Here is a cluster of Index labels under the subject : HG poems (label : subject/HG poems).

I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)

Her low whispers frame the deserted dome.
Her light covers the circus floor.

Happy Valentine's Day. Here's an old poem from Way Stations:

  In a rough-hewn four-poster
  the moody Puritan sleeps.
  Down the steep dark stair,
  slowly, a poor wife creeps.

   
  Under a heavy kitchen box
  there's a crust of dry bread;
  strong hands undo the locks;
  she goes out by the shed.

   
  The old redhead dreams on,
  kindly dawn slowly rises –
  he sees a fatherly sun,
  gleaming strawberry ices,

   
  and a justified Rome –
  while his wife, thinly wan,
  espousing dear freedom,
  succors an orphan swan.

One of the old, "pre-epic" poems in Way Stations, which (in very partial illustration of previous post) contains a kind of vow to Mandelstam:

 
  The wind exhaled, this world
  sprawled – a spring disaster, flocks of embraces
  in the garage, under the oil refineries
  hospitable sirens, waltzing on broken silver.

   
  And night deepened around the temple,
  a yellow-black wafer, crust for the swans;
  and the wind circled the olives, a morning watch
  all night by the Kedron, all day by Euphrates.

   
  And we'll meet again by the wintry river
  where we swaddled the sun in a double wreath,
  cedar and lilac, tangled in a knot of beaten
  gold – sea-roses, breathing in Jerusalem.

(sounds like an OM poem passed through an Eliot-modifier)

another little old one from Way Stations (may have sent this before). . .

                  Bees dance above closed lips;
  in the clear shadow of the oak
  wherever they turn their heads
  they follow the bright pattern.

   
                  Quietly, by the granite cistern
  under a crowded canopy of reds,
  in the cool wind a broken spoke
  sways whichever way it slips.

Busy here in the Rock today. Meanwhile, another simple old poem from Way Stations :

                                 from a cave

   
                  Such a small voice,
  I would not stop to hear;
  the sun was going down, and
  there were no houses near.

   
                  Such a strange voice,
  whispering out of the ground –
  familiar, though it seemed
  unearthly, utterly profound.

   
                  Such a sweet voice,
  twining my cavern ear;
  a vine for water jars, when
  all the wedding guests are here.

On Saturday morning I had an odd premonition, thinking "They're going to find Saddam before Christmas." Turns out they were finding him at the time.

Here's some semi-doggerel formality, from Way Stations, on the general theme of falling kings:

         Ballade Royale


  
         "The enemy is seething at the gates
 and all our stratagems so sorely tried
 have surely failed, and rebels – ingrates! –
 spit at us, and slink away, deep-dyed
 in treachery."  So courtiers sighed
 and muttered dreadful news, in sheer
 despair.  The king was full of foolish pride.
 All eyes filled with dismay – each heart with fear.

  
         "Let's go unto the king – it's not too late,
 perhaps..."  So down stone corridors they glide
 sharing the doom-filled business of the state,
 to find their king... lolling, side by side
 with his luxurious and mocking bride.
 His eyes feign drowsiness as they draw near.
 He snores – or mumbles something crass and snide.
 All eyes filled with dismay – each heart with fear.

  
         The great king disentangled from his mate
 and leaning on one elbow hoarsely cried –
 "Bring me my harp, O cowards that I hate!"
 The instrument appeared.  His fingers plied,
 and with his long arm's curve struck, chord
 on chord, such harmonies! – so sweet, so clear,
 his servants melted... floated on a cloud...
 All eyes filled with dismay – each heart with fear.

  
         "Miserable souls – your anguish I deride!
 When I am gone to rest – upon my bier –
 you'll curse your God I ever lived – or died!"
 All eyes filled with dismay – each heart with fear.

another little bit from "My Byzantium", written late 90s.

3

 
The crowd was moving beyond the guardrail
and surging up and down in gleaming escalators
between the two unmatched exhibits

 
I was in the crowd and with the crowd
memories between the tracks of the trekking pilgrimage
statuesque in lived postures of waiting and looking.

 
At the eastern pole of the great museum lay
Mondrian.  There was a tree in a Dutch backyard;
branchlets billowed a crisscross scandal until

 
with the lantern of his lifelong devotion
a surprise habit was to kiss Mrs. Ernst unlike
a monk, erring, earnest, in the back of a NY cab;

 
while at the western pole was to be beheld
the family album of Alfred Stieglitz –
not Venus not Diana emerging black and white

 
beside the dock in skinwet bathing suit,
or the two dignified old dames a-walk
down a country lane away from the horizon.

 
Choose:  your home movie extracted lovingly
undamaged from the real?  Or the concrete circumflex
of a node of apposite contraries?

 
What are we looking for in glasses?
"there is always something deeper, a little deeper,
in the waste places, along the roadsides"

 
It was a crystallization
of hope longed for, one
something

 
one, what was the number
of the archway
upheld

 
crumbling
unspoken
yet

 
flit, still
as, as
if re

 
me
mbe
red

which mayhap brings me back to Byzantium & "walking through the pictures". This is from "My Byzantium" (you may have seen it before. . .):

 
7

 
On Valentine's Day on my lunch break
I walked down the hill to the School of Design
to see the Crucifixion with Two Thieves
by the Master of the Providence Crucifixion (Dutch, circa
       1450).

 
After 500 years the colors still bright as a dream.
Jerusalem in the background, strange towers of mauve, beige,
violet, the high walls flecked with scrawny trees
(no goldfinch near), the line of horsemen
in blue Martian armor (or Flemish 1400's) appearing
out of a crevice in the pale
green, springlike fields
    
                          and surrounding the crosses,
crowding the stage, the gray horses, their necks
like tensile steel with unknowing beast grins,
the fop soldiers and gawking onlookers, the boy
(or dwarf?) reining in the horses for the lords
staring in gratified excitement
at the three hung men, a swordsman
(realistic touch) ready to hack at the calves
of the thief on the left - the three men
of exactly the same build, only
Jesus more deathly pale, calm, as if asleep.

 
In the foreground Mary faints, weeping
(like the women outside the execution arena
in Afghanistan today, NY Times 2.14.96),
her arms hollowing, ready to become
a bronze Pietà; two of the soldiers
peer sidelong out of the picture frame,
but John and the Magdalen look you in the eye
out of hell, still, out of 1450.

 
Beside the Crucifixion a little gilded wooden niche -
relic, even older (Italian, 1250 or so, hand
of Lippo Memmi) – a blonde in a red cloak,
sky-blue undergarment, holds a little casket
(myrrh-box? urn?) and gazes with almond eyes
from under her hood at me,
the blush on her cheeks still faintly there,
her look still veiled and distant, yet looking, still
    
                            B
       M  I  N  E

 
(A little further down the hill below the museum
you in the yellow t-shirt under a black sweatshirt
circle the gargantuan monolithic pile of the Supreme
Courthouse in a banged-up Falcon only
to look through the corner window
behind the iron bars hoping
to catch a glimpse
of a certain Irish cop
– like a goldfinch
tethered to the law.)

 
Snow is falling today on Providence,
it comes down gradually from cloud to ground;
soon Mardi Gras, then Lent, a drop of ash
on seared forehead; and through the
mirror of a dusky glance I see
one green-eyed almond Magdalen –
a chalice in her hands, she holds
this dying light in pale green fields,
while snow falls slowly over Providence.
 
                         2.14.96

Poetry as language of desire & insufficiency (Orpheus needing Eurydice etc.). Broken symmetry.

Poetry as embodied language, pregnant. Inherently catholic and scandalous. Title poem from Way Stations:


The child honoring you in dreams,
embrasure of innocence, tender shoots
of early radiance - your figure
landscape, unfamiliar town, scent
of May lilacs along a worn road.

Not to be known yet,
only a heavy cloud pregnant
with summer rain
(iron mortality, rust
of decline not yet to be);

gathering up your skirts
you make your way, slow path
beyond the jealous decorations,
fever of scorn, offended pride,
dry branches crackling - a bonfire.

an old poem from Way Stations


Between the parchment of an ending testament
and tongue-tied shadows crowded in a dream -
between blind feelers urgent in the city
and useless talent lodged in bitter syllables -

hanging, balanced on a grim little hill
among thieves and huddled followers, the Word
consents to dying in an empty theater -
to match the futile world with an empty tomb.

Happy Spring in Blogland.

* * *



Time now for the trees to shroud the earth
with their dark branches, time
when the wind dies down,
and over the still mirror
a faded voice is whispering.

Time again to climb into the old
music-box in the forest,
and wind the iron spring -

it is letter by letter,
line by line.

Another old poem, from Way Stations.




Under cover of a whisper
Under wings of snow
I draw forth the star
From the velvet cloak
I draw forth the star
Of your protection
Black Madonna, Black Madonna.

Where life has fallen
And ships gone under
And clouds of November
Take flight in haste
And clouds of November
Shadow your cloak
Black Madonna, Black Madonna.

Who thinks you are gone
Follows their shadow
Far from the sky road
Your green star glimmers
Far from the sky road
And circles the children
Black Madonna, Black Madonna.

Another little poem from long ago (found in Way Stations).


Vines tremble in the night
around the house's wooden doors,
rustling in the soft breeze, whispering.

Otherwise, not a sound. The high
moon stands over the hurrying clouds,

motionless in the central dark;

the wind tries everywhere for a resting
place, vainly turning over leaves;

and someone stands there in the shadows
looking out at the dry garden, listening
to vine-limbs creak in the night air.

Here is a poem in a form (the "nocturne"), circa mid 90s.




NOCTURNE

in Pawtuxet, with the "pioneers"


The night air is soft, the trees hold their places,
the meeting's adjourned, we emerge from the loft.
The streetlight illuminates (diverted faces).
The night air is soft.

Words, words, tarred with a treacherous weft. . .
heart's treason, scars. Posthumous traces
you'll replicate later - when no one's left.

Soul. . . death will bear your disgraces.
Friend. . . let this river be - raft.
Soon, soon - the deep gulf will displace us. And
the night air is soft.




("the pioneers" refers to a little group called the Poetry Mission, who were setting up some readings & an archive at the Hall Public Library in Cranston, down the road from Ted Berrigan's childhood home. Speaking of whom. . . in another form. . .)

[Another short poem from many years ago.]


OLD TIME ELEGY



Lord, we will write and write.
Your August ripens.
A radio keeps the beat.

The writing is what happens,
while merged with the wheat
a single strand of hair stays hidden.

[& yet another wee olde poem from long ago.]


from a cave

Such a small voice,
I would not stop to hear;
the sun was going down, and
there were no houses near.

Such a strange voice,
whispering out of the ground -
familiar, though it seemed
unearthly, utterly profound.

Such a sweet voice,
twining my cavern ear;
a vine for water jars, when
all the wedding guests are here.

"Race" - sort of a vague shibboleth-word, shorthand for the most interesting stories, shorthand for the most painful, infuriating, hopeless, hopeful stories in the history of the USA. Happy Birthday, MLK (Melchior, Melchizedek, Milky Way). I have many, many of those stories too.

Here's something from the sonnet sequence Island Road for today.

I few decades ago I wrote this little poem:


IMPERIUM

The Roman guards
cast lots for your clothing,
the way time and fortune
throw bones for kings' crowns;
you left them the shreds
of the Lord's farewell gift,
awaiting the shroud and the
spices of paralyzed women.

Your voice remains hidden
beneath the black mirrors,
diffracted, diffused by the
cold bones, the cold bones.


Then a few years later, I wrote this more ambitious poem (as I mentioned somewhere in the archive, during the early 1990s I was searching for a rhetorical level of address, mostly unsuccessfully, as here I guess). This poem tries to combine a Russian ode-form (used by Mandelstam in "Flint Ode" & "January 1") with American material. MLK dies on April 4. 4/4: the Chinese number for death. On April 5 my parents and I walked around the very circular Lake Calhoun, and on through the city & the neighborhoods in Minneapolis, in memory of Dr. King. I remember it was raining & gray. We went with my best friend Tom Fleming & his parents. Tom later died of AIDS in his late 30s. The last lines came along & felt curious, as if Milton were suddenly walking next to me (see "Lycidas").


BLACK MIRROR


I have a dream. . .


Amid the confused rustling, creaking of summer nights,
the stars' unspoken audience -
builders of kingdoms share out their blood-light
with cries, with a slow radiance.
As when a star, tearing, burning the ripened sky,
plummets behind mid-May lilacs. . .
- afoot by the shore, the sea's troubled reply:
apples - golden; mirrors - black.

Your hand grips a golden orb, the serious apple;
your voice, uttering sleepy cries,
moves like droning August through the people -
but star crumbles. Man dies. . .
and the sea, unraveling your voice between two shadows,
wears out the green glass,
and rubs in waves of salt across the light windows
this black sandpaper loss.

Buzzing of years, growls of unremembered kings,
breakers heaving curt answers -
we are cast out among detritus of things.
Under the white moon's pincers,
a green star quivers in the cloudy dome,
the black sail's insignia;
your voice in the mirror, piercing the dire foam -
one kingdom's echoing regalia.

I will walk as we walked twenty years ago in the rain
arm in arm through the cinders,
around those hopeful lakes again, and once again.
Friendship. Memory. Dry tinder.
Oh to seal finally the dismal eyelids of the age
with a perilous, windy spiral;
to take a child's first step across the clean page,
eyes lit with incandescent coral!

Along a bright trail ringing the grass mountain
voices, feet striking sparks;
at the hillside's foot - celandine, plantain.
Some ghostly shoulder, framing an ark's
limber keel - ebony plumbline over the scattering falls
of cloudy speech; sparkling rain,
curved limbs muscle and horn below the walls,
until your trumpet levels the plain.

And the wind tears the grass, and the wavering shore
herds the sand back and forth,
while reverence of glass and silver blows no more
emblems over doorway, hearth. . .
green pools of broken mirror suffer the long junkyard
years, glinting along the path
of your river-song - Memphis blues, Nile shard
still afloat, on a matrix of wrath.

To remember - day of rest, word singing out of sleep,
limbs rocking, a tender song.
Tall cradling hills of stone, rugged and steep,
fossilize the hopeless wrong,
inscribe in flint and tumbling falls your memory.
Monuments, marble chariots,
swirling of broken veins, of unknown infantry -
such things of time appropriate -

like this unruly amulet raked from the ocean,
a whispered Sunday in the sand,
where a wind-cut lilac spirals in slow motion,
and a cloud, like a heavy hand,
surges with shady blessing toward the disputed slopes -
shouldering aside the idols
and drawing taut the circular tent-ropes
over the offered animals.

Young lambs leap from the stalls there, near the sea;
old men and the dodging kids
fortify the streets with Saturday glee,
while in the shade, trembling eyelids
close in silence. On the graveyard hillside, blossoms
of cherry and apple crowd the blue
crown of your garden - this prism of Jerusalems,
these meadows pacing shepherds knew.

5.18.88

[A few little old poems.]


at noon

Orpheus sings alone,
his lyre left in the wind
moaning in elliptical harmony.

Persephone sleeps, her head
hidden in her arms, and shadows
of clouds passing over her hair.

And John, in his prison, hears
dance music in the rooms above,
and the sound of an axe on stone.