through Narragansett smokehole

AGATE LAMP

A peaceful evening in late April

the trees barely budding

in mild light   while brooding

darkness rings   the besieged people

& this dissonance of visible   invisible

an indivisible fire   smoldering

criminals & saints   revealing

callous inhumanity    with humble

solidarity   courageous   all-compassionate

& in my flimsy gazebo

octagonal coracle or   Argo

with Sophie’s wind-chime   over the gate

delicate oak-leaf butter-knife design

tingling in the calm air   O

here in my Ariadne-lair   where

a Chartres J coils  toward her Eschaton

& my whisper follows Cautantowwit

through Narragansett smokehole 

southwest, southwest   while a soul-

hart sails back   to her monarch nest –

that circling square dance of Ocean beams

where the spirit of Jessie Ophelia

& Juliet Ravlin   abide in Thee   &

Eternity, O Eternity! cries Roger Williams

& you lift your agate lamp, Psyche

like a fiddlehead   in Holy-Land

& the soeur-coulombe of the Son

of Man   swerves   with a shining eye

4.27.20

Ravenna is a potter's wheel

painting by Mary R. Gould, born 12.26.1927

SPIRAL HUT

Hobo moseys down his usual shore,

thinking of the finish line.

Plays with his river-sign,

his spiral hut of shoreline lore.

Someday there might be an algorithm

for the eyes in the mirror,

the project of the logosphere

curved beneath Beatrice-smile... leaf-skim

fluttering in Pentecostal glossolayea

round those pillars of Diana

stolen for Hagia Sophia

by Justinian (Solomon, I have outdone ye).

The builder’s signal of completion, the flag

of a little pine tree

planted like perfect akme

at the apex.  Unknown Soldier’s Rag

of worn linen.  Shakespeare’s cap

of happiness, he said,

that buried pot – not dead,

not even sleeping; where rays overlap

into a solid beam (centripetal matrix

of a million eyes).  It is

finished, this Poe-biz –

seraphic wayfaring Eureka-box

of pinecones, green acorns.  & the canoe

of flowering almond ribs...

your singing coracle of orbs,

suspended in accord from sapphire-blue.

12.26.19

heights & depths

LOVE LEADS

In the phosphorus dwelling-place of the Most High

Dante, murmured Hobo

will I be able to hear

that melancholy train-horn cry

so-so long gone?  His pal Henry

felt that ol’ pulsing flame

of lonesombrero, becomin’

churnagogue (centripetal clay) –

that emerald lichen-moss of Giuliana,

flanking a time-hewn sepulcher

with it still whorl

of tesseratic Emperors & Empresses... ah

Psyche, from those regions which

are Holy-Land!  Smoky

incense signals eye-

in-hand, Galla (yon casket-niche).

The soul is feminine.  The turbulent

churnagogue is melting

galaxies, in buttermilk –

hamlets of sacred discontent;

YHWH, detached from patriarchal kings

unveils a weird Coatlicue-

possessed & epileptic Dante-

muse... Venusian fire – & Jonah sings

Love leads us up like moth to flame

from steel-train Iron Range

down to Delta... strange

diamond, Latrobe (El MLK mandala-frame).

7.29.19

from Hecate came the Kali-Bear

GLOOMY RECESS

Brrr.  Encased in winter nadir.

A word stings like a burr

in my ear, grown morbider.

Out of California.  Excalibur.

Poe’s gloomy recess.  Ceiling

flickering with Neva-light

(limbeck of Hecate).

Ligeia, Solominka... cryptic feeling.

Juliet, embalmed upon a wounded,

senseless word, while

murder dogs each exile

in a stumbling Republic – hounded

refugees are coldly wrenched

from their own children.

What will you do, Hen?

Keep chanting mantra, teeth clenched.

From Hecate came the Kali-Bear,

Blake, Brown, Black –

stuffed Russian Monarch,

Cuffy from the Arctic (Polar) –

Crowned with the crown & splendor

– like Inẽs de Castro, here

in the casque of my ear,

my dear; of violence the silky daughter;

his banner over me was Love.

Your coming-forth, Psyche-

Persephone – out of the sea

in Frisco Bay – out of the starry cove

                     *

laving the Golden Gate, your destiny –

Old Glory Red, & Irish

Green, & Maple Sugar swish

your seal, ex-Californ– Aieeee...

– over the Bay.  Bears baring

every fang, & bearing

everything – boars goring

every Tarquin – innocence betraying!

So follow Hobo Henry’s burro

as he burrows through

her barrow – thorough

ravishing of hollow tumulo!

She’s flown, sweet Thunderbird.

& like Aurora Borealis

hovers above all this

flag-draped befuddlement (light-ward).

Ghost-haunted Morning Star,

Virgo-Astraea –

apotheosis of Sophia,

milky mosaic your dancing floor –

step your basilica sans fear;

the agate lamp atop

your Gate will not stop

raying back toward D.C., dear.

Columbia & Liberty will shine

their sister-lights within

your ark’s palladion;

Agape will this rage refine.

3.9.19

like variations on a theme

FIRST SNOW

It was a first snow falling on your birthday, Alex

38 years ago.

Cesca’s labor so slow

& painful, there in Miriam Obstetrics

under the klieg lights & the surgeons

she took the C-section

at last (proud, stubborn

mother) while the soft newborn

stars sloped across the parking lot

in silent counterpoint.

The time was out of joint –

your father, too.  Every hamlet

screens its circular pilot plot

through every heart;

Henry left his hearth

to wander Cain-like into Camelot

(his Ars, his land of Nod).

The story is familiar.

Eros sparks war

for Adams unwilling to plow the meek sod,

buster.  Adonis was a narcissist.

Henry plucked his Clover

(tuneful Faustian lover)

& spun the wheel no heel resists –

the veils of Isis & Osiris (masonry,

mummified fire).

Venus, Morning Star

shone pallidly, across the whole country

                  *

a kind of Cairo-Poe magnet (wherever

you are).  Middle C

on the piano, tenderly

(Ravlin Princess, Ravel).  Life-saver

played out to Juliet, by Hart.

Like Bach, young Alex –

one sea-tempest X

along path P (where all the tempers start).

Grief comes in waves.  These little ripples

echo from the pangs

of Providence (where swings

a cosmic jewelry show).  Dilated pupils

merge in swarms of busy drones

(watch-birds for smoke-

signals).  Go for broke,

the Iago of the capital intones.

Unleash the dogs of war.  They hated

me without a cause...

Faust is no Santa Claus;

the raging boar will not be sated

‘til the last woman on earth

flees with her child

into that desert wild

nursing one lonely human birth.

11.14.18

like spinning Jenny Gyre

SAFETY LINES

The late-May lilacs are long gone

but light grey limbs

& the green leaves rim

the grass with shade yet, absent one.

The sound of an ocean softly seething

in the branches overhead.

Is she alive or dead –

my sainted, tainted Juliet?  Still breathing

somewhere?  Imago or Imogen...

merely some ghoulish Ravlin-

Gouldash revenant, then?

Some Beatrice-crystal-Poe routine,

arising ghastly from dank ditch-ravine?

But no... a memory

lifts all azury

from sparkle-spray beneath benign

leap of wide Golden Gate.  Almond-

eyed sprite, a-whirl

like spinning Jenny Gyre

balanced on catenary wire... light bond

that ravels tout le monde... infinite

undisplaceable safety net

& cloudy calumet

confirming universal concord... so be it!

Grave knot that tightens less & less

toward infinite regress

of infinitesimal kiss

(minute atomic balm of tenderness

                     *

merging without mixture or separateness).

Maximus once limned it thus,

the monk who bore witness

(with loss of limb) for concept Orthodox –

incarnate knot of human & divine,

united unlikeness – like

that tomb slab, a limestone block

marked by what seems a breaking line

but only seems; the two are one

in one Person, of three

in all; still guarantee

amid the waltz of turning sun & moon

of Love’s immoveable eternity.

Out of deep matrix

of Ocean – intergalactic

scheme of merry stars in that sea...

inconceivable conception of

all origins (harmonic

correlations, thick

with measureless & dancing life).

The Manitou all people know,

Aquinas wrote.  The God

who dreamed this serenade...

we meet you in the shady slough

beneath great knots of wild grapevines

beside the muddy Jordan –

down by where solitary John

once cast a seine for Jonah (safety lines).

7.11.18

in the grave of the Griffin Warrior

SERPENT THREADS

A stone in the grave of the Griffin Warrior.

Lowly agate (rough

exterior).  What

unknown soldier, pebble on the shore

flung from what Cretan Argo-prow

lay crypted here?

His name’s no more.

Near-sighted magnifying glasses show

how microscopic serpent-threads

wound round the pommel

of a vanquished blade – whorl-

vortex of a maze from Hell (where heads

will roll).  The Minotaur is in –

will see you now.  He’s you.

A stone makes hearty stew,

you know (a wilderness of sin).

The kilty boys are losers here,

for once – the codpiece wins,

his dagger thrusting in... so

war defines its atmosphere.

The agate labyrinth congeals,

like threads of matière

Bretagne.  Lodged somewhere

in the brain – with royal seals

& white election... Hamlet’s pause

(like Abraham’s)... the sword

held back by muttered word

to brand an emerald chimp’s impasse

                  *

with emblems of a lost accord.

‘Tis way of the world, alas –

each fence a sacrifice

for peace (a chain-link, scored

for Queequeg scar).  That little cap

of Mithras-happiness...

that victor’s haughty prance

over the bleeding bull (himself, mayhap)...

As if an intricate expensive ship

– Mayflower? Monitor? –

long-sunk to Black Sea floor

drifted to shore.  The salty lip

of Ocean whispered her afloat again.

The Norway of the year

gave way to Danish cheer

when Hamlet’s amulet (against the grain)

pressed echoes of a gentle man

into the oaken captain’s

table (so that crimson

icon sped a providential plan).

Ah, Psyche, lift your agate lamp!

& Ariadne, thread

my path... open the dead

tomb for your spider-tramp!

There is an agon for the soul

of man – relinquish force

or buy it with remorse.

You choose.  Sweep, safety net; seas, roll.

11.7.17

rim of that heavenly Rome

COSMIC BATTLE

Inching back with my mother down

the nursing home hallway

from dining hall... hey ey

yo.  Keep her from falling (too soon).

Sprightly, amnesiac, brave.

We filtered burnt photographs’

international orange (‘70s

epitaphs).  Look – you still wave

from chilly distance, eldest one.

Your sister, brothers... your

father, meek & mild... War

obliterates peripheral vision, son.

Like game of hangman (simplified).

Figure out the letter

in the word.  Row, Edgar

Poe – enough rope be dangled

like that infamous platform

lifted out of season

like Francis from prison...

only to travel far from harm

along a single beam of light.

Real American creed

spooling through Voodoo

Queen Marie – gonna be all right.

Antithetical Poe held

his ivory casket

in a bird-basket –

row, row, coracle... spelled

               *

IONAH on the bow... over & out

for now.  The cosmic battle

between Caesar & that

measly songster (Stalin puttin’ Anna

into the hollow double-barrels

mimicking Utopia – everyone

happy in warehouse, hon)

becomes a set of Shaker castanets

or scallop-shells of Aphrodite;

– a skirmish in St. Louis

soars above Cahokia (she’s

us) into a supple Rimini-

design.  The poet, poison-pounded

pharmakon, cribbed out

his hazy Paraclete

in limestone layerings – founded

Apollinairy nothings on a pole-starred

pine.  Rose horizontal stripes

on snow led wayward ships

to Milky Way, somehow (the bard

might know).  Over the river E

(for equal sign) carry

me back to cosmic liberty,

Eurydice – united we are free;

like Sophie with P. della Francesca fan

loving galactic neighbors

stitch their laborious

light-canoe (twin Manitou of Man).

10.21.17

bearing her true report

ROSE TATTOO

This tenderness of moss-green light

in the craggy oaks around

the Witch’s Hat (ground

bass of Sibelius, to finish right).

The hat itself a darker green.

Twilight of thunderstorm –

fork-gyring twister-worm

over holm oak in Oklahoma (lonely

scene, brooding).  That mounded Pan

by Mississippi, in Rez

graveyard... his enormous

Rabbit-corpus.  Heavy Everyman

skittered, skating on ice

unswift as raven-wing

(Po-boy, kow-towing

Whitman’s rust-mold Providence

under the night-shade of Cautantowwit).

Earth shaken by thunder,

horns of Minotaur – 

titanic labyrinth of lies (knit

by yon dull orange cur, on fire).

Outcast beyond these walls

Jerusalem worm-hurls

against the black hole (central pyre

                *

of Man’s propensity to murder)

– bearing her true report

like tattered gun-shot

pennant under murk of war.

These damaged epitaphs of pride

& shame (twin Boanerges

buried for albino

snow-contagion).  No crypt can hide,

no script elide.  Vermilion Thunderbird

wheels down to Red Wing

tallying everything

& reckoning each deadman’s ford –

plumb eye of blistered Galilee,

eye of the hurricane.

Out of the depths, someone

traces an arc of palm, for Henry –

skipping from the sea like royalty

(posthumous Davy for

posterity).  Sea-floor

of grey Jonah.  Ocean-reality.

From Queequeg’s casket, like Osiris-

tomb, the rose tattoo

(framed by two-man canoe

of Manitou) slowly rises –

sweet grail of sunken Paradise.

The maze of Ariadne

beams from Milky Way –

meek penny-glow (seal’s copper glaze).

4.30.17

cold reflective casket

NEGATIVE AURA

They’re readying the great Webb Telescope

to spy on deepest space,

remotest time; a Falcon-Ace

of 18 hexagons – unfolding envelope

or massive sunflower of minstrel mirrors,

golden Land o’Lakes

lenses.  Infinity takes

a very cold reflective casket (yours,

Ophelia).  Meanwhile, down here below,

some Leopardian teller or

Poe-boy bookseller

must trace Columbian fall of sparrow

into bleakest night, last

trumpery.  O quintessence

of hollow volume!  Hence,

3-Card Monty – hateful guest!

As if the door to honey-milky

Providence were locked,

foredoomed.  A thousand shocks

in sovereign succession, so quickly

hammered to an Irish skull...

Earthquake, heartbreak.

Ophelia is in the lake –

my center sinks to muddy soil.

Sun gleams in fireplace of camera,

her little room on high –

her lampblack like a sty

in prism orange (strange negative aura).

11.22.16

Henry Bard has second thoughts

The ghost of Edgar Allan Poe troubled my sleep, and I awoke feeling reservations about the gaudy bardic proclamations of previous post.  Perhaps there are two deep currents in 20th and 21st-century poetry : 1) the urge toward engagement, fellowship, judgement, passionate witness; and 2) the urge toward imperturbable detachment, disinterested objectivity, the autonomous perfection of the art work.  You could say Whitman is representative of the first impulse, and Poe of the second.  David Jones across the Atlantic, another great modern exemplar of the long poem, wrote some wonderful essays in defense of the absolute freedom of the artist - as artist - from social/political requirements.  Art has a moral purpose, and forwards human freedom and dignity, simply by fulfilling itself, by working out its own quest toward integral beauty, in free association with the manual arts, applied technology and useful crafts.

It seems clear to me that I have wavered through my writing life between these two poles, between Whitman and Poe.  It's why my favorite American "bard" has always been, not Ezra Pound, but Hart Crane.  Crane's Bridge is a national paean to American culture : yet the poem is so dense and "overdetermined" with pure poetic resonance that it is always more than whatever abstract or paraphrase is applied to it.  The Bridge is multidimensional and recursive, self-referential : you could say the poem radiates the free-standing beauty of an achieved work of art, an "end-in-itself".

Also the serene formulae of the early-modern poetic movement of Russian Acmeism gave me examples of possible integrations of these two poles (call them the aesthetic and the political, or the communal and the individual...).  Gumilev and Mandelstam found a mediation between revolutionary Futurism and reactionary or detached Symbolism : by making poetic works of integral, pure and free art, by following, revising and fulfilling artistic traditions they had inherited, the Acmeists produced an art of and for the people.  "The Word is flesh and bread. It shares the fate of flesh and bread : suffering" (Mandelstam, from the essay "Word and Culture").

Yin & yang, systole, diastole... the poet goes out singing, and comes back again - to work late, & in secret, at the smithy of the integral poem.

This may be another partial explanation for my marginal presence on the contemporary scene.  I've been too busy working at the forge.  My massive unread poems are an effort, in part, to bring the American long-poem enterprise to some kind of artistic, integral fulfillment, on the model of Crane's Bridge and Osip Mandelstam's life-work.  Island Road, Stubborn Grew, Forth of July, Lanthanum, Ravenna Diagram...  It would be somewhat ironic if someday critical reception picks up on the idea that the American national epic has been fulfilled by a contribution from Soviet Russia.  But don't call Putin or Trump : Mandelstam and Gumilev speak from a completely other Russia, the Russia of Pushkin, Chaadev, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova.  The spiritually-free Russian psyche, so radiant with balletic grace and deep chords of solemn harmony.

Gateway Arch Monument, St. Louis

Another Jonah

tomorrow another American vote

ANOTHER JONAH

A solitary bald eagle, by the shore

of Shady Oak Lake

surveys us as we take

a warm November walk, where

kids went splashing 50 years ago.

28 young men,

adored by one young woman

from her lonesome Whitman window...

Tomorrow another American vote.

Steeped in the mud of Brown

Decades, Walter was known

for sharp talons, a monitory note.

Writhing oaks & the dark river

seem to conspire toward

iron & blood – another Ford

Theatre, in Dallas, forever & ever.

Apollinaire, after the war,

released one thin smoke-

column (a silver rook-

feather) toward North Star.

He mocked up Brooklyn fancy-flights

for Walter’s funeral – Walt,

who traveled (trusty salt)

to Baltimore, for Poe’s last rites.

Eureka! I have found her – Psyche,

with her agate lamp.

She climbs out of the damp

stream like a Jonah from Milwaukee

                       *

lifting her mossy torch, sweet Liberty.

The copper sunrays circling

her brow are reinforcing

for the mind’s soul freedom – see!

A ring of sparks around her tall room

spoke the wheel of Union

to the local Human –

truth & justice, woven on a loom

of reciprocity (affectionate

acknowledgement of friend

& neighbor, refugee &

stranger).  Dear Walt, I tip my hat!

The Rio slips across her limestone floor.

Time’s womb, an acorn shell,

spirals an eddy-swell –

an infant turtle at creation’s door.

Gold flecks the curve of smiling threads

anchored on air... your grave

ghost dance, your wave

on wave of feathered blues & reds,

whitecaps – flashing bright angles

through a raptor’s eye.

A raven dawdles in the sky.

Night battles echo – blindness mangles

hope with sour hatreds, fear...

& yet grey-eyed Columbia

may draw another Jonah

gasping from the deep – lift clear.

11.7.16

Mosey up the Nile

WAVY CUPOLA

The child in her acorn coracle

moseys up the Nile

flashing her light smile

every which way (infant oracle);

when you least expect, she’ll plant

her seedling joy – OK,

everything’s hunky-dory

now – with a fiddlehead stunt,

twirling up in a spiral over

empty space (green

island in the brain,

green almond, 4-leaf clover).

The red-gray desert stone

harbored an agate

lamp – uplifted late

into the night (sweet Psyche-zone);

under a wavy cupola of bark

a tepee-tripod braced

the buoyant mandorla...

O Hobo-Rube, not earthquake

nor volcano can displace

your cheery pine-lantern

whose handy facets perne

around one holm oak – chase

the quick naiad now, into the wood!

She cartwheels up ahead –

one skipping emerald,

one glancing Ariadne-tread.

11.3.16

crumbs beside the Po

SERPENT-ROOT

The life that spirals from the sea-cave

like a serpent-root, a curious

labyrinth etched across

the limestone of a vaulted nave –

the dappled sparkling of infant

river-wavelets.  Mud-brown

vortex of an unknown

casket – Easter-packet – font

of raven-crumbs, beside the Po.

Or Ishmael’s hieroglyph –

inverted fisher-skiff

of pregnant galaxy below

afloat now, circling – a living hand,

an arm, forehead, eyebrow...

emergent tar minnow –

Tad Pole, or Polly Wag, some sand-

borne seaweed driftwood Jane...

Christa on crossties, or

IONAH (in Paradise).  Your

Queequeg is a queer cuss, man,

but OK – floats all right – can even

swim.  His Ariadne-

boles are capillary –

vein his bones into a crown

of 50 stars (for Jubilee).

The echo-cave is empty...

only Eureka!  She

has found him! crows (from sea to sea).

10.6.16

Pines in Atlantis-land

STANDING ROCK

In the powerhouse of Providence

lame little Eddie Poe

must play the game hero –

like a minnow tar, fire-pitted mensch

against Mini-Mini-Tick Leviathan,

his haunt of fearful gravity.

His force is a depravity

of animal instinct – Heraclitean

axis of control – apes’ pecking order,

magnified by policy

(raison d’état, you see).

O too-familiar monster, O – our

puzzle-master, oiled in wrestle-hold,

whose flags flap overhead

above each engineered 

corpse-shed (floods memories untold).

The silver dime, Elsie – your Grecian

Artemis – will not

suffice; this Ariadne-knot

must be released, for peace to reign

the dam must burst; an equilibrium

of equity must level out

the bruised minefield.  Bright

misery in wells of eyes... come,

Maggie Shekinah, come Galilean

Buffalo Gal (Eureka-

Psyche)... Standing Rock

pines in Atlantis-land – rise up again.

9.9.16