the legend of Guillem d'Orange

CALM EQUILIBRIUM

The frail forsythia across the drive

is leafing now, sweet

milky gold.  Is life complete,

somewhere – some honeysuckle beehive?

The legend of Guillem d’Orange

seeped into the chansons.

Found its way to Stalin’s

cantons – Osip took an interest (étrange

poète – tel joie de vivre!).  Guillem’s

a distant relative, by way

of Negus ancestry –

West Branch an Ethiopia of idioms

& Quaker scattergood.  Small world

of planetary matrices…

– a world Guillem renounces

(adieu, Charlemagne) for cloistered

Provençal sea-cave.  Knight becomes

monk.  & shall Earth rest,

also? – quaint Jubilee bequest

someone foresaw, 3000 years ago?  Sums

multiply… an exponential calculus

bending toward vertigo.  Yet

Osip & Oscar Cullmann know

an elegant solution to the cul-de-sac (us

vs. Rus… general apocalypse).

The restoration in his Name

returns the Other to the Same –

after a darkened Holy Week’s eclipse

                     *

the Wolf shall lie down with the Lamb

& whom Jerusalem encrypts

shall meet Sophie – who skips

from sepulcher to Ghent (near Amsterdam)

to gaze from candid sheepish eyes

into the crippled stadium

(where waves of human tedium

crash against hate-riddled walls)… & rise!

I see that other monk, Franciscan-

Neapolitan Joachim – his spare

horsehair, daubing seraphim

& golden Thunderbird (tall plummet-plan).

Third Aeon of the Holy Ghost,

gyring… with restoration

in her wings.  A gravitation

from the grave – gift become host;

33 years of absolute devotion

(1099-1132)

framed by crane-bone flute

& Marsden’s Melville-crucifixion.

You wonder at my curious forgotten lore.

It isn’t hard to find.

Her golden fleece, refined

by fire, still shines from everywhere;

sheep in witch hazel, murmur-dove,

pearl beyond price… she is

forsythia of everlastingness –

calm equilibrium of Pax (justice & love).

4.8.20

Yellow-gold forsythia

TWO CIRCLES

Down by the spring river, tossing sticks

in prehistoric Mizz,

my Jordan – little Isis-

canoes, or Ferrarese six-

wheelers; in my mind’s darkroom

recalling you – Love’s raven-

haired sybil (guardian

at the Rock’s entrance).  Your gloom

when my father’s birthday wheeled around

each April.  The yellow-gold

forsythia enfold

your mother’s grave, who died... O sound

those flowery depths, Ophelia –

and rise again!  He was

a good man – rays

of intellectual Amor blessed his day;

he might have walked her from that grave.

A little light only,

through camera oscura...

you know.  You showed me her cave

in San Francisco’s spare kitchen –

where a thin light-blade

infiltrates the Maid

so Piero’s hypno-sarabande might spin

anew (red cedar, blue spruce, evergreen).

Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait with

Two Circles... one light-heavy scythe

defines this wheel’s circumference (unseen).

4.12.16