the river is a strong brown god

AZTEC ALPHABET

The brazen serpent of the Mississippi

runs through my veins,

cantinnas Hobo (in vain).

How to tell my own (con version) story?

The antic disposition of these shelves

of incunabulae (obscure

revoluminous curious lore)

ripples off Norse keels – revolves

around my cranium (son of

McCain I am) – the worm

a canker, iced like berm

at Sutton Hoo (& strong as

love).  He will lift himself up

into his father’s affection

(this child of deflection)

at last, & be first in the stirrup

at the gates of his sly enemies –

he will be the son

who twists there (frozen

image of abjection) underneath greed-

seas of rifle-toting angels

(Cuzco school).  Spleen

of Hamlet, by the bedroom

screen – cunning de Kooning angles –

that Master of Gray, backed in a corner

of Ravenna – or raving

Coatlicue, stoning

the Consul in the dog-ravine (here,

                  *

Fido)... someone lurks in a mirror

with double doves (tin-

whistle Hobo-child of sin).

Abandona-donna’s abbatoir?

Some Aztec alphabête of yesteryear?

Hazel the moth-goddess

flits into brown recess

of brown recluse... (the spider’s... her).

The sacrifice of sacrifices –

hunters’ offering,

a shiny golden ring –

is like this image from ice-fisher’s

thing (icon of everything);

is like this light bread

Moses left for dead,

or Aaron molded into iron Sing-Sing –

a memory of Psyche-crimes

no one can heal,

nor break the lead seal

from the dark backyard (abysmal

time) until the flutter of a wing

like a mind from the sea

Hobo’s thirsty misery

slakes   or forsakes   a palm, circling

through the gray salt latitudes

like blistered sword

blessing   like sunshade

père-sol   ultramarine   (beatitudes)

9.25.17

Mary Elvira Ravlin Gould, potter & flute-player, is of course a major background presence in my poems.

"Time flowers on the lips of whispered clay."

from an old poem called "Grain Elevator" (self-published in Way Stations):

 III


  
 Your two clay whistle-birds
 Are on the windowsill,
 Ready for children's lips to share
 Their flute-sounds with the real birds
 At the feeder, on the other side of the glass;

  
 You've always been the better maker,
 Turning the years and years around
 With muscular feet and fingers,
 Clay speech rising from the wheel
 To last this generation, and to serve
 The next Thanksgiving – plates, bowls,
 Pitchers waiting to ornament
 Some simpler, lasting celebration,
 Open house for the upright heirs
 Of tender hills and anxious clay.

  
 And where's that modest watercolor,
 Lit with the cold and clear Minnesota light,
 Of Granddad's granary downtown?  Standing
 Behind the rusted parallel of the tracks
 And a row of poplars, crowded out
 By warehouses and condominiums,
 Its curving columns burgeoning now
 Only with air and memory – and hidden
 Wafers of petrified wheat, noon
 Sunlight answering a lifetime's work
 Just over the treeline and the crooked streets.

  
 On a sultry day in late July
 In 1961 – when I was nine – we stopped
 In a little pasture beside the road,
 Under the shade of clustered oaks,
 With a herd of cows nearby,
 For a picnic and a rest on our way
 To visit Grandma's farm, and cousins
 In Iowa City.  And after the sandwiches
 And sleepy talk, while the grown-ups
 Snoozed among rocks and baskets,
 I wandered off a little way
 And found a squared-off family graveyard,
 The gray slate leaning in the uncut grass,
 Deep summer whispering from unfamiliar soil.

  
 Maybe it was your voice I heard,
 So long ago there in the aching depths;
 Your voice, challenging me to find
 That earthy crossroads – whistling word –
 And lay Grandfather's brooding ghost to rest.

That drawing was done, I guess, around 1962. Sometimes I think of myself as "neglected"; I should remember my mother. She's never had a "show" - never even thought of it, probably. She's produced many hundreds of paintings, drawings, works in clay.

For my Mom, art is just part of "keeping busy", or "volunteering" (ie. caring for about 4 generations, simultaneously).

My mother's drawing (cartoon?) featured in HAT 6 poem. 

Weird, man. Berryman's very late "conversion experience" happened a few years before my own "spiritual Jordan". Bracketed by that dark cold December night, on the bridge over the Mississippi - the bridge my mother could see from her bedroom window in my grandfather's house. Weird, Henry.

Poet's mother (the painter/potter), inspecting old rose near River Rd.

Sent another bird-clock to Elena Shvarts in St. Petersburg. Apparently she had a fire in her building, lost a lot of books & personal things, including the bird-clock & little blue & white wooden bathtub ocean liner, Sophie, which my mother had made 50 years ago.

[p.s. addendum, 5.18.07 : years later, my mother's wooden boat was lost forever in a major fire in Elena Shvarts' apt. Ah, Russia!]

more Dove Street:

3     
                     Omnia enim universalia, generalia atque specialia in  
                     te Iuliano iulianizant  [All universals, generalities, and 
                     specifics julianize in you, Giuliano]      
                                              – Nicolaus Cusanus


 
A faint gray pencil-sketch   my mother made   decades ago
floats in a blue corner:  two redhead brothers   like twins
almost an octave   Guillem & Giacomo   sit   parallel
each sketching (right-handed)   intent   upon   blank white

 
& Gong Xian   abandoned the field   and the fugue of war
(a change of ancient dynasties   Ming for Shang)
trailing retreat   transmuting each desire
(only flickers   of black horsehair)

 
the Yellow Mountain was   left to your imagination
in grey-black flecks   and war and peace   the blank
spaces   the crooked lightning paths   left up to you
(your willing hand   your loving heart   your sight)

 
Leonardo drew (lefty, mancino) the faintest of red lines
beneath the leaning eyes of Mary   bending down
(seraphic)   toward the babe:   his notes
a kind of mirror-writing (all’ebraico)   with “tired hand”

 
And in the wintry womb   the gray-black limbs
iterate (tired, crooked) against the snow   a backward trail
or trial   a coiled, cold metal spring or   trapper’s guile
(elusive prey   grey shadow   fleeting   glimmering)

 
low cooing   from a frozen eave or   looking-glass
intones an octave   twinned in unison   (some mournful-
silver marriage rite):  a thread of golden lightning
through an ocarina   to a painted ear (and scandalized)

 
announces stormy weather   thunderstorms and   thaw
across the mountains   where waterfalls   rush
past banks of cedars, reeds   (your brush with
fate   by horsehair   led you   here)

       
                                   2.20.04

& a very happy birthday to Jordan's Mom, too, here, at the last minute! I wrote a good entry about the beautiful article in this week's New Yorker by Peter Hessler, "Oracle Bones", which also (along with G. Packer's piece) concludes with Walt Whitman. Must have something to do with Lincoln's birthday.

but blogspot deleted it somehow, or maybe I did. anyway. read the Hessler piece, pozhalista! a raison d'etre for the NYkr.

I remember very clearly listening to my mother once, back in the late 60s, sitting on the couch saying "I don't believe in Time". She was a big Nabokov reader in those days.