

he feels, not sees... melting

aria of everything,

snow-knot of spring (Persephone’s).

Like high sea-gates in sunlight, in salt air...

feathers of jasper & bronze

filigree one true coin’s

moss-green (Lincoln mite... kind fare).

4.21.16

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

Primeval Spring

TRACERY

They leave a track across time,

the sea-salt souls – faint

& delicate as painted

tracery of April birch-limb

shoots under a pale blue sky;

massive as meteoric

stone flung from the thick

of heaven (dark as a raven eye).

Unreadable profundum – yet

a trace of what they loved

remains (as in an alcove

names are tapped in cloudy granite

for a terse echo of foregone delight).

Then centripetal gravity

sheds all formality

& mutters from the depth of night

the soul’s original, L-mast

uprightness – earliness;

birchland of quietness,

in boreal Aurora dressed.

Blackstone & Williams, Edward Coke...

such men of merciful Law

& lawful Mercy... & I saw

the matrix of your Liberty – who spoke

with spokes of fire upon her brow.

Psyche, Persephone...

Cana, in Galilee...

primeval Spring, welling forever now.

3.9.16

Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?

BOAT-MAID

Primeval spring, at the center of the forest

at the source of headwaters

where mothers find daughters

& fathers, sons... your robin’s nest

I sleepwalk toward, beneath half-notes

of chickadee, shrill keening

wail of cardinal, seeking

Persephone (between ice-flotes).

Psyche, Ophelia, Juliet...

your muttered hobo-names

for fishing lures.  These games

of avocation... drowsing yet

below Cahokia, the Kore fields

of poppies (Orleansville

or Alexandria)... Île-

de-France... Ariadne’s golden wheels...

Old Guillaume with his mummy-crown

smokes goldenrod & wine

beside the snoring Rhine.

Hobo might catch a Jonah-fish, or one

might swallow him (it’s all the same)

pining beside the brook

of Lethe... – say there, look

anew, McDuff!  Her ancient name

is Cora – she’s a round boat-maid

of cedar (juniper);

her berries are pure

blue, honey – she’s evergreen (almond).

2.26.16

Among the people that you meet

CLAY PERSEPHONE

The fresh air by the Mississippi

that glides to St. Louis

from here – muddy promise

of snowmelt, my clay Persephone.

Among the people that you meet

– around a picnic table

in Duluth, or at that fabled

native board, beside the seat

of Massasoit (near Plymouth Rock) –

one person hovers at

your back, discovers what

you need before you ask (more bock,

mayhap).  Like plucky Jeanne d’Arc

– or her twin brother, Tom

o’Hawk – she flies from drum

to flask like Nessie shatters dark

Loch Ness, grise foudre scorching east

to west.  She’s Omnipresence

in pauvre disguise – Franciscan

ass with horsepower (a Falcon-Beast).

Stepping forth into canoe

from granite lintel, W.

looks out toward you,

Eurydice de San Francisco –

straight through steely Gateway Arch

midway from sea to sea.

Notes your grave levity

melds plenitude – lark tuning larch.

2.24.16

Limestone Medusa

DOUBLE-WE

Something inherent in the stone,

the milky, the snow-seasoned

Winnebago (Indian mound).

A pregnant plot, expectant zone...

one-stringèd salt-shanty, or tent

of tentative meeting.

Limestone Mediterranean

USA, moon-galloping... unspent

Ethiopian Edith (double-we).

String’s stretch-to-break

(real Rimini headache)

loops through Persephone-tragedy –

Tiresias whispering mother-wit

or pock-marked moon

keening her Dionysus-loon

(rive-marine beyond yon Key West

jetty).  If the Greeks could see...

but it’s not necessary.

Stout military

Perseus will refract the sea

into a trillion dolphin-heaps;

Poseidon’s jealousy

toss Cassiopeia

upside to her throne (for keeps).

The circle of the sea (deep Circe)

revolves round Galilee –

Pygmalion will be

revived in thee, Pocahontas-B. 

10.6.15

may the circle be unbroken