Oh say can you see / by the Topsfield town line

& so the grand explication rolls on...

R.D. READING GUIDE #7

TOPSFIELD  (p.9)

This poem clearly a rejoinder to the conflicted cul-de-sac of previous poem (“Black Peak”).  The aim seems to be clarification, but the murk only grows darker.

“Topsfield” : suburb of Boston, next door to Salem, Massachusetts

“Shaker plate / of light” : simplicity, clarity.  Memory of lakeside Shaker settlement near Lewiston, Maine

“one steady statute / of a dauntless ghost” : refers to “our W”, one of the poem’s heroes, Roger Williams (R.W.)

“O say // can you see / By the Topsfield / town line / Where Endicott / ripped / the King’s cross out / barehanded...” : national anthem transposed onto colonial Bay Colony.  The future Governor Endicott of Massachusetts was (at that time, anyway) an enthusiastic disciple of Roger Williams.  One day (in the 1630s) the excitable Endicott, inspired by Williams’ objections to King Charles I’s reinforcement of the Tudor “establishment” of a state-sponsored church, tore the cross out of his own militia’s Union Jack.  This was an early (and emotional)  expression of Roger Williams’ influential theory of the separation of church and state.  Very remotely echoed by Dante in his De Monarchia – the medieval version of a doctrine stipulating the separation of Pope and Emperor.  (Endicott, a resident of Topsfield, was next-door neighbor to Zaccheus Gould, the poet’s great++grandfather).

“Friend” : Quaker, Shaker

Twain’ll meet / Nought, around the bend” : some kind of prophetic cancelling of violent rivalries and conflicts (with a prefiguration of Mark Twain and the river)

“Wauontam.  Let’s eat.” : a Narragansett welcome, to feasting (experienced by exiled Roger Williams)

“Tempestuous word... stirs up... chartered Concorde” : a lot packed into this stanza.  Let’s say the tempestuous and threatening prophetic word of someone like Roger Williams, in the 17th century, eventually grew and flourished into the “self-evident endowments” of the 18th century – the U.S. Bill of Rights – in some kind of constitutional alliance with France (“chartered Concorde”).

“Hip-hop’s // Charlie horse” : ambiguous image of a limping monarch (Charlie horse”)

“rocking, racking... icing on a cake of Peking / take-out orders” : the political concept of human liberty, originating in America with Williams, results in a challenge to the autocratic, lawless brutality of “Putin’s generic icing” and “Peking’s take-out orders”

“Aerial checkmate thing” : poetry’s inherent opposition to soul-tyranny.  Echoes of  Biblical Ariel (the Psalmist’s hope); and Nabokov, Montale (“checkmate thing”)

speech after long silence

DARK MATTER

On Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise”

(bronze doors of Alighieri’s

Baptistery) mute eyes

read open palms as messages –

clouds’ condensation (mist & spray)

solidifies in glints

of angels’ footprints.

Cerements & shrouds (all hands... away).

Sauntering winter by the river

leaves only this ladder

of snow – bronze adder,

subterranean shiver (moon-silver).

Anonymous Zaccheus of Topsfield

fined for making friends

with Indians &

Quakers (150 years ground

on, before the Revolution

bent the tune).  We are

the salt within the Rio

del Espiritu Santo (many thousand

gone).  We are the Lenten corn

in a maze of amnesia

to the horizon (hallelujah).

Old Hole-in-the-Sky – buffalo-shorn

tepee – pyramid cathedral, aye.

Dark matter between Bear

& Lyre; grey mother,

Jonah’s poncho (oaken sigh).

3.12.18

Zaccheus the peasant

re previous post : it occurs to me that this "conservative" stance, so described, is not so different from the attitude of the medieval (or older) peasant, who hides his grain under the cellar floor whenever the Royal Tax-Collector, or the Army, or the local mercenary band comes around, to grab what they need. Not the most civic-minded attitude, I suppose... but maybe it's very local.

As it happens my great-etc-grandfather Zaccheus Gould, of Topsfield, Massachusetts, penned what must be one of the earliest public petitions to government authority in America. I found it long ago in the old Essex County record books. It dates back to the 1630s. Zaccheus & his fellow farmers petitioned the Massachusetts colonial government to allow the young men of the township to skip militia training practice during the summer months, because said military duty greatly increaseth the hardship on farmers, as it interferes with the haying.

Zaccheus' petition appears in the long village-history poem, In RI (ably translated into Italian by Anny Ballardini).

(- as I say, this attitude may strike you as not very civic-minded - as rather small-minded & tight-fisted, conservative... but I would not be surprised if you also find traces of it in your own family history.)

Listened to some of the (NPR) radio commentary on Arthur Miller, r.i.p., after work. One of his friends had bought his house in Connecticut, where he wrote "Death of a Salesman". His friend described how he had built a special shack out in the back yard, because he felt this important work coming... he wrote the 1st act in 48 hrs straight, pacing around, mumbling to himself... it suddenly reminded me of what Siberian shamans do... (build a little hut away from it all)...

before that they played a 1995 interview with Miller, where he talked about the show he'd gone to with his mother, age 8, which taught him the power of theater...

which reminded me of Elena Shvarts' memoir, about her own theatrical baptism (Brothers Karamazov, in Kiev) (see archive a few wks ago)

see archive, "life is theater" etc.

See also archive about Anny Ballardini's trans. of In RI (the poem). About RI history & separation of church & state, etc. The people dramatized in The Crucible are my direct ancestors. The mother of the Putnam girls (who started the Salem witch craze) was Priscilla Gould, sister (daughter?) of Zaccheus, of Topsfield, my gr-etc-grandfather. Priscilla also happens to be a direct ancestor of Joseph Smith, of Mormon fame. "The pure products of America / go crazy".

Which brings me back to Providence, and Roger Williams...

and my own sub-sub-literary line of descent: Poe-Crane-Lovecraft-Gould. I'm going to write a detective story...

179] To the right worll the Governor Council & Assistants and the rest of
the generall Court now assembled (8) 7.1640.

The humble peticion of ZACHEUS GOULD of Lynne husbandman in behalfe of
himselfe and all other husbandmen of the Country

Showeth that whereas husbandry and tillage much concerne the good of this
Commonwealth and yor peticioners have undertaken the managing & tillage of
divers ffarmes in the Country & sowing of English corne their servants are
oftentimes drawne from their worke to trayne in seed time hay tyme &
harvest to the great discouragement & dammage of yor peticioner the said
Zacheus Gould for himself saith that for one days trayning this yeare he
was much damnnfyed in his hay. And fforsmuch as fishermen upon just
grounds are exempted from trayning because their trade is also for the
Common wealth, Yor peticioners humbly pray that this Court will be pleased
to take the premises into their grave Consideration and thereupon to give
order for the incouragement of yor peticioners who are husbandmen imployed
about English graine that they & their servants may be exempted from
ordinary traynings in seed time hay tyme & harvest And yor peticioners
shall as their duty bynds them pray &c.

p.s. to first post of today (below):

Zaccheus' brother Jeremy left Massachusetts for Newport with Anne Hutchinson's group. His eldest son Thomas owned a small island in Narragansett Bay (still called "Gould Island"). For a few years Thomas Gould rented a parcel there to Roger Williams, for growing hay.

Jeremy returned to England in the 1660s or '70s, at the age of 90. He died in his hometown in Herefordshire (Hemel Hempstead, I think), and was buried under "John Gould's Oak".

Unable to focus on poetry.

Forsythia budding against wall on Prospect St. outside Rochambeau House.

Fascinating NY Times mag article on Sayyid Qutb, Islamic thinker/revolutionary, influence on Al Qaeda et al. According to Qutb one of the roots of Western corruption is separation of religion & state. I live in Providence, home of "separation of church & state" (Roger Williams). Some of my Gould ancestors came here in 1630s, with Anne Hutchinson, driven out by Boston theocracy. Others were Quakers. Gr-gr-etc-grandpa Zaccheus Gould, expelled from his Massachusetts church for "harboring Indians & Quakers" (one was his nephew). When he was finally re-admitted, he sat in his pew with his back to the pulpit.