Steady as she goes

VERMILION FLEM

Late afternoon.  Light sound

of soprano bell, from bass

drone of freight train

over river-bridge.  Nothing profound

(just slightly wistful).  A poet keeps

time.  In the ear’s recess,

faint heartbeat-stress

marks passage of the sheep

over the dream-track.  Nothing more

nor less.  Down N’Orleans way

the Indians are gay

tonight, beaded with coronation Flor

del Rio del Espiritu Santo.  Amen

& hallelujah, hey-

ey-yo.  Let us pray

for the grain of wheat, the salty bran

of liberation (touch of soul,

Touchstone).  So dance

your way into the trance,

Hal Marie!  & remember, all –

tomorrow’s Lent (already).  The square

of ash upon your brow

a sailor’s salty vow

to steady as she goes (fair,

kind & true).  His hand waves from

the deep – he’s called Acorn.

He wears an English crown

of oakleaf (he’s Vermilion Flem).

2.9.16

Fontegaia rambles on.

20

 
On a straw-strewn Campo ring, beneath
the inching shadow of a clocktower,
horses and horsemen display their power -
hearts hoofpounding for a laurel wreath.

 
A snoozing hobo in the clocktower
rotating away from the hubbub below
forges a dream-rim out of molten snow.
Its iron heart will win the race this hour.

9

 
An iron bell (muffled by humidity)
sounds, distant.  Sailor understands
he's touched haven; not vagrant winds,
but lubber's arms, wring such solidity

 
from air.  Sound hangs suspended there
from metal flower (pendulous too,
titanic water-lily - amid blue
depths, beneath infinity).  Somewhere

 
nearby, Sailor Town lies nestled (rocked
beneath green hills).  Metropolis to him,
where locals scramble up a worsted scrim
of news - packetfuls of letters, interlocked,

 
a pillowy osier cage of breathless deeds
uncounted - then counted, recounted; tested,
tasted, registered, restated... ballasted
to earth (as only iron words can be).

 
Landed, they may not mark the miracle
performed - unfurling suddenly, mountain
erupting from sea to sunlight - when
a young green fiddlehead (tentacle

 
sprung free) arises from rusted urn
fractured by wayside.  Wobbly
Peg-leg canters trippingly
in hoarse euphoria; old adamant

 
stern planet (curdled) strands him firm.
There is a proverb in it for the wedding
banns; the word is perpetrated, steeled
with fortitude.  Waltz on, brave earthworm!

Listening to Jubilee on Mars, I was reminded of something I'd read about the cacaphony-harmony of Russian church bells, which reminded me of this section of >July (a kind of found poem):

 7

  
 Maybe it is the belfry   of the Church of the Nativity
 of the mother of God   but it is still cold as Hades
 60 feet up a corkscrew staircase   shoulders
 brush the cobbled walls   the stumbling ascent

  
 a blend of dirge, railroad-crossing clanger and
 shattering wine goblet   a disharmonious sweetness
 makes a beeline   what they create and give away
 no Muzak peal can duplicate   It is peace in the soul

  
 said Mr. Dorokhin, 29   cacaphonous and
 hypnotic   the miracle is that they ring at all
 its bells were carted off   the vacant building
 (gagged) became a holding pen   for circus lions

  
 When it's cold like this, it sounds better
 Russian bells are stationary   the ringer strikes
 them by pulling the tongue with a rope   carefully
 tuned, but   harmony is coincidental   a tree

  
 of iron   droning   like a cork   within ethereal
 and capering fire   or an upside-down Higgs
 particle   afloat in a cup   of gegenschein
 or a grain of faith   profound and whole

  
 lifted overhead into   far-off   rooftop watercolors
 and a basil swell   where the turbulence began
 where a spiral snakes   into interior nègre
 like a turnstone   wheeling   Hamlet's cradle

  
 of inward sin   simultaneously   out into a hamlet
 of fate   at the navel of a rippling   font of sound
 where his father's   agenbite incuse   nostos
 just   rest   spins the will   toward Elsinore

  
 a cue for the angel   troubling the water
 in a maze of circles   with a rod of iron
 for restitution at last   this diorite
 horizon of my clay   you   turn...

      
                              1.26.2000

A p.s. to previous note on "Green Constellation":

the "ecstatic Russian bells" should be seen in context of the many Russian topoi informing the entire Forth of July, which began (in the 1st chapter of Stubborn - "Shakespeare's Head" [a building in Providence]) with brief sketches echoing-mimicking Mandelstam's Voronezh poems. The "path P of the Pushkin-the-cat thread. . . the coccoon/butterfly metamorphoses, central in Nabokov & important in Brodsky. . . the "Letters to Elena". . . not to mention the whole number/dating system, so pervasive. . . (the numbers 28 & 29, dates 5/28 & 5/29. . .

the central book, Grassblade Light, is the most numerically orchestrated. . . each chapter of 28 poems (each containing 7 quatrains or 28 lines : 4/7, or 4th of July), with a central 29th. . . July (1st part) is made of of chapters containing 5 sections of 28 stanzas each. . .

5/28 : burial of Wm. Blackstone, 1st RI settler, the "man who went to live with Indians". . . 5/29 RI Statehood Day, HG/JFK b-day, date of fall of Constantinople, traditional seat of Orthodox Christendom (1453), date (in 1913) of debut performance of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring". Final chapter of Grassblade is titled "Rite of Spring" (in which "Henry" finally addresses "Juliet" plainly, directly).

(Please pardon semi-repetitions here, for those who've read archive from around January.)

Here's a bit from the coda volume, Blackstone's Day-Book : one among many which emphasizes the Rus-Mandelstam threads of the poem (one etymology for "Rus", Russia, is "rowers" - refering to the Vikings who governed the 1st Rus capital, Kiev). The poem refers to Mandelstam's short stark Voronezh poem which begins "Washing up in the winter courtyard" ("mandel" means "almond"):

     1


  
         We are coming to the end of Henry
 Navigator's long voyage, Elena –
 circling around an elephant ear (Abul
 Abaz, or Barnum's Jumbo) – see

  
         how everything grows simpler,
 more harsh, more true.  Still
 the well is always there (and will
 be) – like the man standing here

  
         beside it in the dark courtyard
 (strange blooming out-of-season
 almond branch).  A stone,
 a star, a well.  A cup of water

  
         from a rainbarrel (or Tartar
 wine).  A circling dragon-boat
 or scrap of origami writ
 folded to float so lightly. . . there.

  
         You fold Andromeda into a W,
 a mountain range back into M.
 You cup them in your palm
 to make a diamond, or double-

  
         diamond – cat's eyes, Pushkinian.
 Delicate Blue Morpho wings
 woven with microscopic strings
 of quipu thread (gentian-

  
         gentle, violet, and red).  A knit
 crossroad, then – red, white –
 streams into Cassiopeia's
 mother-night (at last).

     5.22.2000

Here's the "Russian bell" poem from July (incidentally, July was completed on March 5th, the anniversary of the death of both Anna Akhmatova & Stalin):

          7

  
         Maybe it is the belfry   of the Church of the Nativity
 of the mother of God   but it is still cold as Hades
 60 feet up a corkscrew staircase   shoulders
 brush the cobbled walls   the stumbling ascent

  
         a blend of dirge, railroad-crossing clanger and
 shattering wine goblet   a disharmonious sweetness
 makes a beeline   what they create and give away
 no Muzak peal can duplicate   It is peace in the soul

  
         said Mr. Dorokhin, 29   cacaphonous and
 hypnotic   the miracle is that they ring at all
 its bells were carted off   the vacant building
 (gagged) became a holding pen   for circus lions

  
         When it's cold like this, it sounds better
 Russian bells are stationary   the ringer strikes
 them by pulling the tongue with a rope   carefully
 tuned, but   harmony is coincidental   a tree

  
         of iron   droning   like a cork   within ethereal
 and capering fire   or an upside-down Higgs
 particle   afloat in a cup   of gegenschein
 or a grain of faith   profound and whole

  
         lifted overhead into   far-off   rooftop watercolors
 and a basil swell   where the turbulence began
 where a spiral snakes   into interior nègre
 like a turnstone   wheeling   Hamlet's cradle

  
         of inward sin   simultaneously   out into a hamlet
 of fate   at the navel of a rippling   font of sound
 where his father's   agenbite incuse   nostos
 just   rest   spins the will   toward Elsinore

  
         a cue for the angel   troubling the water
 in a maze of circles   with a rod of iron
 for restitution at last   this diorite
 horizon of my clay   you   turn. . .

     1.26.2000

More bing-bong from July:

         14

  
         A slow wheel turns   the law of the jade mountain
 the green J.D.   by the running mead   of the magna
 magma den   and life unwinds there   a gnomon
 month   diploid palimpsest   from ghetto time

  
         and the shield of d-d-d-domination   the doom
 of a damnation of the Ides   of many marches
 a bronze moonship   your deep   deeper   charm
 your debt   a gravid planet's   clayful mood

  
         (the slow boat moving   up the river
 a pair of calipers   in a feral light
 when   five times twelve   tolled
 over a shield)   is numb and veritable

  
         felix fate   from March Ides   to midway
 cruelfact   De qué tronco, el florido
 carpintero!  De qué perfecta axila, el fragil
 remo!   Into the maw   of an old idea

  
         the green spine of the jade that penetrates
 scything   (a Scythian)   through the fat
 of   every seedy masquerade   the stiff ice
 in the cup of masses   stirred by the departure

  
         of the mast   green cape pivoting
 in a punt   a cap mossed-over   a
 Lincolnshire summer's deceased
 footbell's footfall   furball's pnpt

  
         stirs through leaven 60 loaves
 stern to magnetic core's oaken
 coracle   breakthrough   kernel
 of frozen kelson   ice   D-selves

  
         to repay the whole burden of the debt
 government of shadowy quintessence
 weight of one green little one   ascent
 of myrrh and pennyroyal   Jubilato D

       
                                                  2.15.2000