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

a cornucopia of acorn habitats

UNDOING CAESAR

In this misty February pre-dawn dark

a Snow Moon, over silent

cedars, glows phosphorescent

silver.  Sacred thumbprint-mark

of first king (saturnine, defunct).

& I’m whorling his identity

for the FBI (maybe

some type of Memphis pharaoh-punk?)

in case we need to trace him back

to the source (Itasca

tourniquet? some kinda

hieroglyph?).  Small floaty Hobo-shack

in the heart of mudpie heartland.

Little coracle of clay

shaped for Lincoln’s birthday

maybe (Valentine’s Day).  Unmanned?

nay, manned – like a catamaran

by every air across the sun;

part of carnival season,

a gloss on Pentecost.  Mighty One

coming-forth, like hurricane or tornado

from a whisper, cave-

mouth… out of the south-

bound, multitudinous, incarnito

nexus of brownian river-motion…

out of the roaring flood

of driv-down dust, blood –

wind-sown, windblown clay… spun

                      *

into handmade UNION, like an eye-in-hand;

sliced from the Nile-bed,

bled from Osiris-head,

bricked in a pyramid of mason-sand…

our salt earth… squared beneath an almond

lamp like hovercraft

or hydrofoil (fore-&-aft

in quatrefoil) – little fylfot countermand

(counter-clockwise emerald) out of Iona;

like a coracle of Columba

or Camelot for JFK

her Isis-essence emanates from Iowa –

West Branch of western harmony

amassing trusty Athens

& Jerusalem-to-be (Hen’s

covenant of clear spring… see?

– translucent integral of truth).

& that tall rose window

tossed (like buckets of stone

water) to the skies, is massive, Ruth –

a cornucopia of acorn habitats,

a capital of washing

towns – a Kurbsky sting

against dim Ivan coups-d’état;

or Osip vs. Iosif – MLK

withstanding FBI –

Vindman in vindication (sigh) –

humanity undoing Caesar… Hallelujay

2.10.20

signum of yearning

DOOM-BELL

The simple poem sets its seal on the day

(signum of yearning, lack

& bronze heartbreak).

It doesn’t create, but confirms, I say –

tacit equipoise of universe,

with roaring hearth

mirroring each heart

in Milky Way (our fiery nurse).

& of that translucent softest koinonia

the poem’s just a line.

Graven tattoo or riverine

El (whorled conscience of Columbia).

So when the Rabbi hums a restoration of all things

we understand what he means

& feel it in our bones –

sunlight in the kitchen supersedes all kings.

Liberty-tyranny-liberty; light-dark-light...

your Florentine chessboard

migrates its word-hoard

to Skye, & beyond (stern Ocean slate).

Your buoy rides the moiling salt

like a lucky pawn

become kingpin again;

Hamlet swings the doom-bell... halt,

who goes there? – solo Ophelia

hoovers up all Denmark

from her West Branch park,

& Evening Star glows like Astraea.

12.9.19

keep on pushkin, straight ahead

RED FOX

Under the silver shoreline of late cottonwoods

the quiet gray clouds

the dry river weeds (wounded

with scattered sumac) Hobo broods

as always.  Trying mightily to bring it all

into focus, under the aegis

of an ineffable Isis-

eye (black West Branch granite, under veil).

Seated on her throne, standing for a Mind

of grace.  The poets’ doctrine

as against the matter-men –

lambent clay mutter-shape (FOR BLIND).

Johnny, we hardly knew ye... Iona

clover, twirling like a dervish

in the shadow of an Irish

Tyche.  Liberté, coulombe, Columbia...

Jeanne, Jonah.  Up from pacific waters

of an Ocean Rose, an Okeanos

Newport oakenship – ceremonious

wedding (chaste prow, beyond all wars).

Like scrape of diamond on a coal-black

door.  Marking your graffiti-

passage, Henry Contumely –

he hath entered the realm of signs (alas,

alack).  You search the scriptures, lil Red

Fox – but do not come to ME.

Swift as cottonwood leaf

her sun-heart passes... (Dion-Isis?  Fled.)

10.2.19

throned upon dignity

MY GROUND

The muse of my Ravenna poem

is secret & silent, hidden

in quiet like that Belgian

Isis – adamant black Mom

throned upon dignity in West Branch

shaded by old oaks

& the whisper of spokes

on a windmill (over limitless green avalanche

of cornfields).  She is my implicit

First Mower – my ground

of whispering midwestern sound;

Hobo, curled by his sprung rivulet,

her loving servant & factotum

& my bosom pal;

we three walk out of Hell

by the glow of one sole lux humanum –

an eye-in-hand, like that manifest

benign donation of a palm

opening from the cosmic realm

above Transfiguration of St. Apollinaris

in Classe.  & as we are three-in-one

in the mode of deification

we mirror that diamond Everyone

dwelling in the well of supernal Union

before, within, beyond Creation –

in the heart of the dream-songe

& the rêve-vision, we plunge

toward Restoration like a green acorn

                       *

& rise like ancient Osiris or Lone Ranger

through the climbing limbs

of an emerald Okean Stream

glowing more human (richer, stranger)

& more alive, as we lift toward that

light cross-tree of stars

where gentle Dante stares

& time & space availeth not

& where the marriage of true minds

is blessedness of spiritual grace

as we become one Falcon-

Ace, or Jeanne-eaglet – who finds

her microscopic lamb-lamp in the grass

just as Maggie spied Jesus

composting the flowers

there, in Resurrection Cemetery... Rise,

Sister-Dove!  Walk, Jonah-Lazarus!

& thus the reunion of the universe

is now our interstellar fire-house –

Maggie a tower of almonds (brown eyes

shaken up to smiling Milky Way

between Jerusalem & Athens)

& my dry diagram begins

to melt into a double Tiger-Lily –

like this one (Hobo showed me)

peeking from the shade-weeds

by the Mississippi – beads

of green, black, orange... a flag (you see?).

8.7.19

mark how red dust leaps

GATEWAY RING

The trickster-shaman & the prickly prophet

frame a stumbling-block

you can’t dislodge... mock

as you may, puffy lectern-puppet.

It is a fundamental moral world

they dramatize, a place

of breathing flames – their science

is conscience, this life a dream unfurled

on stage (his banner over me was love).

On board a fellowship

from birth, we skip, we slip

& slide toward the deep (sky-alcove,

ocean-sepulchre... Osiris-canoe

full of Isis-candles... grave

of MLK, our architrave).

As if returning to our own soul (true).

In West Branch, Iowa (my grandmother’s

home town) there is a dark

moss-green catafalque

of Isis, adamant earth-mother (who remembers).

& the North Star of the martyrs shines

like a seminal spark

over the Iron Range.  Mark

how red dust leaps into lifelines –

how a merry-go-round of American clay

swings toward the gateway ring

upstream, down.  Shaping

newborn, translated children – maize, hay hey.

7.11.19

let us come into your clay-borne presence

LIGHT RIVER

I see the radiant city on a hill

& Liberty in her harbor

& the Gateway... & ardor

burns, like paint – to make a mural,

maybe?  For one of our post offices?

Floppy Hobo in’s gazebo

full of summer, O

& stubborn weeds, ripe frailties...

& who will deliver us from this cauldron

of planetary woes?

Veiled Isis knows,

out there in West Branch – she’s not sayin’.

Her ghost throws a shadow wherever she goes.

O let me come into your presence,

Lord – let me see your face!

Joanie Magdalen grins... Light River flows.

Her uberous figure under Hooverville

remembers slow clay, &

quickens every which way –

warming the shoulders of your chill

& peregrine companions.  & gadzooks!

She spooks even the Tyche

inside Île de la Cité –

tattooing her airy John Hancocks

to every labyrinthine burg on earth.

A little candle in your soul

flickers through mole-

corridors, Mayflower – brightens your berth.

6.18.19

Down the Mrs. Nile

BLACK MARBLE

The slow green river is historian as well, 

moving with time from here

to there, yet always here

same as ever, with detritus of fossil

shells – eroding palimpsest

subject to misquotation,

willful erasure, mistaken

readings...  Observe that anxious,

fretful archivist – thin railing Ez

with his fistful of heroes

impaled on total loss

(a maze of smoking Flanders trenches).

Like a Minotaur in the bughouse

with his Schifanoia grid –

hierarchical, to put a lid

on greed, by force (his Musci-Louse).

What then’s this chaos of bad dreams?

Life’s horror-show?  Not so,

not so.  PAX.  What thou

lovest well...  After the steamboat schemes

Latrobe still floats his capitol design.

Cornstalks, tobacco flowers...

Virgo, with Isis-powers,

on the adamant of time, will shine –

black marble out of Nile (West Branch).

Not abstract or Pythagorean,

but human, Galilean –

shepherd in Ravenna – beaming avalanche.

5.16.19

Mussolini shoals

MARBLE FACT

Long way from stones of Notre Dame.

We haven’t that feudal allegiance

to a field beyond France.

Bright poppies blister over Belgium

where conundrum of Isis in Iowa

came from.  She is, and was

mysterium of Osiris

on the Mississip – Ezra’s mirror-delta;

hard marble fact planted at West Branch

in Herbert Hoover’s memory

(who would not have taken kindly

to any meat-locker Muss avalanche).

Ezra yodeling the alpine Swiss serene

of his muse Circe Clementine

Vichy (& all the swine

she mesmerized, so spotless clean)

erasing all that history of filthy usury

& black boys handing Bibles

through the bars... Abel’s

your bro, Ez – cain’t you see?

Ah... the shudder of absurdity.

Knife-stab in Marlowe’s eye

– over the Jew of Malta,

of all things!  It cannot be.

It is.  Villon grins in your face,

King Flibberty-Gibbet.

Grimace may be safety net

for every reprobate.  O prodigal race...

5.4.19

 

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)

& know the place for the first time

SOME PALLADIUM

Say we come back to the place of 4

paradisal rivers, & find

it’s a limestone seed-rind

west of St. Lou.  What’s left to explore?

& that grand, sane, towering grainy-mother

is closer, more real

than royal – more U.S. steel

than Byzantine gold (your equal sister-

brother).  How did we get here?

Some palladium of Lamb-

Seeker, out on a limb,

lean-to from Providence canoe... Roger –

halfsome Grain Elevator Song, mayhap

(May 29) – his Pentecost

a Rhody smoke-hole, tossed

southwest, southwest (tornado giddy-up).

Magnanimous hand, reaching toward sunset...

Solomon, seeking Sheba;

a concord St. Columba

spied, twirling Ionian Golden Gate.

Kernel of equal daughters, equal sons –

chaste Isis of West Branch,

Virgo-Astraea in a conch...

a coracle of oracles, lifting crane bones

to life within her almond carousel;

Ophelia & Juliet

transposed to Olivet,

Henry-Persephone retrieved from Hell.

2.22.19

ancient West Branch watercolor

CURVE PRONGS

Everything gets more simple

in old age.  Trust me.

Thanksgiving pumpkin pi =

two stone pillars, plus an ample

roof.  Henry Mewl, hee-hawing

NNW (out of Apuleius)

checkmates template Isis 

planted in West Branch (settling

in river-bronze).  Like that watercolor

Mary Negus limned

in high school – skimmed

from unlocked memory (her

Grant Wood brain, a dusty library).

The curve prongs back to earth

west of St. Lou. – Ft. Worth.

Van Cliburn Plumbs to Victory.

I was walking up from the Mississippi

this afternoon, & met

(in Voronezh sunlight)

an ancient babushka, smiling at me.

Thinking of Nadezhda, & of hope...

of Mary Magdalen,

who witnessed Russian

irony in the garden (roped-

off Gesthem – Tsarskoe Selo).

The dream song blinks

until your lighthouse winks.

Wry rosy Providence (all systems go).

1.11.19

personae taking shape

SOFT GLANCE

On the high ridge of River Road

Henry seeks his throne –

little Sophie-chair (long gone

from her gazebo octagon). O Lord

Apollinaire of Poetry, what now?

Is the Great War ended?

Are the lads mended?

Have we entered the Third Aeon?  No,

not yet, vows Joachim (1132).

When Eagle molts

to Coulombee, & bolts

from heaven like a swallow blue...

the eye of Providence triangulates

over an Isis-pyramid

of West Branch clay – hid

from Cahokia to now, he states.

Hobo slumps closer to the river, sound

asleep.  He dreams of her,

who dreams of him – somewhere

over the Franklin Bridge (an Indian mound).

Henry, fragment of Osiris –

iris from Rhode Island –

sees her too.  Sand

curves through silent Providence...

soft glance of Magdalen, absorbing

mourning (wrung like tears,

like rain).  Those anxious piers...

Hart’s, John’s... frame her redeeming orb.

11.18.18

stone, water, light, fire

DOUBLE RING

The agitations of a stone thrown in the stream

make ripples that become

a smooth continuum

of moving wheels.  One Gothic beam

draws light through stone and water –

blending elements

into high bafflements

of rainbow glass, mind with nature

beyond nature, reason with wonder.

Agnes – her exacting threads

trace Ariadne’s leads

through wilderness of sea & thunder.

Grant – his strange & strict constructions

spin a decussated

dream landscape – fated

black dirt looming beneath confections

of late sunset West Branch foliage.

Why, then, this mirage

of images?  The poet’s rage

wells from embodied fury – & her voice

– Arachne’s, Ariadne’s – is mortal

as that scar-calendar

of dread Coatlicue

unsnagged by force from Mexican corral.

Her poem is cast-iron Poseidon-net

straight from the furnace,

thus : a human face

veiled by the smoke of calumet

                     *

morphing brute fraudulence to peace,

transmuting blank white

voids to violet

& moss-green habitats of paradise.

St. Maximus Confessor, musing

monk, articulated

in theory what unfolded

in reality – fusion of divine choosing

with human liberty in understanding,

in enactment, as the spirit

moves us : radiant

tangle of wheels into a double ring.

All spokes are joined there, in the personal –

as in a room near Golgotha

babble turned glossolalia

& tongues aflame lit one bright coronal.

The poet chants out of that mental fire

& dances like a Nazirite

her intellectual delight

inviting you & me to join the choir

around that altar of a rolling stone –

a living hearth-fire

of the Earth’s desire

for equilibrium, once we throw down

the Minotaur lodged in our hearts.

Malevolent violence & lust

& greed for dominance must

be renounced... & so the dancing starts.

7.17.18

conducting veinous electricity

MUD-ANGELS

These three mud-clay homunculi

hung from pink ribbons

in my tent – lumpy remains

from some Dance of Death?  My

mother must have brought them back

from Mexico (mud-angels

to guard her potter’s wheel).

Coatlicue of Quauhnahuac,

adamant Madre of encrusted Time!

Out of your bottomland

whirls eye-in-hand –

out of Monk’s Mound’s perennial slime...

Clay muscles rolling stone – conducting

veinous electricity –

out of nothing come to be

loaves loafing from the oven (rising,

singing).  A moss-green Isis by the Nile

(or in West Branch) you

rain your rivers blue,

compassionate Magdalen – your smile

lifts Jesús from the grave, raises

Enrique from the cemetery

too (some ordinary

day on Earth).  Hobo Jay cleanses

all hearts, rinses eyes with river-clay –

sighs, EPHPHATHA.  From boulders

God can lift up equal daughters,

equal sons... just look at buried Henry-manqué!

7.10.18