agate density

GREEN HILL

Dante nearing the end of his poem

ambled around Ravenna

under cloudy skies.  He saw

the glinting tesserae in the high gloom

of San Vitale, Sant’ Apollinaris,

yet loved best

that older cryptic nest

Galla Placidia (Empress

for a day, exile & refugee)

had plaited long before –

with panel of Jesus-Nazir

styled as Arcadian Orphée

clasping rustic David’s staff,

loafing on a green slope

shared with sleepy sheep.

He loitered, gazing at the roof-

beams, lit with swirly-interlocking

whorls of 8-point stars

surrounding one small cross

like neon phosphorus – marking

their zones of cosmic midnight blue.

The mausoleum held

no body.  The rough shell

hid its agate density from view.

Primitive angel glyphs in caves

across the planet glimmer,

lurking, waiting for her

aria of plummet-stone, through waves

                 *

of spacetime, spiraling in Dante’s ear.

Singing, bringing in sheaves

(while Ariadne weaves

her fleecy oarlocks round one salty tear).

So tesserae reform, like Gospel

beasts into one

M – a beak so aquiline

& sharp to tear the casket lid from Hell –

the shearing blade of sheep from wolf,

of infant innocence

from feral insolence,

scattering bread across a shark-tooth Gulf.

Ariadne lifts her penny whistle sign.

A chartered Paris yearns

toward heaven – burns

for shame... the Minotaur’s declension

stokes the flames, flares orange

for a time (4 times).

In the House of 4 Pines

wind-chimes supplicate one ange

d’or via strange door (subterranean).

The flute still rhymes.

The sunny shepherd climbs

a green hill toward his Galilean

Psyche-Mendelssohn.  Sibelius

ratchets his violin...

geese fly from Ravenn

into Estonian concord (a Finnish Russe).

6.1.17

engr. by Harold Sund (from Ravenna : a Study, by Edward Hutton)

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

sleek as raven-eel

LICHEN DOME

The last snow before Easter.

Sophie’s footprints etch

a squarish spiral sketch...

still photo (lento, Bruegelish faster).

From long distance, every

bird’s-eye view can fuse

with every other (sans

confusion).  Each waltzing orrery

links hands in Sydney – under those figs

whose natural majesty

anchors her panoply,

a fractal Dr. Octahydra (sky-digs

of Southern Cross, O dusky lady).

Bends toward akme

of the starfish now, Henry.

Meteor Hurtle Aboriginal Day.

The stone fell (odd fellow, ultramarine).

Fey otter – furry,

sleek as raven-eel –

into the gilded net of Saarinen

(Sibelius?  Some other fin).

Architrave swept (over

canoe).  Windhoover,

agile Harry Grizzly (buoy-woman,

boo-hoo – smoking Camel,

him calumet).  A Caliban

or Cain (Abel).  A Son

of Man – sad Prospero (blithe Ariel

                  *

is in the pine).  Where be the porpoise

here, Dauphin?  Your plow

scratches the surface now.

Her keen lengthens toward Paradise

(swell memory of Outremer).

The palm-lines slacken,

ease... shade thickens then

toward Wingy Rock (you know where,

Coatlicue).  The cedar forest

where the monarch dies,

lives.  Memorize

my speech, for its spooky taste

of dead bees (Finnish sacrifice).

There’s the arch, like

a prow (turn on the mike

now).  Spin the jenny, throw the dice.

Snow mantles the martyr’s tomb.

Green lichen dome

where breakers foam

from galaxies of Mendelssohn (home

run).  I don’t know where to go

from here.  The scared poem

swims down Rio del Hum

until your blues become a hollow

rhumba-Rome (flight-bud unknown).

Whispers vespers... purrs.

Her bop-team be yours,

egg-woman (inner-tube pontoon).

4.11.17

& so concludes Ravenna Diagram, bk 5

BRIGHT PENNY

J was for Juniper (Maia genus,

Jenna) – an ordinary

quiet little tree –

you find them everywhere in Rus,

U.S.  One of the cedar family –

of which great masts are made

in Massa Maritima, she said;

& note the canoe, so beautifully

wrought, that graces this garage

full of rusted implements,

old iron junk (ribs,

tubes, gunnels, disjecta, garbage)...

– no, don’t kiss me now, it’s almost

Valentine’s.  Here’s a letter

in the litter, from your brother

in Minneapolis (him & his boats!) –

expatiating on that Inland Ocean

stretching from Superior’s

index, through Mississippi

dells & vales (his new obsession)

leaving these microscopic spirals

...in the pervasive buttery

limestone underbelly

of the land... seashells, fan-whorls;

epitomized in one moist flesh-toned

stony nave & spire

(near 34th & 34).

Meek modern well-proportioned

masterpiece, harmonic matrix

of father & son (elegant

Eero, eerie Eliel) – bent

Saarinen ark, soaring to Beatrix

rondure... O navigators!  Inching

over gravity waves,

black holes, ripe graves

of wombified Vikings... cinching

one planet with your splintery

kaleidoscopes (wind-

buffeted facets of land

& sea) under Dancing Bear, Polaris!

I would scratch my cartoon of your fellowship

with the circumference

                *

of an almond salience –

one bright Penny’s (legal, tender) skip.

A dove circles the Bay there, Columbia –

where the beats gather

spliced to twine pillar,

shrouds & safety nets of a still Finlandia –

wheeling wings, massed between sea

& cedar palisades,

Pacific rock parades

& sigh of spray... enveloping, visionary

finish at the prow of fiery

sunsets!  & I recall

the rudder of it all –

kind capitan of Little Rhody,

prophet of soul liberty –

gold Independent Man

atop the mobile span

of Providence – abeam with charity!

Wrapped in cloud, the binding peaks

wink now with S.O.S.

Laurentian Divide is

where the waters separate – soul seeks

her Earth, commensurate with hope

– justice of Manitou

sluicing like rain (for you

& me) across wide prairie slope

to live-oak bottomland.  My faint

hen-scratch... mere filament

to trace the lineament

of Kalevala-coracle – St.

Mary’s fishing-boat, or Paul’s

(vain little man, whose plan

would hook Leviathan) –

one rosy ark, riding the squalls

where refugees huddle for warmth & light.

O womb abrim with life,

grail-casket, Raven-knife –

matrix of River’s coppery might –

lift up your little pine apex!

Crown my origami fleet

with fir-green fin – beat

time with silver oar (moon reflex).

2.11.16

Back to Lanthanum 57

Trying to get back to writing Lanthanum again (& here). Out of my sluggish slough of slugs of accidia. This is really my best poetry ever (of course, I may be biased). I hope I can find the energy to write Book 2.

I'd like it to be read in the context of Sibelius. Wave upon wave, that's what it's about. There's a Finland (Karelian, to be exact) dimension to this. Finnegans Wake, Karelia, Mandelshtam, & the MN pike that never got caught. Am I being coy? My mother had her first drink (sherry) in Longfellow's house, in Portland, Maine. I lost a fish to a northern pike once - tore the bass right off my hook.

I was down in Jersey for a few days, near Asbury Park (my 85-yr-old mother-in-law is a Springsteen fan). Ol' Henry is phlegmatic lately.

Speaking of coincidences : ol' Kent Johnson emailed me last week to say he'd been reading a New Yorker profile on Finnish composer Sibelius, & his thorny relations with 20th-cent. avant-garde, & Kent thought of me. & then this week I received a package from Tasmania, from Ralph Wessman, the only editor on this planet who actually solicits material from me. Latest issue of Famous Reporter includes an excerpt from previous endless Henry series titled Rest Note. The excerpt mentions a lot of birds - Sibelius was a serious bird-watcher (his last words were about his beloved cranes) - & concludes with these lines :

Symphonic morning (slow Sibelius) : from night
to day, processional (with cloud-parades).


Thanks, clerk Kent.