Ides of July

MARBLE TOY

On this defunct St. Emperor Henry’s Day

the cavaliers of Christ broke down the walls

massacred the cityfolk, & found

the Holy Sepulchre.  & it was empty.

His midget kingdom was a bit of ground

6 ft. x 6.  Beneath Jo’s linen palls

that Body slept, 3 nights… then slipped away.

So Earth corrals the sun again (at mid-July).

Old Henry rotates his lugubrious clay

like cenotaph, or marble toy.  Through hells

of blinded crowds – mesmeric crown

for snobbish mobs, heartless autocracy –

deracinated tribes, bent for destruction.

So humankind spins round its Book of Kells

by fiddlehead bronze… on heaven’s way.

                                                          7.15.20

the clay wheel of America

HARLORN NINT

The tiny Russian church on Franklin Avenue

like an Easter toy box

– St. Pantaleimon – is

slowly, slowly, expanding in size (cinnamon-blue

eggshell transept… more light from East).

& this is Sirin-Nabokov’s birthday;

my mother’s interest led me

to find him too; Pnin, Pale Fire, a kind of yeast

for hilarious risings into Harlorn Nint

(you sense what he meant).  &

never mind, supercilious gent,

that I myself am bumptious Pantaloon –

(hint, hint).  Her ocarina loon-call

from Petersburg bridge

stays here, with me; the edge

has never left my raven-knife; Hope’s all.

We saw the Pantaleon window, painting light

across the massive maze

at Chartres.  He was

a Nicomedian healer-martyr, “all-compassionate”;

the tromping Emperor (sick Pantalone

himself) despised his expertise.

Some judgement-grave (not nice)

whorls in a spiral from Big Muddy Zone;

the clay wheel of America is heavy

as concrete.  I set my seal

across him swamp-gray dollar bill –

the eye of Providence over the levy

*

dealt by Pharaoh.  Each eye shall be

flooded with Cairo salt

when Black Elk’s figure 8

echoes (6 ways) Ravenna’s quay Rhody.

& then the Isis-eye of that palm-print

curls into acorn coracle…

green glint of dovecote-oracle

(Ionian emerald, honey-gold & mint)

when two wheels meld in one almond

& a blood-red waxen overlay

(the shattering of JFK)

molts Newport ships to ancient Trebizond.

I set my seal there, in a double ring

where the canoe binds equilibria

– Gateway curving to Cahokia

& up & down, from Delta to the spring.

It is a Janus-face – past & future

reconciled there, pain

& hope.  Because the vin

et pain of his free-will suture

like that flint beak of Mandelstam, reaching

into the wound, to heal

will reconcile Love & the Real

with a Redemption already achieved (teaching

of Cullmann, as in Pushkin & Scriabin).

& so the grail-stone of the eucharist

whence the 4 Eden-streams will burst

marks twain upon our Mississippi spin.

4.22.20

on the North Shore of the North Star state

SOFT KISS

Not far from Berryman’s Witch’s Hat

in Prospect Park, off Arthur Ave

Henry beholds spring showers lave

his plague-burnt Vale of Josaphat

(in Minneapolis).  It is a hard Lent

& shrunken plain to see –

April trundling mournfully

to graveyards.  Brash head bent,

hobo Henry Hal recounts his crimes

(near Purgatory Chasm,

in Newport).  Hopes a chrism

helps redeem his own end times

along Humility Way – the icy treason

of a lodestone heart.

His mother’s art

pierces also, beyond reason –

those 4 unsoldered quarters of clay tile

where Henry & Francesca swim

below a swirling rim

of Gooseberry Falls (old Ravlin file)

in the blithe innocence of marriage

unbetrayed… unmade,

not yet.  Like Longfellow glade,

or negative of Dante’s personal stage

(Circle of Lust) the two of us

will splash, forever smiling

in that riverine, beguiling

clay lost Paradise of faithfulness

                   *

& O the hubris of Superior Prince Hal!

To think he’d play the alpha male

to Berryman, beyond the pale –

snow-bent J. Beerust, in his dream-corral!

My clay ticks slowly on its glitter-wheel

toward kiln of Judgement Day.

But you might take another way,

Kidron – follow the foamy V of keel

into that Ocean River of the galaxies;

gaze up into the Royal Arch

where smile-canoe arcs

over candescent happiness... frees

hearts & souls into the wholeness

they were meant to seize!

That Charity of charities,

that source of every brimming goodness...

the grace of Miriam-consent (to give)...

true North Star of the Sea!

Friend Berryman would be

beside me here, in this infinitive

to live – an evergreen, emerald

eternity of growth –

an exponential for a moth

(or butterfly) to find – New World

born from the Old, as wings from chrysalis

when Spirit strokes like Thunder

through clay rings… & under

your rose aye of Providence (soft kiss).

3.25.20

where the spring is found

ROBIN HUM

This plaintive spring, like a lonesome robin

piping his distance at the riverbank.

Out of The Tender Land, I think.

The vast bronze river is one serpentine

vibration.  A continental vernal sign,

stretching with catenary smiles

from Lake Itasca to the marshy isles

off New Orleans.  & Hobo sez – all mine.

Dotted with gravity of local bridges,

1132 miles (up & down).

Their almond arcs a pontoon

cascade… cavernous vector of ledges…

climbing toward a flimsiest first whorl

of fiddlehead crowns

at the source of sounds –

where the spring is found.  All shall be well

& all manner of thing shall be well

when the blazing rose shall dwell

at the matrix of clay wheel,

& Thunderbird boom his bronze bell.

& the cry of the mighty bird & the sigh

of the river sound one octave :

unison, played in the key of Love.

For though I sing like angels & men… & though I

have all knowledge – all prophetic wisdom

of stars & planets, capitals

& kings – yet I have not caritas…

I am but sounding brass.  Hear Robin hum.

3.19.20

print on linen by Grace Tagliabue & Phoebe Gould

they were playing Benjamin Britten

LEAF-MURMUR

In the peace & quiet of her little room

with cactus & late poinsettia

on the sill, she’s growing quieter

herself, just one step from the tomb.

They were playing Benjamin Britten

on the radio, his Moonlight

from Sea Interludes.  Slow

breathing, like tides come in;

the pulse of one high cresting wave;

flute-shrieks of gulls.

Her strong deep swells…

receding now.  She curls concave

into her wheelchair, brave head bowed

(the pride of life, brought low).

Her potter’s wheel, slow

spinning, rounds her own clay into cloud

as in the Garden of Gesthemane

all-powerful God

knelt to his own rough mud

fleshing star-fire to flinty harmony.

The wheel of life, how she runs down

at last!  This shadow of herself

feigns sleep, feigns prayer.  Only

the fleeting elfin smile remains her own.

Stalin, Akhmatova… terror & grace,

beauty & ugliness meet

in the grave.  A life’s complete

that hears leaf-murmur through a face.

3.5.20

oak-leaf plate by Mary R. Gould

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

for Dina Tagliabue

SUNNY SISTER

                                 for Dina Tagliabue

I never made it to the Mimbres Ranch,

Dina – though Alex & Phoebe did,

& brother Jim did, too – up

in them hardscrabble cactus hills, with a bunch

of hippies.  You chugged out there back when

in your VW bus, dragging along

stray hitches from Michigan –

getting the farm going, the pottery kiln...

Bob was there early, I guess, plying

the seasonal pickers’ fields

& his carpentry (& sprout yields

from the bathtub hydroponic mung-bean

enterprises).  Early & late he was –

composting with you to Sicily,

your garlic plot of earthy

transplants (care of kind Erica, & Grace).

It wasn’t my life, it was yours –

tied close to soil

by musing love-wrung toil

until this planet glazes bronze, & grows...

your joy, your blazing smile, Dina!

You were the sunny sister

to my moon’s iris – her

Inca-mauve Sheep’s Clothing (Francesca);

& now I see you foot the potter’s wheel

& knead your human clay

into a memory of joy...

molding earth to sunlight, in a laughing reel.

1.26.20