dimensions of Pacific promise

IRON ROOT

It’s possible we understand the common good,

since we are human beings

blessed with intellect, & feelings.

Might we live in the old neighborhood

again?  The narrow streets of Providence

for example – haunted by ghosts

of Roger Williams & his hosts

Canonicus & Miantonomi (his friends,

working out in late-night conferences

the immemorial foundations

of good government).  Nations

& peoples, grounded in the ancient senses

of those words (Pax, Libertas, Justitia)

sustained, beyond the bite

of Mammon (greed & spite)

into a vivid substance of reality –

dream-songe of every poet ever born.

Yea, Henry Acorn King

will of foundations sing,

laid deep before the civil wars began –

of Edw. Coke, bent over Magna Carta

(constitution of our civil rights

before the king, his knights,

were born); of Williams, apple of his eye

& visionary of our liberty

who felt the fiery seed

of conscience, freed

from all coercion, was the key

                  *

that opens up a box of keys –

the iron root of human

dignity (since we are one

with goodness only as we choose

to be).  & how distinct this innocence

from those manipulations

of the Mammonites, evasions

of sadistic Minotaurs!  The silence

of compassionate stars rebukes Caesar

& all his empires, murmurs

Hobo.  His abode blurs

river-mud with gravity (cold graveyard

avatar).  All density of stone

compacted into black hole

rings your somber footstool,

Everyman – refining stokehold of the sun!

& indistinguishable from hopeless hell

until the graceful whisper

of Columbia, your dove-sister,

thunders like lilting from a light-filled well –

like those Latrobes, who journeyed down to Delta

après shaping simple mansions

for America; or Hart’s dimensions

of Pacific promise… Ocean harmonies (selah).

So Hobo’s heart lingers (below the sweep

of salty galaxies, just off

the bridge).  His brooding strophe

coos from orange shadows… azure keep.

2.15.20

banquet at the end of time

PUSHKIN MOVE

The banquet at the end of time,

the invitation read –

the living & the dead

to celebrate.  This pantomime

of solemn feasting they perform

beneath cavernous timbers

(burnt resinous embers)

foreshadows that preternatural storm

of joy, tasting our expectation –

when Eli’s empty chair

so hopeful (floating there)

is overflowing with affection

once again.  As we well know,

observes bright Magdalen –

beseeching, in the garden,

gardener (raw moon of woe).

& what it all may mean for Hobo

Hank, lazing out

his salvation-boat

conundrum (Solipsism, ho!)...

Can it be can-do canoe?

If anyone thinks they

know anything (See

St. Paul!) they’re in Pig’s Eye

sez he.  My inconsequence

is like a Pushkin move;

chess is like love,

government... clear as Providence.

9.16.18

the family woodpecker

STEEP RAVINE

Quiet today along the river.

In the steep ravine, only

the Morse drum-talky

of the family Woodpecker

interrogates the oaks with hollow

query.  Where are you,

worm?  Job’s blue.

Ice-packed for the long, Nile-slow

Egyptian winter, thick with Pharaoh-

dolour, pyramidical –

ridiculous cyclical

suffering, encased in snow.

It’s not his fault, & he will tell you so.

O, if these canyons were

only in a book!  We’re

leaving – desiccated, delicate.  Don’t go.

The poet has her humors – she’s

devoted to them, wholly.

Lear’s wise Fool, she’ll

follow Boaz carrying the heaves

out loud, in sheaves.  The polis, too,

be uncobbled knowledge.  What

vaguely familial knot

of rivals, bickering horseshoe

favors for grubs, is this?

Not Man-Eat-Too-Much

or Minotaur – no, such

rapacity’s reserved for the abyss

                *

of Pole Star Netherworld (Étoile

du Nord).  Little Crow

stood there, y’know –

with the Red Wing clan, in a potted bowl

of leers.  Stood with the scapegoat

as a prophet should – charisma

whirling in the twister-eye

(magenta bronze, the serpent-calumet).

Who sees him sky-hole in this mess?

Light imperturbable

as Mississippi burble

through a transparent lamb-lattice –

the holeness of that holy garment

parti-colored Joseph wore,

shellacquered semaphore

way under limestone sediment

of painful jealousies & wounded hate.

Her singular vocation,

musing on desolation

til scarred earth-pangs abate –

bored by a dream of early days.

Canoe of Camelot,

Lake-Lady’s thunder-knot...

the old bare dance, woodpecker maze

of placid Oak-Gal Day – a writ of spring

(St. Vitus 1913

Paris Corn Maiden)

that joins Creation to Thanksgiving.

3.9.17

Still reading Perry Miller's Roger Williams. In tandem with this week's New Yorker article, about religious right's pressure on separation of church & state.

Roger would have had a lot to say about that. The aggressive proselytizing, which makes Christianity a cultural binding agent rather than a spiritual shriving & quest. A certain worldliness attaches itself to the million-dollar legal & ad-propaganda campaigns. (Then again, who in this world doesn't exude a certain worldliness? Not many.)

The absurd, tragicomic melodrama of relations between religious practices and the practices of society at large... Williams loved to use the "garden & wilderness" metaphor (the church is the garden, the wilderness is the world). This is a useful distinction, which goes back (you might say) even before Christ, to the rite of baptism - which is the sign of repentance, of turning from the ways of the world to the love of God, of recognizing oneself as a child of God before anything else.

There is always this temptation to impose one's landscape (the garden) on the world; to erase that difficult distinction; to create a kind of Christian-imperial fantasy-culture. Williams, on the other hand, loves to point out that the sign of the true Christian is the lamb : the persecuted, not the persecutor.

The power of rhetoric over free inquiry. The willingness to judge & condemn the opponent, the "enemy", in simplistic terms, ruthless castigations (practiced everywhere now, on every side, on every issue).

The first Roger Williams I knew about was the '60s pop musician. I played his fancy version of "Autumn Leaves" as a piano recital. (This was the sheet music:)

There's a sweetness & humanity in Williams' A Key Into the Language of America. The idea is to get people to learn Narragansett so they'll actually go be with them. & in the process discover the wild Indians are at least as kindly & "civilized" as, or more so than, the saintly English. & what that says about church government. See Perry Miller on this.

Williams, Blake, Yeats, Mandelstam.... scholars of the wheel of fire.

"Ye shall all be salted with fire. Salt is good; therefore have salt amongst yourselves, & be at peace with one another."

What does this mean, scholars?

According to Williams, throughout human history there was & will be only one true, real, authoritative social covenant established by God with Man, and that was through Moses; and that covenant was dissolved by the crucifixion & resurrection. [This, it should be understood, is not current standard Christian doctrine, which holds that the covenant has never been abrogated - but rather taken into a new dimension, a new step in the process of divine unfolding.]

Thus all human government - especially theocracy, perhaps - is error-prone, a blind muddling-along, & sometimes utter pretense, fraudulent. This from one credited with establishing the first civil state based on precepts of free speech & complete liberty of conscience.

(Then William Blackstone, ensconced with his moldy manuscripts on Study Hill, looks into his alchemical flask & asks... but how, in fact, was that 1st covenant established? Who laid the cornerstone behind Shakespeare's Head? Where is Atlantis, Hart Crane? The rest is silence.)