throned upon dignity

MY GROUND

The muse of my Ravenna poem

is secret & silent, hidden

in quiet like that Belgian

Isis – adamant black Mom

throned upon dignity in West Branch

shaded by old oaks

& the whisper of spokes

on a windmill (over limitless green avalanche

of cornfields).  She is my implicit

First Mower – my ground

of whispering midwestern sound;

Hobo, curled by his sprung rivulet,

her loving servant & factotum

& my bosom pal;

we three walk out of Hell

by the glow of one sole lux humanum –

an eye-in-hand, like that manifest

benign donation of a palm

opening from the cosmic realm

above Transfiguration of St. Apollinaris

in Classe.  & as we are three-in-one

in the mode of deification

we mirror that diamond Everyone

dwelling in the well of supernal Union

before, within, beyond Creation –

in the heart of the dream-songe

& the rêve-vision, we plunge

toward Restoration like a green acorn

                       *

& rise like ancient Osiris or Lone Ranger

through the climbing limbs

of an emerald Okean Stream

glowing more human (richer, stranger)

& more alive, as we lift toward that

light cross-tree of stars

where gentle Dante stares

& time & space availeth not

& where the marriage of true minds

is blessedness of spiritual grace

as we become one Falcon-

Ace, or Jeanne-eaglet – who finds

her microscopic lamb-lamp in the grass

just as Maggie spied Jesus

composting the flowers

there, in Resurrection Cemetery... Rise,

Sister-Dove!  Walk, Jonah-Lazarus!

& thus the reunion of the universe

is now our interstellar fire-house –

Maggie a tower of almonds (brown eyes

shaken up to smiling Milky Way

between Jerusalem & Athens)

& my dry diagram begins

to melt into a double Tiger-Lily –

like this one (Hobo showed me)

peeking from the shade-weeds

by the Mississippi – beads

of green, black, orange... a flag (you see?).

8.7.19

& know the place for the first time

STEEP HEART

The mystery of the Incas, how

they filed those giant stones

at the top of mountains

into close-fitting knots (above, below).

The slim knife-edge, the penetration.

On behalf of balance,

lamb-tethered violence...

one must die, for the sake of the nation.

Something about moss-covered stone,

arctic lichen.  Colors

on a rough-hewn wall (yours,

mine).  Collage of blood & bone.

Memory, mother of muses

lead me back to your

stone milk-splashed door.

Ancient well-bench (sea-roses).

The eunuchs of the kingdom come

& go... their simple habit

underneath the gibbet

simply to repeat the sacred OM.

Alpha, Omega.  History unwinds.

He’s humble, sheepish

as a goat – Ish-

mael, or Solomon.  Pay him no mind.

The one thing that happened, historically

was that an innocent nobody

became king for a day.

Steep heart, remind me... let us pray.

12.15.18

I sent poet Gabriel Gudding a poem written a few years ago. I thought he might like it because he has a Providence connection, & because it involves a mysterious someone named "Clio" - which is his daughter's name too.

Lo & behold - it turns out these two Clios were most likely one and the same !

I'm amazed... it's as if three writers were playing a game of secret messages...

(re-affirms my faith in a "special providence" of poets - a belief (superstition?) instilled years ago as I read Nadezhda Mandelstam's memoir, Hope Against Hope...)

Muse gives poet skeleton key to native land. Price : exile.

Reading Auerbach on Dante's early poetry (Vita Nuova). "In Dante the esoteric lady of the stil nuovo stands forth clearly for all to see; she becomes a necessary part of the plan of salvation, decreed by Divine Providence. The blessed Beatrice, identified with theological wisdom, is the necessary mediatrix between salvation and man in need of enlightenment..." [p. 62; 1st publ. in 1929]

When poetry (Dante's) requires a personal mediatrix for wisdom, two ideas are implied : first, that all (human) knowledge is "incarnated", or mediated by particular individuals; and second, that theological wisdom is necessarily synthesized by the psyche and the imagination - it's not literal, transparent, absolute, in the way fundamentalists and dogmatists insist it must be.

a "9" is an upside-down "J". both are spirals. fascinating, isn't it?

I'm looking at various emanations of "9" in relation to the Siena poems. "The Nine" was the name for the commune governors during one period (when Lorenzetti's murals were done). Siena has 9 gates.

I'm thinking of the nine circles in Nicholas of Cusa's "Game of Spheres", too.

"J", of course, is very important in Stubborn & other places.

I'm looking at the spirit/nature, divine/human, substance/image, nature/art dichotomies... in terms of number & geometry.

Duccio's (& many other medieval & renaissance painters') designs were based on ratios having to do with the square & its diagonal (an irrational number, the square root of 2).

N. of Cusa, I'm sure found this of interest. Creation/incarnation (or Cusa's "infinite", for that matter) can only be analyzed by means of "irrationality" or immeasurability.

does a J reflect 9, or vice versa?

Dante, somewhere in the Commedia, writes: "Beatrice is a 9". (Beatrice, of course, was a sort of avatar of/from that other "J")

Holy Roman Emp. Henry VII, Dante's messianic Arrigo, died near Siena on a Friday in 1313.

I gotta finish muh poem.

Here are two more short sections (present for Jonathan):

1

 
The blithe young maidens dancing in a ring
In the peaceful street, in the ancient hill town
In the painting, slowly fading on the wall
In the ancient hill town -
How many were there?  Five, seven, nine?
All in a ring - did they sing a counting game?
One, two, three... faster, faster!
Only a ring now (one dizzy blur).


 
2

 
The path from the beautiful day
Through the summer maze, through the needle's eye
Back into sunlight.
                      The blind step
From a screenless porch, to fly through the air
And roll in pliant grass...

 
- different eras, different names and flags
For the human effort.  The mute donation
Of the groundlings : wholeness
Counting up to one

 
And one (the hermit's witness).

 III  (Sham Death of a Minor Shakespearean)


  
 "I die for the glory of the light and
 the majesty of Apollo!" – he cried
 – drifting slowly, fastidiously,
 to the floorboard bedside.

  
 Head flat against the hard oak
 neither he nor audience could tell
 if it was by his own hand
 or by another's, that he fell.

  
 Only that the heavy thunder, the light ringing
 washing through his skull was not applause,
 but penetrating phantom fingers
 of the black – sable – nurse of darkness.
      
                                  5.27.96

3


 
 
These letters, rolled like drops of sap along the spine
of a spindly cedar (hardened into crust).  My letters
to you – you, who have no need of letters
among your mirrors and lights.  They seep
toward you, and love you, sensing
you love them just as well.  
 

     The moon
was faint tonight, behind a smoky cloud.
Pale, bloodless, not quite round, yet
shining anyway, it lingered:  held
in the branches of a willow tree
like an empty goblet.  Silver
leaves lay down below – a crowd
of masks, a flock of repentant souls
from a Sienese fresco (surging around
the Rood of Heaven).
 

      Without you,
dear, my knowledge disintegrates, a new
encyclopaedia of dust.  All pledged
to rigid silence, under useless stars.

 
But if you were here... you would point
to the warm lights of a house nearby.  And
your other hand would reach for mine
like the sun.

2


 
 
We were walking through the cemetery.

 
It was about this time of year, as I recall –
when the earth itself seems only a graveyard.

 
We heard a far-off sound (pattering rain,
puttering pigeons, mute piano notes?).

 
We saw, over the river, the silhouette of a figure
throwing dead branches on a tall bonfire.

 
Perpetual twilight.

 
And in those days, it seemed, everyone wore masks –
except for you and me.  And now I see only masks.

 
Halloween never ends, it seems –

 
unless you come back again, unless we retrace
our steps over the grassblown graves. 

1

 
 
In mid-November, a dark autumnal day,
leaves shuffle underfoot, drift in the wind.
Each leaf a little hand stretched out –
a letter, inscribed with tiny branches,
limbs.  A letter from a tree gone bare,
expecting no reply.  Soon snow will fall.

 
Each day I walk down Dove Street
with your shadow – talking to you,
talking to myself.  Drab gray alleyway
cluttered with crooked telephone poles...
here gray pigeons waddle, wavering
and purring, across gray asphalt,
underneath gray skies.
      
                        Shadows
of turtle-doves, wings flitting overhead;
glimmer of gold oak and maple leaves;
desolate, diminished Jack o’lanterns
huddling with crazy smiles against
gray doorsteps (lumps of faded orange).

 
Hidden in the twilight season, camouflaged
in gray, whispering down a hidden street
with you, my phantom (leftover from 
Halloween).  Toward the harbor – where
dim light from a low star threads
across gray water, and doves collect
along the iron rail, and shuttling leaves 
float, mutter... whirl against the pier.

& so today's illustration (Dove Street):

4

 
A washed-out February light   winter floating away slowly
and the sound of a mourning dove   one   one-one
mingled with elisions of an iron brake   life’s nonsense
and my notes   cars on the road

 
a world gone quiet   in my mind   (preparation
for annunciation)   spring’s in the womb
of sister-dove:  limping slowly on the barren earth
she goes   as if she had a stone in her shoe

 
maybe   a stone fallen from heaven
landed in a camel-canopy   Abram’s otfe
out of Ur for good   across the sandy waste
under the fringed silk   she sits in shadow

 
cooing to the warriors   urging them on   to the end
of their beginnings   all the way to Jordan
or Jerusalem   where they guard the black stone
of the scapegoat   (father, son and   intervening angel)

 
another stone   too heavy for heaven   and buried deep
in your corrupted heart, O   horseman, knight:
love is reason   and reason is love,   she coos
and this equality   brings Jubilee,   she whispers

 
where seven iron rings   circle the sacred city
each ring manacled to its own   unbreakability
(like weapons of mass destruction   guarding
weapons of mass destruction)   from the days of John

 
until now    the Kingdom has come with violence
violent men    take it by force   but it shall not be so
with you   murmurs the fragile   enshrouded bird
(grey wing   buried in grey stone   furled   in black)


         
                                       2.26.04

possibly the only other non-Russian poet comparably preoccupied with Mandelstam was Paul Celan.

note "Magdalen" reference in Voronezh poem quoted ("For Natasha Shtempel").

mandel (almond), magdala, amygdala (seat of memory in the brain?)

almond tree : ancient emblem of Jewish people

mandelstam - "almond branch" (blooms in January)

little tree (cf. Forth of July, various places, & this from Island Road)

David (poet-king), Messiah : "the branch"

from Dove Street:

Now the snow (pure, blinding).
Water slown down, retarded to
star.  Yet I know you're there,
under the gleaming ring,

 
unseen.  Where images fade out.
Puffy doves purr, tut-tut, bunched
on the ridge of a tree-branch.
Having you left... you're all I've got.

                          
                *

 
The war goes on, outside the brain.
Where the grey dove of Bran or 
Bretagne once dove in.
The mirror's extra dungeon

 
for X, of X, in X:
stage envies, accomplices,
maybe lateral damages.
Machine read-out: You're next.

                          
                *

 
As if you were there with me on the branch
I'll mumble and purr, puffed-up in the cold.
Because you're not here doesn't mean
you're not there.  Unfold, again.  Branch,

 
little tree.  Tomorrow's always,
and always is your birthday
and this is all I have to say -
your birthday, always (little tree).

 
                                     1.29.04

. . . the battle, in art, essentially, being between the imperial and the empyreal:

the contemplative (Mary's better portion) and the active (Martha's):

a spiritual battle in the soul between the whole Creation & partial goods (greed, lust, pride, anger);

("since the coming of John until now the Kingdom of Heaven has come by violence, and violent men take it by force; but it shall not be so among you. Verily I say unto you, the least of those in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than John" - Gospel)

the 9 daughters of Mnemosyne (memory) being grandchildren of Zeus;

this is the subtext of July (Julius Caesar to Jubilee).

Island Road moves slowly, zigzaggedly, from autumn to spring, from despair to hope, from cynicism to love. When I listened to the recording of my awkward Reaganesque/Clint-Eastwoodian whisper through the whole 99 "sonnets", I re-experienced, recognized again the EFFORT that is part of giving birth to a new poem. It's an "incarnational" poetics - & perhaps hearing these mutterings, while reading along, is one consequence. "Entering" the form of the sonnet (I almost wrote sinnet), answering Shakespeare & Berrigan & Berryman - it was a physical, embodied encounter, represented by the "muse" figure - the figure of Spring or Persephone or Dark Lady - right from the beginning, in sonnet # 1. It felt like an encounter, a MEETING - and indeed it was.

Whether the awkwardness is finally a sign of artistic defeat - well, I hope not. Listening to the whole thing felt like listening to some big untidy Cantos getting underway. I wish someone else, some smooth actor, could read it FOR me : but it's better this way.

More on poetry as embodiment: think of Joyce's concept of "epiphany" (the particular thing seen in its "quiddity", an intellectual light). Pound's heavy acorn of light.

Think of poet & muse: Orpheus/Eurydice, Dante/Beatrice, Henry/"J" (see me being pretentious!). The child-bearer vortex - Venus, Virgin Mary, Magdalen - and her absent (ghostly) presence. & the imperfection of formulae - the vanishing point of recognitions. The embodied absent one, the story, the index. M, W, mother-night, Cassiopeia.

The black-haired young woman in the dark green skirt walking ahead of me in Fox Point (a slim stringed instrument, heft tuned to her gait).

"Heavy-hearted woodlands."