you cannot buy free soul

FLAT VODKA

The weather is alchemical,

the mix is changeable

& lethal – Lear will fumble

through the hailstorm, inconsolable.

The air is saturate with salt.

Even the snow is bitter

as flat vodka.  Better

to butter up the mayor, Walt –

don’t you think?  I don’t.

His orange head is swollen

full of bloody poll-pollen –

he likely toss you to the Don.

Phosphoric Osip fingers his Commedia

for signs of figlio

della figlia... down Rio

del Espiritu wend lilac, willow, etc...

Dumb Cordelia keeps her counsel.

Won’t corrode the word

filial with a coarse reward.

You cannot buy free soul,

dear heart – & salt is cheap.

Cotton bolls is de termite,

but woe unto de spite-

docta, who sow to weep.

I see a Solominka mincing

on the edge of a knife,

a precipice – fine

Ravel for violin (pining).

11.18.16

- here's something slightly alchemical, from Blackstone's Day-Book (the last chapter of Forth of July):

 4


  
 Ultramarine being the diamond of all colors
 a glazing pigment out of lapis lazuli
 (background painted with dust and clay
 become a lively cornerstone, elect and precious)

  
 applied to the low prison cell, with pale
 moonlight through the barred grill
 over the old bruised boxer's skull
 as he wonders at the releasing angel

  
 obliged to use pure Naples yellow and
 vermilion for the lights upon the nailheads
 of the door (asphaltum from the Dead
 Sea region or American Bottomland)

  
 and directly below the cross in the lower
 left corner stands a dark vessel with
 shroud-like cloth – Bishop Berkeley's
 oily tar and water, or mercurial

  
 salamander vegetating in the fire (sulfur).
 It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.
 And a pale green shamrock gracefully
 resolves... into a little Indian red or

  
 vermilion and lake, deepened by black.
 You must have observed the difference in
 lustre between silks woven from different-
 colored threads... luce di dentro.  Mark

  
 how that heavy angel moves the stone door
 with downward cross laid over his shoulder.
 And he will walk into stone-shrouded Rome
 and bear – (lilied footpad, Troyes mummer).

      
                            4.20.2000

Reading Marguerite Yourcenar's The Abyss. By centering the story on Zeno, an alchemist with a single-minded scientific passion to know & to free himself, who delves into the hermetic secrets of the 4 elements within nature & his own body, Yourcenar gives very rich & vivid shape to a distant time (1500s Europe). The novel somewhat reflects Zeno's own fascination with the human microcosm, becoming a literary microcosm.

Funny how yesterday I was sidelining "hermeticism", since this novel reminded me (this morning) how important the alchemical-hermetic aspect is to the U.S. long poem. Both Paterson ("the giant, Paterson"; "a man = a city") & Maximus are structured largely as literary-alchemical transmutations (the epic questor becomes "Everyman", the image/bearer/creator of a cosmos). I've noticed before an odd thing about alchemical notions (the 4 elements, the transmutation of metals, etc.): once you take note of them in literature, they seem to crop up everywhere. I guess you may say that writing itself can be read alchemically.

Kenneth Warren, in his little mag House Organ, has published a serialized study of Charles Olson & Maximus ("The Emperor's New Code") which is steeped in alchemical-theosophical lore.

(However, let's be clear: alchemy, hermeticism, literary obscurity, trobar clus... these are not all the same thing. In other words I would still disagree with Ron S. when he suggests that a kind of secret writing for adepts represents authorial respect for the intelligence of the reader, or that trobar clus-like poetry is or will be the engine of literary change & advance. Yourcenar (or Nabokov, for another example, or Shakespeare) is a great writer because, among other things, she is master of a clear, precise, and capacious style - capable of absorbing and reflecting realities on many different levels.)