Henry having a royal fit

ARIADNE’S CROWN

A limpid morning, Palm Sunday.

In the little woods

behind the Shriners’ (closed)

Hospital, gaunt oaks lift branches high

in anxious supplication (to an emerald

Acorn King).  Prince Hal,

scion of OK Gal, in his corral

of febrile & uneasy crowns, grows bold –

to place his father’s own upon his brow

in the Jerusalem Chamber

(where Huck & Jim clamber

aboard… that cardboard scow,

the trumped-up King of England’s dhou).

The river bends, reverent

& full of revery (blent

with the clay into its royal slough).

You boy, there!  Yes you, boy –

rivery O-buoy!  Come here!

King David shall appear

& dance – like naked singularity

or Solomonic wormhole, full of sacred

density – before the Ark!

& with the flicker of a quark

the center of the galaxy turns red

& churns like furnace of the cosmic kiln –

inverted mirror of MLKy

Y’Way – so massively

reflecting (like a missile-toed oak-gall)

*

that mauve & scarlet Rooster of the Day

who chants his clear call

to Event Horizon Wall

& leads the Magi home – another way!

M87 – black hole (multiplied

by 56, at least) –

from center of the feast

of lights – preternatural Virgo, Argo-eyed

Hagia Sophia – Isis of Ocean River

barge!  Prince Hal

trembles now, elliptical

epileptic – empty Apollo quiver…

overshadowed by that Thunderbird

shadow-of-shadows (el Rio

del Espiritu Santo).

His Ariadne’s Crown only a word

for the implicit eagle’s nest of silence

where the plague-eddies

of blind King Eddy

disappear into Big Muddy, & the dense

congregation of the Humble One

who rides a mule into town

(distance-divided by their own

disease, their wrangles for the crown) –

are suddenly hushed before those lips

mute-smiling, like a rose canoe;

those palms, encircling us now

in one speechless embrace… (love-clasp).

4.5.20

one foolish man & three Magi

TURTLE-SHELL

Henry wakes from an old man’s nap

with a child’s sense of space

& time.  Heart’s relentlessness.

Here be the river; here the wide gap

between whispering grassland, distant sky.

Epiphany.  Three Wise Men

camel out from high Tehran

to find one homeless king, in a spare pig sty.

Tonight the belligerent intelligence of war

sent guided Minotaurs

heat-seeking vengeance.  Stars

were collateral damage (kids no more).

The ragged tent-flap & the drafty stall

are Henry’s flimsy turtle-shell.

His mind & heart a broken spell –

a wasteland shack, no longer fit for Grail

or Calabrian hermit-monk, or Parsifal.

Only bring me the gift, Melchior

of your toy myrrh-nef – your

river-sense, emerald, mercurial;

like a 4-leaf clover made of almonds

interlaced... like 4 canoes

bent to the whirlpool’s

mandala (Itasca spiral of palm fronds).

This Providence of tight-coiled J

anchors the Pacific Ocean.

Knots its rose-clay revolution

to a bottled ship – ensign of Milky Way.

1.7.20

what child is this

HOLIDAY MUSIC

The empty duplex is quiet tonight

though not completely silent.

Drumming in the basement –

Khaled rehearsing our old duet.

From different corners of the same planet

immigrants & refugees

hasten to the Twin Cities

as to gemütlich haven or warm magnet.

& history is like a palimpsest of pelts

trapped in somebody’s woods

before there were neighborhoods

or streetlights – only raw scalps, rotting guilts.

When we were that City on a Hill

of our imagination –

special paragon of Creation,

establishing law-&-order by God’s will

on earth.  But it wasn’t so beautiful.

The Magi rode by camel

across a parochial hell

subject to Herod & his trumpets (terrible);

the angels remained invisible, mostly;

& both the Ark of the Covenant

& ironclad Ship of State

came to resemble that drafty, mangy

manger itself.  Where Mary lay

& her shivering baby sighed

& Joseph almost died

of inhumanity.  Hush little baby, don’t you cry.

12.24.19

among four pines

ABSOLUTE ZERO

The grey coal cars thunder slowly

over the rust-orange bridge

again.  & I pledge

allegiance to their gravity,

to the stern trumpet of the train horn

as they go.  Down the street

Grandpa’s brick Paraclete

among four pines awaits the morn

(birthday, today).  That carpenter’s

clear eye – a level’s bubble –

gazes out (chaste, equable)

into the turbulence of Zoroaster’s

Peacock Star (Yezidi refugee).

& ours.  A world of tears.

Absolute zero sears

the riverbanks.  The Mississippi

plunges under ice.  The dead of winter

sleep in Resurrection

Cemetery – Berryman,

Henry... each petrified splinter.

Massed in the clouds, a stone mizzen.

From profound Black Sea

she strains so steadily

toward me... a limpid sail, a friend.

Is she life, or death?  Her vault

is mourning.  Yet her smile

is joy – raven diagonal

coursing toward dawn (where Magi halt).

1.6.17 

Natasha Stempel, Voronezh(?) ca. 1936

a baby year

POLAR NIGHT

                               for Chris Kraemer

Begins, a baby year.  Crawls out,

survivor, bearded with ice.

Minnehaha Falls

not (b-flat, sustained).  Hobo is stout

now as Shostakovich – repairs

the floppy mosquito screen

on vacant gazebo.  Seen

more mangy homes, the bum declares.

Remembers that other Epiphany

50 years before...

with Chris the carpenter

in Soho, & Ernst Neizvestny –

three rootless cosmopolitans

christening his studio

with vodka – dla vashego

zdarovya!  Hunched on some Titan’s

crucifix of railroad ties

laid out across the floor.

Moira’s “Mask of Sorrow”

on the eastern wall (king-size

Golgotha-face, Vladivostok).

Troy’s brother Gabe

there, too – my chemo sabe

trying to toot the sunshine back

with his brass headpiece (soldered

to holey, breathy crown).

Fenced about with unknown

renown, we are, Hobo purred –

                     *

doddered.  The thatch be windblown.

The star be nowhere

to be seen.  The Minotaur

harried our return – he was like a stone

blocking all the arteries, squeezing

the flowers.  So we sang Kaddish

for the kids, in plain English –

scrannel our pennywhistles, wheezing

Pipestone smoke... remember now?

Down by Little Crow’s tent.

Where Thunderbird bent

his twisted contrails, laid so low.

St. Paul tied up in a Christmas bow

the whole Fort Snelling crew –

neat.  & they’ll forgive you, too,

Minneapolis – just let them Gypsies go.

Morning Star & Evening Star

are twins, brother & sister.

The planet limps... her

black burn-scars all covered are

in tender hexagoons of fleecy

tinder.  Let us pray.

One black-yellow butterfly

sleeps in gray winter crèche – she

furls her wispy shroud tight, tight.

The Minotaur has dropped

his cup.  It rolls... it stopped.

One pearl winks out of polar night.

1.3.17

Still bugged out with bad virus. No whiskified egg nog for me, thanks [sigh].

Watched PBS magical-mystical program last night on origin of 3 Kings. Magi may have been Zoroastrian astrologers from Babylon & environs. On April 17, BC 6, there was an eclipse of Jupiter by the moon in the constellation of the Ram (which signified Israel). Gold : royalty; frankincense : holiness, priesthood; myrrh : death & burial. Lo & behold, there on the program as one of the commentators was William Dalrymple, whose book I mentioned here a few days ago (From the Holy Mountain).

Here's a very old HG poem :

Proverbial


 
I give you the parables as I received them -
my mother's voice, the nursery rhymes,
the memorized rhetoric and the anthem
leading us like sheep to death sometimes.

 
The mystery ringing in our ears,
the noise of the cultivated howl
of ubiquitous unknown lusts and fears,
the music of monkey, wolf and owl.

 
In silence before music and the word,
a voice already prepared to save
delivers you into a pastoral world,
out of the dank and bestial cave.

 
A cadence I cannot repeat just right -
the pristine choir of many morning birds,
or the patience of children in the dancing light
performing the ritual of careful words.

Looking around at home, I found these curious precursors of the long river-poem (Forth of July). Sections of a poem called "Octaves":

4

 
Is it the sea or is it a voice,
or is it a sea-voice (rocked
by heartbeats long ago docked
in petrified wave-lengths, ice-

 
water)?  Or the wind in a tree.
That one, rising like a broken delta.
Speaks through me.
Rafted away now...  Huckleberry.  Selah

 
6

 
Mississippi, Mississippi...
Gravel and silt slide down the stream. 
Mississippi, Mississippi...
Spell it out, spell out your dream.

 
Why should I spell it out for you
(New York - D.C. - California)?
I hit the road before you do.
(Minnesota...  Alabama...)

& finally, here's an couple of odd (as usual) bits of something for the day, from The Grassblade Light:

21

 
The snow covered the ground like the shoulders
of his white bull, only colder, colder; he saw a cloud
of ice breath, chill between warm heartbeats.  Old
Blackstone, in clear December light, ponders, ponders.

 
Some penetrating sound, a loon-call through the aether,
or... some answer to a riddle, rectifying denouement,
perfect solution... some snow-crystalline all right,
like the moon sailing across deep soothing black... or...

 
Good King Wenceslas looked out
on the feast of Stephen
when the snow lay round about
deep and fresh and even

 
High clear children's voices above the dark
tops of pine trees, as they make their way
through snow from house to house.  Gradually,
slowly, peacefully (in the cold night).  Hark

 
the herald angels sing...  He looked out toward the mangers
of the world.  There... on the outside of the inns...
in the cold, among animals, straw, the thin
coverings, the sparse walls... the hungers, the dangers.

 
And like Balthasar astride his mule (riding west
and staring east) old Blackstone thought:
what One is this? - as, bright-wrought,
an arc of moonlight moored above that nest

 
(a lowly nef, berthed under a lofty shell).
An airship, or some hovering bell... it shed
a sweet, translucent music overhead.  And
music changes everything (as Wenceslas could tell).

                       
                     12.24.98





 
22

 
In December, in the snow, in the clear cold air,
everything grows double, everything is allegorical,
like those distant crows, high over the Bruegel
valley, and the hunters turning home, bare

 
bodkins, empty-handed; a half-moon, small
and delicate, glows through a haze,
and the stiletto of one star beside it says:
behold tight-woven final acts of good and evil

 
here now passing... upon theatrical soil.
Here simplest things are full of profundity:
hungry wayfarers, winecellars of reality...
gypsies, flocks, shepherds... an angel.

 
Meanwhile, under the dome, the black stone
of Isaac waits.  And gathering specific gravity,
to the city - through Stephen's Gate - comes Jubilee,
like spring streams down from Zechariah's canyon.

 
And he will stage these holograms of Incarnation
(strange attractors, gathering wise men toward one
star's dark matter)... cask them, roll them on board,
until the ark of Wenceslas is full, and Stephen's crown

 
goes round again, millennial - in those meadows 
where Time does not run down, but circles...
where May Goulding conceived, and Stephen's bulls
are papal, Romany... where Blackstone throws

 
his final boomerang : a child is born,
and everything is changed.  Come down,
you shepherds, to the manger now, come down,
behold - how God is cradling Isaac like a son.

                         
               12.24.98

Wishing you holiday cheer & lights - *