Ravenna Diagram Reading Guide #4

This be the next entry in Ravenna Diagram reading notes for Susan Brown.  Inquire here for more info....

R.D. READING NOTES #4

COLD SPRING (p.6)

Poem full of obscurities.  Stanzas 1 & 2 : we are back in northern MN winter landscape.  Raven/Ravenna.  Shakespeare’s “treble-dated crow” (Phoenix & Turtle) – which, according to legend,  engenders offspring by breathing – is flying back and forth.

“scrawny schemer.... Signature / of Cain-torn soil”  :  slight mingling of Biblical and Native American legends.  Raven, along with Bluejay, appears in some Trickster stories.

“something resolute... smoke-dispute” : a basic philosophical debate – what is Death?  What is Life?

“dissipating ghost-limb, drifting / wake” : allusion to parallels between 19th-cent. Ghost Dance movement and Christian doctrines of Resurrection

“morse code... remorse” : sound echo with Latin mors, death

“chancy chancery... So choose” : the actuality of death, its duel or chess game with life, motivates the moral conscience – what shall I choose to do, how shall I live, in the face of mortality?

“Only way / is up, replies the smoke” : affinity between ghost, or spirit, and smoke – the “morse code” of Native Am. smoke-signals (& peace pipes)

“raven-laughter (hoarse / sneers)” : the suggestion behind this poem’s folktale dialectic is of something beyond cynicism or fatalism

elephant burials

SOFT RIVERBEND

Snowflakes crystallize, unique

& elegant.  Mandala-

knots (of ice).  Then follow

the sun, like dew in a raven’s beak.

Into the rain, the river, Ocean.

Heart’s slow dilation.

Sunken beams of pain,

of petrified love... beyond reason.

Light tracks of salt, the tears

of trees.  Sacrament

of speechless element –

elephant burials.  Fallow years.

Inarticulate, dumbfounded soul.

The knowledge of the end

in each soft riverbend –

her fingerprint, on clay bowl.

Dreams gather, so.  The dream.

A curly wave of sheep

threading from the deep

time-meadows.  Trim trireme,

bearing a casket wrapped in fleece –

matrix of Paradise,

grail-caduceus

lifting each Jonah to release.

The air murmurs immortal Spring;

your friend is limping sweetly

by your side.  The tree

of Galilee is blossoming.

1.17.17

only Ophelia remained

AGATE LEVIATHAN

A little Hamlet, on remote planet

in Denmark, was troubled

with Mors – he stumbled

as against a stone, to understand it.

Pebbles flung from anxious Hell

pinged against his helmet;

a pearl-toothed kismet

glimmered from the poisoned well.

It was a union greatly to be wished.

Its whorl unfathomable

shone... like Luna in a fable,

agate Leviathan (unfished).

A curse enclosed it, like a shell;

a nightmare of the sea –

a beast called Jealousy

clutched, rang it like a bell

from bottomlands.  It was his grail.

The angry Minotaur

grunted through Knossos-tar

in the crusted mirror – you must fail.

Denmark was full of hardened criminals.

Only Ophelia remained

to pluck the sweet Beltane

of innocence (from sordid halls).

Hamlet stepped up, to meet his fate.

He smiled into the teeth

of Sheol – sensed beneath

basalt of gladness, past debate.

11.24.16