oracles from the Henry Couch

LOVE NEIGHBOR

While the planet bakes, heats up

like the moon... Henry,

like Winnie the Puer

Aeternus, idly rotates his kaleidoscope

full of little bits of brass cymbal.

Hibernal, he turns

this way & that; his urn’s

an ointment jar from Mary Magdala

full of tiny frozen stars of royal

palm oil.  His screech-owl

habitat’s a cypress bole,

an Erica-tree (washed up by Nile).

Osiris is a long brown river

searching for the sea.

A muddy throne for Henry,

couched like round-headed Cavalier

in the living room of an argot Argosy.

Whose vessel wavers

on the waves, & shivers

when the keel spokes (glossy Lady) –

a buoyant kind of synagogue-canoe

or pileated coracle –

high honeycomb cenacle,

multiocular almond (with ox-eye prow).

The Golden Fleece dangled in Providence

like a unicorn in a cloister;

in Sheep’s Clothing (her

murmur nest) Francesca wove the dense

                     *

gold poncho for young Dionysus

out of San Francisco.

Light moves now

through the window, Theseus;

Ariadne is a widow, & young Helle

sleeps with the shellfish

south of Phrixos (Frisco);

all shall be well, & all thing shall

be well, &... who shall lift up

the great acorn of light?

Not Henry, with all his might –

but Grace (who bears the Bear-man cup).

That donkey-man of Apuleius,

cousin to St. Francis,

steered the figurehead of Isis

to the throne of Henry’s soul-crisis.

Pressure from the Left to dispossess

the thriving bourgeoisie

leads (see 20th century)

to misery.  Children, beware forgetfulness!

Pressure from the Right to still maintain

luxurious plutocracy

leads (see 21st century)

to misery.  Children, beware unrighteousness!

Old Coke & his disciple, Williams

joined ancient lawful right

with each & all – O passionate

recognition!  Love neighbor, & be happy clams!

1.25.19

inside the coracle

UNBENDING PINE

You hear the rustle of a spring

in the moss forest;

in the immaculate nest

inside the coracle.  Outside, nothing.

Milton tutored Williams in Italian;

Roger taught John a mite

of basic Narragansett

collecting firewood around London

to banish winter at the poorhouse.

Here in January ice

beside the river, ICE

is on my mind.  The Emperor’s

in league with Herod, every infant

trembles for her life;

Virgo is mummified by strife;

grieving, she murmurs her dissent

from frozen exile on external heights.

Meanwhile sweet Providence

searches for evidence

& Lincoln coins... irrevocable rights.

Your imago, moss copper-serpentine

(between Son of Man

& some unbending pine

of immeasurable heaven) is Washington

redeemed, again; your Virgo (hovering

ethereal triangle

o’er Spotsylvania) might mingle

with Virginia clay... Jonah, recovering.

1.18.19

when morning stars sang all together

ROSE QUARTZ

                  

The delicate crystallographer

chipped at rose quartz

in a mica mirror.  What’s

wrong with the signal?  Fuzzier,

now, out of Nazireth.  We’re

missing the calendar,

oh hazy November –

have to find a new atmosphere.

Hobo (along jungle river)

envied that lofty poet

on the hilltop.  What

brings you here, Indian-giver?

The Song of Minnehaha (Henry

Wordfish Lungfellow);

light black-&-yellow

swallowtail (aye, amen, Re).

In Happy Hunting Ground,

HHG.  Your twin

brother – like the sun

breaking through Narragansett Sound –

when morning stars sang all together,

hearty & brave (children

from incandescent freedom-

sun).  Under the tender tether

of ineffable Intellect   O

lambent   star (Grace

Ravlin   Falcon-Ace)

with Notre Dame   at zero-

                 *

hour.  Your brother is a simple

carpenter, Hobo.  He

studied Victimography

with Cyber-Ciphering, & Ample

Anthropology (Social Jeering) –

yet loved that golden

bubble (in the cauldron

of the level) more than anything.

Because the sense of being right

flows like a burbling

stream – wondering

into verbal dirigible... bright

speaking thundercloud... imaginary

friend of Liberty

(Decembrist charity –

Crimean exile, Pushkin-boy).

The government of Liberty

is of consent, not force;

our kingdom of remorse

enfolds Redemption at its source.  See,

child?  We have outlived the Minotaur;

Ariadne’s simple thread

leads to your kindred

by the glowing gemstone samovar

of hearthblaze – everlasting joy

warm crystalline kingdom

rose-violet   freedom

smokehole to Wakan Tanka   in the sky

11.25.18

autumn in my heart

SWEAT EQUITY

Like falling from a winter bridge

in Minneapolis.

Absolute zero-ness.

11.32 ft/sec (straight-edge

it, carpenter).  A little life-saver –

gold bubble of air

in the wooden measure,

Chris (dolphin fin-waver).

The little tree, the little almond

eye of Providence.  A

sort of weathered prudence

from rough planks – sweat-bond

of every laborer in vineyard

or in field – Georgia

footprint, selah

in every cemetery, bard.

Like this confusion of nature

circulating good will.

Invasive humble

habitat, Roma imprimatur...

signature of spiral J

(Ojo de Dios,

owl o’Sophia)

out of the oak-knot, honeybee.

Lightning furnishes the room.

So fall into my heart,

Julie (where start

the roses on their river-loam).

11.24.18

after looking at Joan Mitchell paintings

SIMPLE BUBBLE

The battle for the blank white page.

To start anew, Joan.

Pale-bright field of corn

shaded by grey to black paint.  Rage?

Minnesota summer wheat

outside New Ulm.

Bohemian hum

of Anton Gàg?  Felt like defeat

for everyone.  Hungry Dakotas,

heimlich Bavarians...

local George Washingtons

banked on cheap lots (take theirs).

Everybody trying to shill Big George

back in redcoat London.

Not to be outdone,

Tidewater gents – that’s our land, by George!

Learn some Narragansett, maybe.

Milton did – from Roger,

one hot frozen winter.

To love, not to betray, your neighbor?

Somebody tell me how to get from here

to there, America.

Too used to being honcho

number one?  Come to shore;

wash in water.  À bas.  Restore.

The level’s golden measure,

simple bubble of air...

sea’s middle C, beyond all war.

10.13.18

O day-song of a day

MINUSCULE EDIFICE

Some ancient Oklahoma sage

knows life as integral

& whole.  A round corral

of circle dance (light wind on stage).

One heartbeat, straight from Manitou.

John in the river, calling

each to prayer, & fasting –

washing clean (life to renew).

The little red plastic lawn chair

Sophie uses catches

the sun.  Minuscule edifice

subject to ridicule, she will suffer

small kids to be comfortable here.

Her persecuted refugee

will be your judge someday –

the heart of old Bluejay casts out fear.

Some perfect day in June, she’ll come

for you...  Shine, raving dove

from Resurrection grave!

She’ll ask what you have done, she’ll sum

you up.  And it’s not too late

(amid these arcs of oak

& pine) to add your spoke

to the wheel of penetrating light –

to hear Natasha’s whispered promise

in the ear of Mandelstam

& join the rapture of a psalm

clasped in her kiss within a kiss.

6.13.18

limestone eyelid

TEXAS HERON

The smoking poilu, in his pink turban

like a blasted basilica

bent over Ravenna

marshland.  Many thousand gone.

His ferrous requiem for Texas heron –

wings on migration,

Zion to destination

unknown (indifferent shotgun).

A ghost dance of repetitive waves.

Arthur in Otranto,

Geo in Ferrara...

Micòl & Black Elk (lead-gray graves

in crowds).  A quiet cemetery

full of new-mown grass.

They Shall Not Pass.

Heaven & earth... won’t fade away.

The Magdala Stone... hasn’t figured

yet.  Her equilibrium

of magnanimity (come,

stay!) – like rain over the weird

Mammon of idle selfishness...

a motive for release.

She’s coming, Orpheus –

returning, Willy – rose of Inverness

or little almond tree – Mary

shedding lambent grace

or Jenny Falcon-Ace –

Love’s fiery knot (bright quipu-tree).

4.25.18

quiet end of the year

LOVE’S CAVERN

At the quiet end of the year,

among the barn smells

a chilly infant wails –

a refugee.  Shepherds draw near.

He is king.  His mother is

queen.  His father is

a mule-driver (was,

anyway) – Vietnamese,

I think?  They live in Egypt now.

They’ve never seen Ghiberti’s

Gates of Paradise –

that brazen lava overflow

to metamorphoses of fiery dream

and rock – sedimentary,

igneous, flickery...

roiling sun to spring, upstream;

they’ve never been to Providence

or heard the Rose Ensemble

whose violas tremble

with harmonious transience...

they live the poverty of innocence.

Light flickers in a manger.

Someone senses danger –

cows murmur, chickens grow tense...

enormous shadows of the monster-men

leer over flesh & blood.

It is the shadow of the rude

star burning in the last heaven

                  *

– the red star, bringing rectitude

out of the mild mien

of that child-man –

incarnate stony magnitude

heavy past sullen measurements

of every swollen tinpot

despot in his chariot.

Matrix of cosmic elements –

the figure of a man emerges,

burning in brazen tongs

and glossolalia of tongues

from every tribe.  Sea surges

multitudinous, incarnadine...

Ocean called universe

forging one verse

with arches (catenary, almondine).

So combers crested in a tower –

moonbright Witch’s Hat

tenting her desolate

oak-limbs (snowy owl’s bower).

Quetzalcoatl, brazen serpent,

lift each refugee of time

into your feathered rhyme

of flame.  Your flicker-tongue, sent

dancing into each soul’s paradigm –

the sparkling river, bent

back to its fundament;

Love’s cavern, salting every lime.

12.23.17

in memoriam Liu Xiaobo

SAND-CASTLE

                                                i.m. Liu Xiaobo

The workmen are building a great new wall

beside my octagonal turtle-

hermitage – where Sophie’s little

ruddy chair sits patiently, for one & all.

Another chair remained in Stockholm,

waiting for a noble prince

to win his prize of Peace.

His prize is won.  He’s going home.

He held his vigil by Heavenly Gate.

Hatred can rot a person’s

wisdom & conscience,

enemy mentality poison the spirit

of a nation, inflict brutal life & death

struggles, destroy a country’s

tolerance, humanity...

They want to bury him deep in the earth

yet verily I say to you, unless

a grain of wheat falls

into earth & dies,

it remains alone – but if it dies

it bears much fruit.  I remember

the orange Chinese lantern

peeking its bright octagon

out of green shade.  Welcome glimmer

with hidden crimson berry – lamp

of mountain sheepherder

marked by the torture

cell like turtleshell (or scarab stamp)

                *

only to grope toward pine-green Liberty.

My beetle’s modest haruspex,

the ideogram for pontifex,

key row-your-boat for Vera City –

check the N-trail labyrinth.

This liver between Earth

& Sky was micro-moth

or Maximus (locked up til 44th

of July, by Bureau of Injustice).

His wounded knee, his tender

foot, his gentle mind were

furrowed brow, for cultivating scholars...

Thrones are made for serial tumblers.

You can demote King Tubby Lou,

kill Voodoo Queen Marie – so

what?  Arrestocrats come back in numbers

juggling for electric chairs.  Polly

Pound says so, the mystical

Apologist of Tyranny; she’ll

sow you Uncle Ez’s grapes – see

how they make great yappy whine!

(& his chinoise Confusion

still bakes a mean Rune

Cake.)  He not the Way, sez Hen.

The blot thickens.  Blue Emperor Mon-Ki,

with his twin princelings, Rude May-Hem

& Gilt Moon-Eye... descended from

Lord Me-Man, Minotaur of Die-Nasty...

                *

[sludge on the honey-scroll, I guess]

We circulate by arrow-

glance, the human sorrow

of disharmony (each creepy-eepy instance);

only the gentleness of Manitou

the windy sheep-liver

& fleet   lamb-giver

who stands   magnanimous & true

blue cedar (melodious   rainbow

of royal   Reality)

is King.  So let her be.

Your soul, sealed so, dear Liu Xiaobo –

your spouse, waiting by prison-house,

will flex her wings, & spread

your word – rise from the dead;

her torch (inalienable human justice)

shines from copper harbors & green hills;

over harm & over hate,

ever-flowing   light on light

descends   like turtledove   on twisted wills

to straighten ways   streams merging

into concord   toward the sea

Ocean of Charter 8   mercy

& fellowship   in gratitude   Thanksgiving

Day   after the battlefields are still

& Liberty beams   far & wide

her smile   across the tide

& turmoil of the mind’s   sand-castle jail

7.14.17

Rhode Island was purchased by love

RAVENNA PLAYTHING

The last of the autumn thunderstorms

crashes through town,

hail & sleet coming down.

Quick whitecaps fleck the enormous

imperturbable Mississippi flood.

Bridge-work almost done,

the sturdy crane-&-pylon

men climb the sweat-&-blood

iron stairs up to the ridge

just one more time.

Labor is no crime –

titanic force poured to the edge

so that a featherweight robin redbreast

might perch atop a flange

of international orange

and warble good, better, best

into her indigo infinity.

Good will is balance, justice,

equanimity.  Who is

the man untouched by vanity,

cupidity?  I will hold him close

in my heart’s treasury,

for he alone is free.

Not price nor money could have purchased

Rhode Island; Rhode Island was purchased

by love.  Understand, Sophie,

this ocean mystery

of your first scallop-skipping space –

                   *

the star of Rhodos-Liberty

crowned with a ring of palms

sealed with a steady calm

handshake – confirming equity.

Guide of young Roger, ancient

Canonicus – father

& son : the grace to weather

every gale of greed, any fraudulent

unknotting of their pact of peace.

They step like lambkin twins

from a kayak circumference,

an almond eye, figuring Providence;

the planetary hearth of promise

knife-beaked Raven spied

beneath his southwest glide –

Cautantowwit to cedar wilderness

like monarch checkmating to Mexico.

Primordial Ragnarok

& other nightmares lock

the curse into a seeming cul-de-sac – so

your peace which passeth understanding

like a limping child’s sun-

yellow gyroscope, must turn

upright again – Ravenna plaything,

gather us into the river dance

drowning Man’s arrogance –

evergreen presences

surfing Ocean Stream (taut spring romance).

11.28.16

bronze mood of river

MAGNANIMOUS WING

The crickets’ eerie premonition.

The bronze mood of snaking

river, mirrored in

cottonwood’s heart-shaped fallen

shield.  Identity’s an equal sign

in autumn – twin banks

the Mississippi makes

to fringe the tender almonds of a span

darken toward evening, of a year.

That wavy, sooty smudge

afloat below the bridge

no raven now, but King-bird, here –

old Balder Will, majestic, serene

sailing with the wind

downstream.  You’ll find

his imago, dispersed, unseen –

scattered in brown eddies, copper jags...

the soft green lichen

of anonymous kin-

folk.  King Who-He-Who-She brags

like Pharaoh, but it’s all a masque –

autumnal Shakespeare,

smiling through the year-

dregs... tears toward Phoenix-Pasque.

Chaste vision is an equal sign.

Justice like rain – drifting

magnanimous wing

from Cosmosphere, where all things shine.

9.21.16

bald eagle in flight, reflected below bridge

like a walnut brain

SKIN-SWIRL

Wide lonesome chord of milk-train horn

across an Osage plain.

Lilac & star, American

crowd... shy bird calling the not-yet-born.

The microcosm of a Maximus

is like a walnut

brained by teeth.  That

worn brown face, in Omaha bus

lounge, spoke quietly.  “I am Dakota.

I’m a man.”  The poem

lifts a sign toward home,

that’s all.  The sum of Ariadne-

maze, malevolent eye of Minotaur

is in the skin-swirl

of your fingerprint.  Roll

back into the vault then, sailor –

shed each blow of monster violence

until you find the mild

eye of the typhoon-child –

immaculate origin of Providence.

I see her hero stepping through the gate

of stone, one hand held out

on a wave of love.  Light

scout, scouring the root of hate –

defanging that lamprey of predatory

malice, hostile cruelty –

injustice clamped on history.

With Coke & Blackstone whispers : Now be free.

6.28.16

India Point, Providence

Henry the Activist (ret.)

Now & then I seem to get pigeonholed in poetryland as a (political, poetickal) conservative (if not Neo-Neanderthal Reactionary). So some might be surprised to learn that I come out of a vocational background in (the Republican-vilified) community organizing.

Yes, while other young 20-somethings were getting their MFAs & Phds., I was out there in the grungy streets & asbestos-flaking factory bldgs. of little old Providence, being a VISTA volunteer (5 years+). I specialized in grassroots legislative training - working with neighborhood organizations with lobbying at the RI State House. We published an annual detailed review of the (often execrable) doings up in the big white marble dome. & other things, too - fundraising, organizing. Food coops & community gardens, wholesale produce collectives. Mass meetings, street theater. We held a mass meeting in a hockey stadium with the RI congressional delegation, running up to the Reagan election. Many many many long late nights in smoke-filled rooms, with the 70s crop of Saul Alinsky-inspired activists. Many actions on the defense budget, Reaganomics, housing, etc. & so on...

This is some of my background. My life comes in distinct layers of re-fashioning (maybe too distinct). Actually I think my skepticism about some of the doctrinaire-enthusiastic blendings of poetry & ideology in contemporary poetry, stem not so much from any "conservative" allegiance to tradition, but from my everyday very hands-on experience with something Alinsky focused on : the differences between theory & practice. We went through many scenes, melodramas & turf wars between "radicals" of various left-wing clans & stripes; the neighborhood organizing movement itself grew out of a disillusionment with 60s New Left abstractions.

Of course, I haven't hesitated to drone on with my own theories & doctrines about poetry (physician heal thyself)... nevertheless one of the things that has consistently bothered me, through the 90s & up to now, is the scheming & bloviating about political styles in poetry. What you learn in practical politics is something about the difference between words & deeds : about the limits of "windy discoursing". This background, combined with the fact that I'm from the understated & stoic Midwest, might have more to do with my attitude than any commitment to "traditional styles" in poetry (though there's that, too, I guess).

To repeat : my life fractures into distinct layers. Perhaps also I've simply devolved, grown more conservative with age (a familiar ailment). I'd like to recover some remnant of my intense civic enthusiasm & engagement of those ancient days. Ah, yout'! But "youthful idealism" is something real (though often aligned also with youthful naivete, arrogance). The sense of community is a spiritual sense. The populist demand for justice comes from a (maybe inborn, innate) sense of fairness & humanity - the "ceremony of innocence" which suffers outrage after outrage over time - until the old man sinks into indifference, discouragement, anomie, & despair - all those spiritual blockages which confine Aristotle's virtue (man the political animal) & Dante's spiritual joy (man the animale compagnevole). What is poetry, Mandelstam was asked. "The poet's sense of being right," he answered. & he died for it : with the writing of one 10-line "political poem".

In a lifelong effort to reconcile Greek philosophy & Christianity (Hellenism & Hebraism), Simone Weil had a lot of deep things to say about the relation between beauty and justice. See her writings on suffering, mediation, geometry...

"Fair" : an old word that bridges the realms of aesthetics and jurisprudence.

Beauty & justice : brother & sister.

I'm probably losing people with the murkiness of these last 2 entries (#14 and 15). & my explications don't explick much, either. But #15 is sort of an allegorical sketch or illustration of some underlying elements of #14.

The argument is, to put it very sketchily, that relationship & mutuality are substantial, fundamental, inescapable aspects of existence, reality, however you want to put it. There is the saying of Heraclitus, something to the effect of "living each other's death, dying each other's life." & this mutuality - this reciprocity - has consequences for the way we use language. All kinds of covenants and verbal bonds are examples of situations in which we must come to terms in order to live together.

The example in poem #15 of "drawing straws" in order to choose an individual to bear a certain inescapable burden is just a sketch of one such (implied) situation.

In other words, the world is not simply our (philosophical) oyster, an object made to order for our contemplation. Or, anyway, perhaps it's not only that. We are engaged in an ethical conversation, in which the shared burdens of life are under negotiation and tested - & we are tested, as part of this process.

It's a question of - what is justice?

Just rambling...

When I, hopefully, get to the end of this part of Rest Note (#19), I will add #11-19 to the others over at Alephoebooks. & maybe by the time I get to the Read-Along for these latter sections, some of this will make more sense. & meanwhile, maybe some people are becoming more attuned to my lingo, & can interpret for themselves.

Op-ed piece by columnist David Brooks in NY Times today, about study of differing child-rearing habits of rich & poor. In the Moynihan style, I guess.

American culture needs to counterbalance bourgeois competitive materialism with an awareness of the common good. Not that competitive materialism & striving are necessarily bad. Not at all. I admire strivers (I just hate those big SUVs). But we need that equilibrium. Civic values, the humane values of civic society - charity & good deeds & justice & equal opportunity & human rights. Not patronizing : empowering. "Let justice pour down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

This is where the arts come in. La Republique. Liberte, Egalite, Sororite, Fraternite.

*

I'd sure like to go to the AWP Fest, but I gotta stay here & take care of the poetry store.

Catherine Drinker Bowen recounts the story Edward Coke told at the ceremony of his investiture as judge in 1606. From the conclusion:

"The young man... accepted the judgeship. But he told no one, and, pretending that he was about to leave the country, invited his friends to a farewell banquet. 'It is true,' he told the assembled company, 'that I purpose, as I must, to take leave of you all and to be a stranger to my dearest friends and nearest allies. Thus must I depart from you and yet continue amongst you. For I am appointed to be a judge, and in the seat of Justice I must forget the remembrance of your former friendships and acquaintance. In the person of a judge, with respect to keep my conscience clear, I must with equity and uprightness administer justice unto you all.'
'And this,' finished Coke, looking out upon his own dear friends and kinsfolk assembled in Norfolk's venerable Castle of Blancheflower, 'this is my cause also! For by the love and favor of my gracious master, King James, I am, sine precatione, vel precatio... - without price or request - freely called unto this great office and sent to be a judge amongst my kinsfolk and familiar friends, even in the bosom of my native country. I must therefore, as the young Roman did, take leave of all former acquaintance, and do that which is just unto all estates and degrees, without partiality.'"

["If justice in her equal course were stopped - Coke went on, pointing his moral - it was the poor who would be drowned and overwhelmed, 'whilst great and wealthy men, like hills and mountains, build their stations sure. Justice withheld, only the poorer sort are those who smart.'"]

- The Lion and the Throne, pp. 247-248

*

The artist is devoted to the Art as such, the good poet is devoted to the Word as such, just as the good judge is devoted to the Law and the Law alone. (Note the process of estrangement/duty/reconcilement illustrated here.)

a little more from My Siena :

10

                         The Lord hath created a new thing in the earth.
                         A woman shall compass a man.
                                                        Jer. 31:22


 
In the quiet womb of what shall be
The estranged, homesick word flies back to its nest
Of abiding peacefulness.
                          Alighieri and
Ezra circle home again, through the door
Beneath a bookstore's rocking sign
For Wisdom (coracle) - touched
By patient, penetrant
Forgiveness - lifted
From the jaws of Leviathan.

 
The womb absorbs their eccentricity.
An unexpected equilibrium takes hold.
The empty wind and the words it carries
Ruffle the water and reflect unspoken things.
What was justice for the High Commissioner
Becomes a pathway for the downcast immigrant -
That baby refugee, whose throbbing wail
(Still untranslateable) will parse
The future tense.