she is a mason too

FAMILIAR EYE

When the farmwoman goes out to sow

a scattering of cornseed

or fleurette africaine (dark weed

flung wide), she is a mason, too –

planting a cornerstone at dawn

to the northeast (between

the subtle nightshade of illusion

& nuanced elaborations of the sun).

Hope being the common denominator

of all our troubled labor

buried out there, somewhere.

Does language know?  Prickly pear,

prickly pear... where the shadow falls

across an exact location.

33 light-years... (someone

WW knew – at Kitty Hawk?).  Tiny candles

flicker in the hot wind from the crypt.

Presently details of the little

room emerge.  Her title

to the seasoned sailor, found amidships

after the ashes scattered like black raven-

doves into infinity –

where Mr. Sunborn’s akme

of knowledge curled its crown toward heaven.

This the mandala the builders left me.

Jenny with her Book of J – my

golden lamb of Ghent... familiar eye

peeled back, unvarnished (dyeing history).

1.30.20

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

on six directions

CLAY CUP

I will not rival Dante’s double

spiral (from depth of Hell

to heart of Love) but spell

a complementary bubble-

rêve, mapped on the horizontal.

Infernos of damnation,

sparks of elation

harbor here – my guide no Virgil,

only turtle-speed Hobo;

not Beatrice now

but one blithe ocean-dew

rainbow (her smiling Jonah-brow).

Like that mercurial Micòl in Ferrara

she lights my imagination

with X-S creation,

aslant from Providence to Frisco –

a river, crossing at the Gateway Arch

like some switchback, Pawnee

Missouri – molding a key-

stone at Cahokia (ten fingers’ kiln-torch).

Where slowly, slowly, the potter’s wheel

with shaping eye-in-hand

rotates the whole land

counter-clockwise – churns against the keel;

casting her clay cup on six directions

like Black Elk diamond –

firing her mandala-almond

amid each human hearth-rose (Hobo reckons).

8.5.19

cradle of rain

RUDE EYE

Grey cradle of April rain.

Your riverine Nazir

or holy fool was here,

rounding his moat with a vision

of metaphysical hope.  Song

like Mendelssohn mandala.

Smallest coign (voilà!)

of the realm – just one among

many, Penny, to kingdom come.

Copper wrung with fire,

like Cassini in pyre

of saturnine canons – Love’s hum

somehow redeeming them, each little

statuette of soul 

freedom (the cosmic equal

sign).  A dab of mud & spittle

might reveal the night garden –

snowflake octavo

revolving over Buffalo

(holm oak to acorn, evergreen);

the whole note of the Nazarene

squared & shaved round

like some lost-&-found

locked-room problem – Tom the Twin

tying twine into a knot-cradle

of human & divine,

of Jew & Syrian

(or Greco-Roman republican).  Ladle

                  *

of Milky Way – the Twin Bear Cube

softly circling,

a tiny light unmoving

(port for Magi-King & rube).

The light strengthens as you climb.

Climb toward the broken

seal, the torn silken

veil, the split seed of our primal crime...

ecclesia & synagogue divided

in the keystone arch

as airy lark from larch

(twin siblings from earth-shaded

sky).  The seed is the salty word.

Out of the undivided

Ocean-Jonah glided

magnanimous eagle-wings – soared

into Benedictine Aesop-cells

from Africa to Memphis,

Iowa to Mississip –

aerie of equality, wells

of everlasting life.  That vermhurl

knot, spliced by an outcast –

Pushkin-slips so fast

the prophet scatters into whorl

of matrix-hurricane.  Rude eye

on Zion, Washington...

Heartbroken Hart (one

eggshell mason’s crooning sigh).

4.27.17

bard owl hoot-yawp

DARK MANDALA

A dark mandala, with its threads of gilt

glinting in sepulchral gloom.

Brown recluse home

or poison farm – Potemkin-built

for subtle, shady beast (forma

tricorporis umbra).

Yessir – USSR – Usura

rapt the hack machine – some worm

robbed all the banks in Hungary

– sincerely, your servant

left with Nada (she went

under).  One black-wreath memory

laurels a World War grave,

limed with gold streaks

of tears.  Leaf breaks

hearts; stubborn moth digs nave.

Infinitely gentle, infinitely

suffering thing... Rabbi,

rabbi, your symmetry

of gravity pulls toward a parapet

or pole-star magnet – anti-matter

mutter at the gate

of timespace (intricate

constellate icosahedron footpad

rabbit-patter).  Yellow gyroscope

for the lad in Ravenna,

wheeling through Gehenna

into turtleshell domicile – Hope

                   *

Diamond southern bells – milky

over Memphis, chanting

out of slave-haunt... (sling

your wide human boomerang, Psyche).

Fraud loops fey pebbles into flagging

factories, for vanity –

haughty coyote-

greed howls babble onto bragging

piles of glare – why do the notions rage?

Out of a quiet well,

a widow’s mite will tell

another rustic peony tale.  Osage

cheekbones of Lincoln-Logos shine

in the fiery human sun –

Rhodos-Colossus Woman

radars an omnipresent beryl-pine

from silver harbor.  The retrograde

cannot delay reality –

their bubble-polity

will burst (too much steel air) – a Maid

of Orleans, or Land o’Lakes

shall lead the ring-dance

in a crayon trance

& sketch a reciprocity

of snakes & ladders, golden eagles

& grey turtledoves.

The peacock fan of Love’s

dominion flares... green acorn-angles.

11.11.16

What's in a sine wave ?

PALM WAVE

This milky February sun

foretells another spring.

Still far-off – winging

eyebrow-arch reflection

of a snow-blue almond bridge.

Yet near... a looming

whisper (out of Red Wing,

maybe) in your ear.  Sweet pledge

of union, set sail southward

by wattle-crane basket

to mossy reed thicket

below Delta (belle Campagnarde).

Knot-eye of Popeye raptor-

sailor, here trans-

mogrified to mildest

peahen-cockerel (Eeyore-

Sophia, high over Frisco Bay).

Equable & everpresent

omni-beneficent

orthogonal well of charity

infusing one & all (mandala-

dome, dominion’s

doom).  Everyone’s

chest de trésor – heart’s ah,

life’s oh... amended Manitou

of Man.  For me & you,

within the vernal blue

of ocean wave (palm-feather true).

2.1.16

Jesus Thoughts (28) : the numerology of 28

Friends, this is a diary, a journal, a record of stray thoughts, not some kind of formal essay or academic discourse.  I guess that's obvious to everyone... I just want to reiterate this apologia, since today I might really wander in my ramblings.

 Tomorrow, 12.21.2012, the ancient, subtle Mayan calendar goes into rewind.  But the world ended last week for 28 people - children, teachers, a mother, and one young suicidal murderer.  A whole town and nation have been draped in mourning black.  Tomorrow the bells of the National Cathedral in Washington (epicenter of a new gun-control movement) will ring 28 times - once for each person, once for each of these violent deaths.

Maybe - we can only hope - this traumatic event will signal a new era, marked by stronger curbs on these killing machines.

Forgive me now for a seemingly detached, arcane aside.  The number 28 became important to me this year, in the course of composing and finally finishing a long poem, Lanthanum.

Numbers in ancient times and cultures had a symbolic, even aesthetic value, which has been replaced in the modern era by an emphasis on pure calculation (mathematical, scientific, statistical...).  But poetry is (or can be) a kind of throwback to old days - when "numbers" was a synonym or term of art for verse, when counting and rhythm were essential to poetry and mnemonics.  In the early '90s my own work was inspired by Alastair Fowler's studies of numerology in ancient, medieval and renaissance poetry.  I became fascinated with the symbolic/artistic potential of the "architectural" design of poetry.  The process of number-design seemed to go hand-in-hand with the other elements involved in writing a long poem (theme, plot, etc.).

Symbolically, 28 is a "moon" number - a pattern of the lunar (monthly) calendar.  This may partly explain the centrality of this number for some Native American tribes : Black Elk, for example, emphasized its importance, noting how the circular tepee used in Dakota Sun-Dance ceremonies was always constructed with 28 poles.

Quite a bit of my poetry has been influenced by Native American legends and concepts.  The cross-cultural amalgam, in the long poem Forth of July, of "Orpheus-Dante-Jesus-Bluejay-Juliet-J" was shaped to re-tell the story of a descent/ascent to hell/heaven, and a journey into the interior of both the mind and the American continent.  The "Jay" punningly combines Jesus, Juliet, and "Bluejay", an orphic trickster-figure from Northwest Coast Indian mythology.

Lanthanum carries on with many of these themes and symbols.  The poem culminates in a kind of Dantean "rose wheel" mandala-figure, shaped by the conjunction of two circles, forming the geometry of a mandorla, or vesica (often used in ancient and medieval art as an ornamental border or alcove-shape around Christ, Mary, or the saints).  The merging of 2 circles represents the wedding of contraries, the hieros gamos, the joining of earth & heaven, the synthesis of opposites : Lanthanum narrates or unfolds such a visionary process by way of both symbolic images and numbers.

Lanthanum is one of the elements of the atomic table - #57.  It is a rare earth (not actually so rare).  The poem Lanthanum is itself designed using this number, and its "factors" : ie. the basic building block of the poem is a strophe or section of 28 lines (the 4-line quatrain stanza, times 7).  The mandala design is built on a pattern of 28-1-28, with the "1" in the center representing the pivotal figure of synthesis (the "wedding number").  The climax of the poem is a visual (concrete) symbol of the mandorla, with the words "Jesus Christos" in a crosswise pattern inset within.  The shape also mimics the "catenary" arc of the Gateway Arch monument in St. Louis - ie., a mandorla prong rooted in the earth, at the center of the North American continent.  The same mandorla or vesica design, rendered as a 3-dimensional octahedron, outlines the form of a diamond shape - the same shape drawn by the traditional Native American ritual offering of the peace pipe to the six directions.

There are a lot of complex elaborations on this basic numerical design, in the poem Lanthanum.  Since finishing this long-term project, in July 2012, I have been struggling to find my creative bearings and direction for further poetry.  One of the paths I've begun to follow involves an intensification of the methods and patterns I've used before : ie. I'm working on a loose series of poems patterned on a quatrain stanza of 28 syllables, in poems of 7 stanzas (or 28 lines).

I am very aware how abstruse or pedantic all this might sound.  Where is all this symbolic numerology coming from?  To what exactly is it relevant?

In one sense, all this is an outgrowth of my own activity as a poet over the last 40 years.  And the process of welding personal, national, and religious symbols together in poems has roots in my own psychic/aesthetic experience.  In a way I look back on my life as one long, very slow, very incremental, very hesitant and halting, process of spiritual conversion.  Maybe it's my own sort of interior Dantean journey through hell, purgatory and paradise.  It began around 1972 : at age 20, I had already been a poet for several years.  In 1972-73 I went through a psychological breakdown and spiritual crisis - a "conversion experience" - which changed my whole moral orientation, yet which was also very intimately tied up with poetry (and the poetry of the Bible : the poetry of Jesus-the-poet, the Nazarene, the Nazir : chanting, proclaiming his original parables).  And the slow, incremental labor on these very extended, journey-like poems - their structuring around numerical-geometrical-symbolic numbers - can be seen as a creative process of drawing, or illustrating, or symbolizing the growth of a personal worldview of time, history - what is human and divine.  My poetry is a response to world history, and a response to my personal experience, and a response to the tradition of American literature - all in one.  Lanthanum, for example, is a kind of synthesis (welding, wedding) of America and Europe - centered in "St. Louis", between Melville & Crane on the one hand, and Henry Adams & T.S. Eliot on the other : between Notre Dame and the Gateway Arch.  And it attempts a renewal, a re-visioning, of Dante's effort - to weld together Man and God, earth and heaven.

The slow, stubborn constancy of this particular approach to poetry has not been taken seriously by my contemporaries.  But what can I do?  That's not my business.  I've basically lived in my creative workshop for the last 25 years.  I've disseminated and published my work as best I could, under the circumstances : it's here & there for anyone who takes an interest.  Maybe someday my work will gain a readership, and a place in the story of American poetry : I can't say.  I just keeping doing what I do, under antithetical conditions.

So concludes Jesus Thoughts (28) : my Jesus-poetics of the number 28.  (But there's much more to this, secretly squirreled away in my poems : numbers, dates.... 5.28, 5.29....)

Note on Mandelstam (& "the axis of the earth")

There's a short poem in O. Mandelstam's Second Voronezh Notebook which begins :

"Armed with the eyesight of slender wasps"

(see L. Schnairsohn's translations & commentary). Schnairsohn & others have remarked on the wordplay in this poem, on the etymology of (Russian) os - connecting "wasps", "axis" (of the earth), "Osip" (Mandelstam) and "Iosef" (Stalin). Schnairsohn's version reads, in part :

I don't paint, or sing, or draw
a black–voiced bow; I only pierce
the skin of life, and love
to envy wasps, powerful and sly...

I wish that someday I too could be forced
By a sting of air and summer heat,
To pass over sleep and death, and hear
The axis of the earth, the axis of the earth...

I've found a curious subtext to the speaker's desire to listen to the "axis of the earth" in G. de Santillana & H. von Dechend's unusual book, Hamlet's Mill, where (in appendix #14, pp. 377-383) they explore the Indo-European roots of a complex of words & syllables having to do with manth-, math-, mundus, mundil, mnd, etc. They relate these roots to various mythological & etymological meanings of "axis" or "axis-whirler", the cosmic "churn" which rotates the world-axis...

"Mandelshtam" itself contains echoes of "almond stem" or "almond branch"... but here we have a more archaic (Indo-European) layer of meaning. In the poem, Mandelstam puns repeatedly on his (& Stalin's) first name; yet this unspoken (conceptual) pun lurks there as well, on his patronymic.