up in Montrose Park

PINE-SMOKES

The war to end all wars was done.

On May 29th, 1919

Sir Arthur Eddington

tested heavy light, suspended

in a thread around the moon-black sun;

so gravity bent clay

toward refining accuracy.

Black Elk extends to six directions

silent gratitude & recognition,

just as an icon speaks

in speechless pine-smokes

or a painting glows with valedictory

emotion.  Around the summer solstice

rose-phosphorus sunset

seals the monuments’ regret

in Washington – western promise

magnifies & coalesces, in a microcosm

(up in Montrose Park,

at Avon Place, by River R).

That armillary zodiac, or star-prism

revealing violence, imperial dominance

(diagonal to its redeeming

countersign) – entangling

mn-mutter, amid all circumstance…

sweet Angel, levitant above the cancer

of the Capital; fleet-

footed Evening Star, bright

Pocahontas (waterlogged Delta, triangular).

2.24.20

in the entrails of the nation

RIVER-SCOW

So Henry hearkens to the sea-wash

over his meandered house.

From District C to Minneapolis

his terramara whorls, to Washington

& south to Frisco, lap after lap

of wave on wave, sea-green,

serpentine.  A Berryman

for Julian’s Bower (Juliberry nightcap,

mayhap)?  Osiris, in the entrails

of the nation?  Sleep, now

microcosmic river-scow –

everything grows smaller in the whale’s

rib-cavern, everything a miniature,

dioramic Minnesota (at the

end of the last knot, minute-

man).  Cold as a Viking vulture-

sepulture.  These bricks might save

the planet, Henry mumbles

to the museum baubles

in his sleep.  & then her hand will wave

to him, from waves of his dream;

Columbia the sister-dove,

his Tyche-tyke from above...

over the Father-of-Waters with a beam

of smiling light.  & suddenly the vermilion

shades atop Sunset Mountain

& the orange orangutan

threatening our rusty tub of human

communion (Old Ironsides to you)

are dissipated shadows

in a rosy dawn... & Henry’s

crown rests in her ark (shalom, J-rue).

1.6.20

a place in your mind

SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE

Providence is a place in your mind.

And also a town.  Like

the sun rising over the lake

be burnished benevolence – &

also a solar systemic fact,

dawn’s chilly weather.

& if we dream together

rather than apart... the intellect

somewhere outside the movement of

these moons, planets...

Now what you grinning at?

You wilna guarantee supernatural Love?

But I am what I am, & I am, I am

a wondrous thing (after

10 a.m.). O ye rafters,

rise!  O ye gates of Jerusalem!

Providence, funky old town.

With a history.  Roger,

under killing weather

in a warm wigwam.  The plan

for the planets, the calm creation...

like a vase whirled in milk,

a home for Black Elk –

at the door of six directions,

where the sheepfold meets the sea.

A little oaken Okean.

A microcosm, spinning,

Jen.  Dream, le songe, where you meet me.

10.26.18

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

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

those great & famous lines, from "The Tower"

And I declare my faith:
I mock Plotinus' thought
And cry in Plato's teeth,
Death and life were not
Till man made up the whole,
Made lock, stock and barrel
Out of his bitter soul,
Aye, sun and moon and star, all,
And further add to that
That, being dead, we rise,
Dream and so create
Translunar Paradise.

(this is really aligned right up with Nicolaus Cusanus & dear old Bishop Berkeley)

...& all of this is emblematized, miniaturized, in the 2nd chapter of Stubborn Grew, titled "Ancient Light". Henry goes to London, and stands before the great painting by Hans Holbein, "The Ambassadors"; he sees a vision of the medieval unity crumbling under the pressure of that other secular power, Henry VIII (the ambassadors in question were on an embassy from the Pope to resolve Henry's marriage/divorce problem - which also finds its echo in the poem to follow).

Jonathan, with some interesting comments on one of Shakespeare's sonnets. (He's always thinking up productive & well-defined poetry self-edification projects.)

I would interpret the poem slightly differently, I think (it's complicated!). Yes, narcissism is not self-love per se; it's merely one symptom of it, one form it takes. But the speaker is not "lying", because he's not accusing himself of narcissism : he's accusing himself of overweening self-love. This excess is none other than original sin, which fills "every part"and is "grounded" in his inward heart. When he sees his aging image in the glass, he's reminded of his mortality & human frailty, and recognizes that he's been projecting his inescapably excessive self-love - in narcissistic fashion - on his admired young friend. The glimpse of his aging image in the mirror is not a narcissistic moment, but a moment of truth.

Why is overweening self-love "original sin", inescapable? Well, it's grounded in our "god-like" subjectivity and self-consciousness. I love this sentence from Nicolaus Cusanus : "Omnia enim universalia, generalia atque specialia in te Iuliano iulianizant." [All universals, generalities, and specifics julianize in you, Giuliano.]

We are each a little creative world, a microcosm : a situation which has both its glories & its dangers, which is why we love to - and must - keep looking into (& through) various kinds of "glasses".

Good blog day. See Bemsha & the Sonnetarium in debate. I like this from Yeats:

And I declare my faith:
I mock Plotinus' thought
And cry in Plato's teeth,
Death and life were not
Till man made up the whole,
Made lock, stock and barrel
Out of his bitter soul,
Aye, sun and moon and star, all,
And further add to that
That, being dead, we rise,
Dream and so create
Translunar paradise.

In which microcosm pops up, of course, Ignatius Donnelly, searching for Shakespeare while "Henry" searches for Pushkin the cat.

"I think he will take this island home in his pocket & give it to his son for an apple."
- Wm. Shakespeare, The Tempest

& then Henry wrote a fictional Providence microcosm [concluding in a Finneganesque infinity on Good Friday] about a character named "Henry" who was begotten in the orgone box of John Berryman, who jumped off the bridge down the road from the house his (Henry's) grandfather built, on River Road, by the Mississippi (John H. Ravlin, who was born on January 6 (Epiphany), the day that Georg Cantor died).