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

the true poem always comes from elsewhere

NEAR KINNERET

This is that ancient harvest night.

You bring a refugee inside

– might be an angel of God –

& find participation is the true delight.

The otherness-&-love of God

deflects the local stream

from its own banks.  A dream

intrudes – disturbs each land of Nod.

Bright Dante, growing gaunt & gray

steps into a seashell

– beached, like him, in exile.

Tall haunted shades of Sant’Apollinare

gaze, raining compassion

from wide almond eyes

like springs, like Beatrice’s...

he feels at home.  O prodigal son!

Poema sacra must be reconfigured.

Maximus in prison

by the Black Sea... vision

like shadow of the Argo soared

– an Easter visitant, come dawning

far above Firenze, or

this rusted blue-red frenzy

ferrying Rubicon (Cain-abling)

& you are weeping, you are smiling

far beyond sacrifice,

climbing that hill-face

near Kinneret (life-reconciling).

11.2.19

unusual poem

OLMEC TEETH

Providence, a meeting-house of rivers.

Moshassuck, Woonasquatucket...

Narragansett alphabet.

Key into the Language (Roger’s

hopeful idiom).  Green valley space

for some invisible Seeker-

church – plain Shaker

chair for Eli, or Henry (grace

supplementing human nature

like a mild blessing

before Thanksgiving).

Can we do this, Roger?  Sure.

Providence, a circling campfire

of Renaissance persons.

Like a Rembrandt summons

to be humble (as St. Matthew’s ear

to voice of dark-haired angel).

Listen, proud Ferrara –

not to glose of Schifanoia,

but shade-garden of Bassani-spell.

The meekness of a soft goldfinch

will be memorial

for what was already eternal,

always.  As our Redemption is a cinch

for flighty heartbeat (underneath

the chain-link).  Grail-canoe

or eye-in-hand – you

fled into thin air, through Olmec teeth.

5.6.19

from Hecate came the Kali-Bear

GLOOMY RECESS

Brrr.  Encased in winter nadir.

A word stings like a burr

in my ear, grown morbider.

Out of California.  Excalibur.

Poe’s gloomy recess.  Ceiling

flickering with Neva-light

(limbeck of Hecate).

Ligeia, Solominka... cryptic feeling.

Juliet, embalmed upon a wounded,

senseless word, while

murder dogs each exile

in a stumbling Republic – hounded

refugees are coldly wrenched

from their own children.

What will you do, Hen?

Keep chanting mantra, teeth clenched.

From Hecate came the Kali-Bear,

Blake, Brown, Black –

stuffed Russian Monarch,

Cuffy from the Arctic (Polar) –

Crowned with the crown & splendor

– like Inẽs de Castro, here

in the casque of my ear,

my dear; of violence the silky daughter;

his banner over me was Love.

Your coming-forth, Psyche-

Persephone – out of the sea

in Frisco Bay – out of the starry cove

                     *

laving the Golden Gate, your destiny –

Old Glory Red, & Irish

Green, & Maple Sugar swish

your seal, ex-Californ– Aieeee...

– over the Bay.  Bears baring

every fang, & bearing

everything – boars goring

every Tarquin – innocence betraying!

So follow Hobo Henry’s burro

as he burrows through

her barrow – thorough

ravishing of hollow tumulo!

She’s flown, sweet Thunderbird.

& like Aurora Borealis

hovers above all this

flag-draped befuddlement (light-ward).

Ghost-haunted Morning Star,

Virgo-Astraea –

apotheosis of Sophia,

milky mosaic your dancing floor –

step your basilica sans fear;

the agate lamp atop

your Gate will not stop

raying back toward D.C., dear.

Columbia & Liberty will shine

their sister-lights within

your ark’s palladion;

Agape will this rage refine.

3.9.19

O day-song of a day

MINUSCULE EDIFICE

Some ancient Oklahoma sage

knows life as integral

& whole.  A round corral

of circle dance (light wind on stage).

One heartbeat, straight from Manitou.

John in the river, calling

each to prayer, & fasting –

washing clean (life to renew).

The little red plastic lawn chair

Sophie uses catches

the sun.  Minuscule edifice

subject to ridicule, she will suffer

small kids to be comfortable here.

Her persecuted refugee

will be your judge someday –

the heart of old Bluejay casts out fear.

Some perfect day in June, she’ll come

for you...  Shine, raving dove

from Resurrection grave!

She’ll ask what you have done, she’ll sum

you up.  And it’s not too late

(amid these arcs of oak

& pine) to add your spoke

to the wheel of penetrating light –

to hear Natasha’s whispered promise

in the ear of Mandelstam

& join the rapture of a psalm

clasped in her kiss within a kiss.

6.13.18

quiet end of the year

LOVE’S CAVERN

At the quiet end of the year,

among the barn smells

a chilly infant wails –

a refugee.  Shepherds draw near.

He is king.  His mother is

queen.  His father is

a mule-driver (was,

anyway) – Vietnamese,

I think?  They live in Egypt now.

They’ve never seen Ghiberti’s

Gates of Paradise –

that brazen lava overflow

to metamorphoses of fiery dream

and rock – sedimentary,

igneous, flickery...

roiling sun to spring, upstream;

they’ve never been to Providence

or heard the Rose Ensemble

whose violas tremble

with harmonious transience...

they live the poverty of innocence.

Light flickers in a manger.

Someone senses danger –

cows murmur, chickens grow tense...

enormous shadows of the monster-men

leer over flesh & blood.

It is the shadow of the rude

star burning in the last heaven

                  *

– the red star, bringing rectitude

out of the mild mien

of that child-man –

incarnate stony magnitude

heavy past sullen measurements

of every swollen tinpot

despot in his chariot.

Matrix of cosmic elements –

the figure of a man emerges,

burning in brazen tongs

and glossolalia of tongues

from every tribe.  Sea surges

multitudinous, incarnadine...

Ocean called universe

forging one verse

with arches (catenary, almondine).

So combers crested in a tower –

moonbright Witch’s Hat

tenting her desolate

oak-limbs (snowy owl’s bower).

Quetzalcoatl, brazen serpent,

lift each refugee of time

into your feathered rhyme

of flame.  Your flicker-tongue, sent

dancing into each soul’s paradigm –

the sparkling river, bent

back to its fundament;

Love’s cavern, salting every lime.

12.23.17

one dusty pair of loafers

GOLDEN DOOR

A cloudy day in June.  The silver-

green hearts of cottonwood

shape an eave of old

whispers overhead – over

Hobo’s sleepy crown.  He drifts

along the riverbank

like wind.  Who to thank

for this vagrant splendor?  Lifts

one eye to meet mauve milkweed

flowerets.  The milky

pod will land later.  He

recalls the King of Butterflies – his seed

of fire, smoking bloody thorns

out of the House of God.

Beyond Land of Nod

dawn twilight hovers between horns;

the Minotaur, hideout collapsed,

glances sideways now –

he’s facing you, Hobo.

Ennui & self-disgust snap

shut his labyrinthine face.

An intellectual

despair (material

forces define our fate) will place

disconsolate Ophelia

& lonely Juliet

upon the parapet

of Golden Gate.  Barefoot pariah-

poet joins them (leaves behind

one dusty pair of loafers).

Ice coats the Minotaur’s

sealed lips.  Hobo’s refined friend

Henry wavers on river-ridge.

He breathes deep.  Steadies

himself.  Watches eddies

spread calmly (from Stone Age).

A tiny flint, like mustard seed

planted its yellow point

in Henry’s mother-heart.

The soul is feminine, she said,

her clay says welcome to the plant.

A fishy pie plate

              *

framed between what

look like Twin Cities’ restaurant

cartwheels?  Double helix, welded

with rows of keys... inside

a box of buffalo hide... ?

Disc-knot, or gyroscope... plaid

4-leaf clover in a Star of David

spun toward peace...

Frisbee (call the police)

or flying saucer?  Air-bridged

harbor, so she sang – a lightning

prism.  New Colossus

in the live-oak moss –

her beacon-hand.  Smiles, welcoming.

Grain of the laborers trains Henry’s

unison.  His ancient sigh

for Juliet-Eurydice

brings grey-eyed Emma Lazarus

out of a purple sea – her Liberty.

The seed of fire is Love –

soul’s only treasure-trove;

find Her & you have found Me

too, murmured the grey ring-dove

whose cloudy wings unveil

a glinting copper seal –

bright penny from the King’s alcove

(of Lincoln logs & Memphis marble

made).  Now Henry sleeps

in Charley-oak – he keeps

the crown of Manitou arboreal

while Hobo swims down Milkweed River

branch to branch, & limb

to limb.  Says, Go find him

who seeks you in deep-end despair.

Love’s gyroscopic equilibrium

(from seed-beginning

to rose-blooming

end) is manifest Wisdom;

she dances like a cloverleaf

until you turn with her

into that Golden Door –

her almond Agape (undying life).

6.29.17

green grows the rusty O

GREEN RATION

Mighty Theseus was stuck in Hell,

strapped to a chair by Pluto.

Persephone’s no go.

Pennies clink in the wishing well.

The Blarney Stone’s a backward stretch –

cold kiss from pale ghost,

silky diner hostess

off the Isle of Man (unfinished ketch).

Snarled in the Underworld, Ariadne

warps him her cocoon...

a wee mummy pontoon

bridge, of air (soon, soon).  Erinye

Medea’s in the murk of crime,

stark raving grief –

Death offers no relief;

meek mercy must unspool this time,

unbind expiring rhyme.  Raven

Cautantowwit – wrathful

Coatlicue – skull-

wound knitting Golgotha-maven –

I ken your reddening woodpecker pate

all round our Oklahoma

home (green aura

martyrdom for scapegoat fate).

Because we won’t agree to disagree

we have to pick on somebody

small, like a refugee –

some poor kid cornered up a tree

                      *

who doesn’t sound like you or me.

Somebody will have to pay

for our settlement today –

it’s worth more dough that Proserpine

Hollow, or Bohemian Grove –

& that’s a fact.  Leaven

with mite of muddy heaven

this Martian clay of ours, O Love!

For the wars plainly disturb our sleep

& the mushy copper mirror

shows nobody anymore

way outa here.  Grave is the deep

wherein my friend is laid.  The blue

moth scatters, the monarch

flitters from the ark,

& they will not return until you

say : Blessed be he & she

who come to live with us

escaping strife, as guests –

may we tender hospitality

like theirs.  The whole Indian nation

has done as much for us.

When Thunderbird appears

as thunderstorm over the dry station

the rain might ease this drought

of reason & compassion.

Share the green ration;

pipe-skip the chilly serpent out.

3.10.17

for the Samaritans of Skala Sikaminias

ROOSTERS CROW

                                       for the rescuers

A gray light shines through the normal world

a silver-scale dawnlight

like the sea-sound in the right

chord on an oud, like a sail unfurled

on a cedar mast, standing simply free

on a fishing boat, out of Skala

Sikaminias, on Lesbos.  Ah,

sighs the wind, for the drowned refugee –

Oh, keens the seaman, for the ghost

of his son (a scarecrow

helped to shore).  Hard row

now, for Samaritans – for the host

village, gasping by the sea, in the normal

world, in the feathered light

of the mourning dove, so quiet

here (in the soughing wind, in the tall

cedars, in the shy bird’s nest, in the forest

dusk, in the soft

dawnlight, in the gray gull’s loft,

in the normal world).  Plain salt is best.

On a concrete floor, someone traced a star

like an octagon, in a Sapphic

ode – under harsh traffic,

under raving codes, like a graven bar

on a looping ply.  In a rosy key

sailors skim toward home –

from a morning comb,

roosters crow for Lesbos (merrily).

8.18.16

*for more information on sources of this poem, see today's New York Times article

Womb in the cave-shade

ALMOND ARK

They were farmers & shepherds in West Branch,

cartwrights & blacksmiths, laboring

through pain... the rusty ring

of iron clamps, the thick stench

of horse manure, the pigs & cows...

yet took their time for quiet

in the Meeting House – let

runaways abide, lambs browse.

Their silence lodged in protest against

violence itself –

the insolence of Guelf

& Ghibelline, the gangs, the hunts...

the iron dream of domination

locking the brain-cave

in its frozen grave

(creak-echo of damnation).

There was a spring in Tuscan hills,

coiled like a rusty serpent –

green with moss, bent

into turtleshell... old Williams’

spiral (out of Coke, Blackstone).

Mules’ rustic rights

& supernatural delights

limp into leaves of a live-oak woman –

her heavy womb in the cave-shade

like a Negus by the Nile

hidden for a while...

almond ark of spring (oak-apple maid).

5.11.16

Quaker Meeting House, Scattergood School, West Branch, Iowa

The Hiawatha

SMOKE-SIGNUM

I carry Sophie through the snow

to the summit of Tower Hill.

She says, It’s magical

(prodigal 2-yr-old). & so

it is.  That conical moss-green

Witch’s Hat crowns

a Yeatsian limestone

keep (prehistoric submarine

barnacled with biomorphic

hieroglyphs).  Isis

the octopus gathers

her segmented sea-worm (limbic

bronze phosphorus monarch child)

in streams of time – before

the 9th planet was born,

or knowledge-tree known (wild

afterthought of smoke-signum).

Chicago Hiawatha

arrowed here, truer

than rue – trained consummation,

like soft carnation in Quaker lapel

(hexagonamatrix).  Rule,

Scattergood Friends School –

your West Branch harbor (charitable

agape) a hostel in a hostile time.

Justice for orphan, widow,

refugee.  Praise be, grey

catenary icon (9-twined lime).

1.20.16

Tower Hill (Prospect Park, Minneapolis)

Bathsheba takes a bath

HOBO SPAN

Nocturnal nadir of the year.

Gray oaks along the river

nestle in a manger

of their own dry leaves.  Cold here

for the wanderer, the no-count

strangeling (shiver-er).

Bring them in, Pierre.

We have room.  Starlight will haunt

the here & now (parochial).

Already the axe is laid

to the waste land, cried

Granddad (civil engineer).  O

Tannenbaum... (his favorite carol).

Would save the sacrificial

pine (last year’s Noël)

for this year’s fire.  King Cole

in Mississippi wood (sacred) –

The Bear, a Memphis barge

in Iowa (suspect

at large).  Uriah (Scapegoat Snared).

Bathsheba Takes a Bath (sit tight,

Hittite).  In poetry

Hamlet will flip & fry –

like Salem for bluff Endicott,

Sweet William in the vacant pine

(a free perennial).

Romany iron, after all.

This hobo span beams red & green.

12.17.15 

RR bridge, Minneapolis (red & green navigation lights barely visible)

Cottonwoods on River Road

A poet builds a house with words.  Underneath the words, the wind blows.  Time moves on, change happens.  It's out of control, seemingly.

Or is it?  The house is built on sand, or stone.  Maybe limestone, which is a record of shifting time.

Back in the 1920s, my Grandpa Ravlin built a sturdy brick house at 1615 River Road, in Minneapolis - around the corner from where I am now living, after about 45 years in Rhode Island.

In 1615, John Donne became an Anglican minister and Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral (pretty much against his will - he was commanded thus by King James I).

A poem has its own architecture, if you live in it for a while you begin to sense the contours with your fingertips.  The first Book of Ravenna Diagram concluded, fittingly, just as I was leaving Rhode Island.  Tonight - maybe - I'm starting up again.  The impulse is relentless, like the Big Muddy ink-wash across the street.  It feels good to be at it again, anyway.

Moving is painful, as thousands of Syrian refugees can tell you (better than I can).

The state of Rhode Island was established (under the leadership of Roger Williams) as a "refuge for troubled consciences".

Let them in, America (Statue of Liberty speaking).

MAMMOTH SNAKE

By the River Road, under the tall

bare cottonwoods, on the last

warm day, before the blast

of ice descends from the North Pole

I think of this Mississippi

constancy (unbending

loops & bends, winding

serpent-wise out of prehistory)

& of my frailty, my brevity

having forsook soft sand-

castle petite Rhode Island

for some territorial interiority –

inward cthonic Mendelssohn

where Mirror Lakes echo

down Arthur Street (so

far-off in the way-back zone).

The cottonwoods lean toward the sun.

Gravity pulls at

the Franklin Bridge (that

spider-thread my brother swan-

dived off, & lived).  Flatland anguish

drags at Minneapolis –

down gridiron avenues

of gray snow, hunkered refugees...

The low sun, like a paradigm

hovers just over the mammoth

snake.  The face in the cloth

shudders – furls birchbark (trireme).

11.19.15

Her heart was a Mediterranean

Edwin Honig would have turned 96 today.  Child of a polyglot immigrant family in New York, Honig devoted his life to the art of poetry in translation, crossing linguistic & cultural divides.  In this time of great refugee distress, I would telegraph this Honig poem in reply to all the anti-immigration demagogues (Trump, Le Pen).

For an Immigrant Grandmother

She sat for an age at the window with glances that threw
Pennies of pity at collarless beggars, and cripples
Who crawled like crabs from gutter to curb rippled
The geese in the bag of her hunched-over flesh. But you
Always could tell by her murmur for heaven to witness
When neighborhood children like sparrows hopped in distress
To catch from the hand of the baker his three-day-old bread.

Yet she danced with a hint of the hips and a lilt of the head,
And the savor of turbans and princes and spices welled
From her smile like a promise of Turkish delights withheld;
For her heart was a mediterranean cradling the earth
With wishes that tumbled like fish and golden sea fairs
Where pirates were drowned and angels were spared by her prayers,
Till she slipped unaware on the edge of a sigh to her death.

young Edwin Honig