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

National Poetry Month begins with April Fools

SPRINGLIGHT

                                       i.m. Jim Harrison

April by the ancient river.

The old bones of the king

remember everything

that he forgot – his yellowed quiver

like a scrollful of desire, old goat,

old Harry son of Harry,

with his dogs, with his ’44,

a massif in a cave, disconsolate –

world like a bungled maze, a hive

of killer bees, in a hole

in the ground.  Old King Cole

with his pipe & his bowl, still alive

somehow.  A dust-mote labyrinth

horned by his own shade.

I met a straw-blonde maid

of Provençal, spruce terebinth

from Marseille, or Toulouse – name’s

Quitterie – who kissed

me sweetly, once

outside St. Martin-in-the-Fields...

                     *

Turn again, O Man, from thy insect

wickedness... a dust-storm

swarms the bristlecone

pine, high in her cold dry cleft,

still evergreen.  Through yon spiderweb

of desperate cities

one clear flute-breeze

intones a major melody (B-

flat) – frail threads transmogrified

like griffin-chords into

transparent unison – blue

octave through twin pillars (pied,

squared).  It was an iteration

out of alienation, empty

heart of vanity –

whose nothingness nested creation.

                     *

Long ago el Rio del Espiritu Santo

rolled, a mighty glacier-

torrent, out of here –

before your dream-songe Manitou

brought you to tent among these timbers,

People.  April was Earth

before a human birth

lent gentleness & poison (hers,

yours, mine).  I found a moss-green coin

locked in a cedar fork,

swept past the flooded park

into this punted limb.  Begin the Beguine,

spun the vapid strings... the War to End

All Wars is ended.  An old

king crawls from the blistered

bole (emptied orphanman, around

the bend) – shines in the springlight

like a babe newborn.

Roland honks his horn;

Guillaume unwraps his gauze (a Calumet).

4.1.16