part of the main

HEARTH-FIRE

I stepped outside of the quarantine

early this morning (one quiet

crystalline April moment).

A mourning dove, sequestered in a pine

nearby, was practicing, solo (adagio

con molto sentimento d’affetto).

& therefore do not send to know

for whom the bell tolls – Adios, amigo.

We don’t hear them much now, here

as once in Rhode Island.

& it’s hard to comprehend

how time-space telescopes into the mirror

(O my clay-rimmed, worm-riddled heart

& soul)… yet her melancholy

plaint echoes, in me

the solitude that ripens all my art.

We do not belong just to ourselves.

We are part of the main.

I am a half-hitch in a seine

flung from an ark, whose kelson delves

across the Black Sea of the universe.

Borne by embattled star-murmurs,

this pressure on the king spurs

martyrs to out-run the royal curse –

so Socrates & Tommy More, Jesus

absolve the men who killed them;

so their normative love-law anthem

sighs out warm fire into cold sacrifice.

4.19.20

& Miriam will dance

DRIED SAP

You can sense the salient resistance

of this old Norway pine

like a mast from Lebanon

in each crust of dried sap.  Straightness

of its upright stance.  Simplicity

of sea-green yearning

toward such bright-swelling

moon… half-dollar of Apollo mission (JFK

smile).  Our SUPERMOON, shedding a silver

reminiscence of sunshine

across crepuscular decline.

Rippling resistance.  What we were

reversing what we are (black sun

of trumped-up emperors

gnawing like rodent-raptors

at the heartwood of the law – treason).

The Song of Miriam, the hymn of exodus

out of the red waters

red white & blue tatters

your sister-dove murmured… passed over us.

My penny in the well, my dark reverberant

exile – the king of Israel

Melchizedek his trial

in Memphis, by the muddy Nile (our

hierophant).  Somehow the 4th of Set

rainbows a seventh 4th

& Juliet comes forth

& Miriam will dance (a Jubilee grande fête).

4.7.20

in the days of Ivan the Terrible

AYE-AYE

In the days of Ivan the Terrible

Sultan fought Emperor

& culture fought culture.

Faith was fervor, & power, trouble.

Lately we don’t have that problem.

Everyone agrees the state

is not about the potentate

& not about God.  It is a system.

It is a system of checks & balances

blah blah yes yes… but where,

where is the heart?  It’s there,

Hieronymo Geronimo (maybe in Providence).

I remember that whiff of salt air

off the silhouette of Roger.

A flow from Berkeley’s wager…

how Jonah might be the universal tar.

Each one of us within that law

equal as feather of Maat

or smoke of Cautantowwit

(bright sunset glow of wonder & awe).

Henry Hurricane sleeps in his dream

somewhere in Minneapolis.

Maybe taking a piss

in a treepot, on Nicollet (off the beam).

His circus is circumference.

& maybe we are Hagia

Sophia with a million…

aye.  Aye-aye, captain.  Silentium.

3.9.20

now we are six

SOUL LIBERTY

Today be the birthday of granddaughter Sophie

the Bangladeshi-American.

Her Baba became a citizen

in 2017.  They’re just as American as you & me.

We made a covenant of equality

before God, long ago.

African-Americans know

how long it took to become just barely free,

not to say equal before the law

in this blood-soaked country.

It begins with soul liberty –

thumbprint of human dignity.  We saw

how Roger stood alone against the weight

of Boston magistrates,

to separate a faith’s dictates

from common civil rights – & shape a state

of openness, of global mutuality

– planted in equity,

grounded equality –

premonition of a new reality

emerging like a dream rose island

from an imagined Providence

(Roger’s capacious sense

of Edward Coke’s law-learned hand).

Sophie, dancing image of an unseen grace,

child of the universe

sprung up in Minneapolis,

take hold of your inheritance – one hopeful place.

8.21.19

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

the Winter King (a mummer's play)

BLUE LIGHTNING

Hobo, sprawled among November reeds,

cattails.  His scattered bones

ache on jagged edges.

A chill is in the sky.  Light feeds

the icing-over swamp, the acid-

green vomit (absinthe

effigy of spring).  A plinth

of plastic raft supports his dream-kid,

Henry Hawkeye – duffed.  In mummer’s rags

of scruffy black, to match

his sullen rage (a match

is all it takes).  Here comes Antigone’s

antagonist... here comes Creon, Jason...

Here comes Le Grand K

himself, all brassy

mass and armored mirror – one

half bull, the other carny barker

in a cream straw hat.

Just look at that!

He laughs, he sneers, he boasts, he barks

surrounded by his bulky thugs,

stiletto-dames –

No Shame in Crimes

his badge declares (pinned with slugs

to his forehead).  The plastic raft

quivers to his stomp.

This is gonna be a romp,

he crows, & circles Henry, fore

                   *

& aft.  Wispy, cloudy, quiet Henry’s

cornered.  By the water.

No weapon (though an otter

peeks up near the scrim).  He’s

holding only a tiny pocket mirror,

which he flecks upward

toward the pale sun.  Hard

to say what will come next.  Your

ghost dance, Hobo, flickers photons

like Planck’s constant

from an old field tent –

where photos of Kennedy, Abe Lincoln,

Martin Luther King hang, haunted (black

& white).  The King

is dead, long live the King,

Ave Maria, Henry whispers back.

& suddenly a mass of flame pours out

like pale blue lightning

from a Chartres ceiling

down upon a maze, blazing partout

across the center of the raft.  Truth

is our Law, O shallow

prince – our commonweal.

She rules, & will spring forth

again – like that torch-bearing Liberty

all clothed in copper green

welcoming everyone...

So Hobo saw.  The raft was empty.

11.27.18

golden autumn of the codgers

CHASTE EQUALITY

A synthesis of reality

is the poet’s quarry –

the whole serene array

sweeping like wind over the sea.

Not that irritable reaching

after fact & reason

but a subtler conviction –

life’s laughing dolphin, breaching.

So lips’ continuum of air

sustains your sea-sounding,

reverberates in rounding

surf (os-scintillating there).

The light stems from another realm.

A gravity so dense

you’re pulled beyond sense

to transcend...  Owlish Athena’s helm

shines like an emerald acorn cap

out from that wilderness

of native lovingkindness

(Williams’ mayday just a maple tap).

The Ocean State is what we seek.

The Providence of Roger-

Seeker... golden codger

settled in his freedom, meek

and bold.  Like admirable Edward

Coke, who founded

justice vs. his confounded

king – a chaste equality (rood-hoard).

11.1.18

poem in memory of Sen. John McCain

UNPERISHING REPUBLIC

                                        i.m. Sen. John McCain

Politicians are not often poets

though they might be actors

in a denouement of Shakespeare’s

Measure for Measure.  Just deserts

are rarely staged there, in the Senate,

these days – when a thumbs-down

from a stalwart shaken lion

mimes the freedom to be obstinate

against all bullies, liars, tyrants.

When a simple judgement – white

supremacists aren’t patriots,

they’re traitors – damns those deviants

from one magnanimous dream of Union

(human, not partisan;

global, not only Arizonan).

Comanches raided every town

along the Rio Grande, once: Yankee

& Viet Cong slaughtered

each other, martyred

kids; but we transmute reality

by change of heart, by radical

meekness.  With mutual

respect... consensual

advice, consent... our ancient legal

dance of equity, for human dignity...

so might this son of Cain

be able to smile again

in that unperishing Republic of hilarity.

8.27.18

Philadephia harbor

SHADE TREE

Stewart’s old print of Philadelphia harbor

(1821).  The great shade tree

by the shore, so peacefully

imposing.  What’s America for?

The benign bonheur, hovering over

our intricate pursuits

of same.  The one who loots

forcefields of dominance, mon frère,

may never find this canopy

of feathery leaf-

grace, hopeful belief...

for we the people brook no satrapy –

relentless justice of the golden rule

the frame of human dignity;

law’s equilibrium of equity

our guarantee of commonweal.

My own boat pilots back to Mendelssohn

so slowly, through such vast

flat riverlands.  Her mast

a pine tree split from almond Someone –

cloudy shadow of a smile (O shady oak).

Your heavy clay, Coatlicue –

the chilly violence you

still portray – fired to a silver spoke

as fine as spiderweb, becomes a sign.

Your limestone epitaph –

a serpentine & fractal staff

fractured for us, broken for bread & wine.

5.17.18

Primeval Spring

TRACERY

They leave a track across time,

the sea-salt souls – faint

& delicate as painted

tracery of April birch-limb

shoots under a pale blue sky;

massive as meteoric

stone flung from the thick

of heaven (dark as a raven eye).

Unreadable profundum – yet

a trace of what they loved

remains (as in an alcove

names are tapped in cloudy granite

for a terse echo of foregone delight).

Then centripetal gravity

sheds all formality

& mutters from the depth of night

the soul’s original, L-mast

uprightness – earliness;

birchland of quietness,

in boreal Aurora dressed.

Blackstone & Williams, Edward Coke...

such men of merciful Law

& lawful Mercy... & I saw

the matrix of your Liberty – who spoke

with spokes of fire upon her brow.

Psyche, Persephone...

Cana, in Galilee...

primeval Spring, welling forever now.

3.9.16

Reading a lot of British philosopher Gillian Rose lately (Dialectic of Nihilism). (Led there by citations in Geoffrey Hill essays.) Reminds me how little philosophy I've studied. Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Deleuze, Derrida... it's all over my head. She makes connections between writing, history, philosophy, religion and law, which I've never thought about before...

I've been doing some shuttling myself today.

6

 
A monarch ambled aimlessly toward Mexico.
Lost in the corn, he knew where he was going.
Knowledge fed humility; he was a gentle king.
There is a cypress where all monarchs go.

 
The cricket schemes a quainter camouflage.
His ordinary droning screed pretends
it cannot penetrate the summer blinds,
short-circuiting the season's slow demise.

 
But we hear differently, upon our swing.
Its iron triangles are Archimedean;
paired parallels ascend into a green
and absent-minded Paradise (creaking).

                  
                 *

 
A swing rocks back and forth, reflectively,
summoning evening summers out of night
and day.  Its governance is just (slight
scraping of the hinges, anyway); see

 
how the old saws of the legal hacks (Coke,
Blackstone) frame up sturdy guarantees
of civil equity : see how proud trees
bend branches to a sigh's brush-stroke.

 
The bookish founders of our liberties
reflecting in their libraries (on Rome,
on London), brooked a necessary home-
truth : let the flower lead the bees.

                         
                                     7.4.06

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.)

I'm reading one of the best-written books I've ever read :

The Lion and the Throne : the Life & Times of Sir Edward Coke, 1552-1764

by Catherine Drinker Bowen (author also of Miracle At Philadelphia, about the Constitutional Convention)

Coke was the young Roger Williams' employer & mentor. Basically a master & saint of the Law (vs. tyranny). A key element of English legal tradition : right of accused to fair trial, no matter who, no matter what.

Here are some interesting Bowen quotes about writing.

& how did I get to this? Thanks to ol' Ez, whose Cantos extoll Coke as one of the wisest of men. Highly ironic, since Pound's whole temper & personality (violent, arrogant, irascible, contemptuous, brave, foolhardy) would have set him amongst those noblemen full of contumely whom Coke, time & again, excellent legal hound that he was, sent to the scaffold.