a woman in a hammock

DROWSY SONG

The earth waits, like the source of the Nile

on the periphery of the capital.

Behind its porphyry wall

princes perform their tragedy of control.

The earth sleeps, like a woman in a hammock

dreaming of a happy home.

Crowds gathered in the New Rome

to print their great seal on a marble rock.

The Minotaur strode back and forth

sleepless as a pumpkin seed –

his labyrinth a putrid gourd

of fireworks orange (Julius the 4th).

He fought the dragons in his nightmare sea;

he clutched the basket of his swollen

head; his world was stolen

from a woman’s arms – bound to tyranny.

Hobo droned his drowsy song in unison.

The earth still turned for him.

Saturn & Venus, in their stream

of light, grew calm.  Night was for everyone.

The enormous clay wheel spun her sarabande.

The great ship shrank into the distance.

A tiny needle in its compass dance –

the apple of the capital (in Hobo’s hand).

Her shadow was a cloud cast on the evening sky,

a handful of benevolence.

A mystery of loving Providence

instilled in hearts by art, with eyes from Aye.

1.18.20

something very like an H

SALIENT THREAD

In the limpid evening distance, the twin

piers of the bridge are shining

as if a smile took wing.

& something very like an H is drawn

in orange ‘gainst the azure gold –

a catenary grave

for slight Ophelia (wave

goodbye now, wrinkled Henry Gourd).

Hamlet & Laertes squabble

aching in the trench;

leaves fall... the wench

is dead.  The leaves make hibble-hobble

& the scene folds into quiet,

sea, mourning.  The ship

groans back to London.  Slip

the knot now, Everyman... knit

your soul into that oaken keel.

The ropes will fray, the mast

will break, redwood at last

keel over too... yet may this steel

needle still aim toward home, somehow.

A gibbous moon ripens

onto Jaybird’s pencil-

thin & salient thread (above, below

twine almond bears)   the crossroad sings

with joyeux Yeshua

the motes flame   Manitou

Black Elk   yahoo   the tree-bell rings

10.11.16

the palm, the fiery gates

PRAIRIE ROUNDELAY

American robin on my fence

I sense you are a friend

& neighbor – here to lend

your orange breast, for salience –

swell-sign of aerial fellowship

in gravid cave-adventure

(blue waves of chicory

pacing old roads, from Boston slip

to San Francisco).  How your edgy

yodeling interrogates

our grubby, wormy hates –

sclerotic, squamous tragedy

of shriveled hearts, rancid hypocrisy!

You diagram with song

a madrigal so strong,

so many voices in emergency

merge into blueprint buoyancy –

manifest (garnet clay

prairie roundelay)

a ship-shape evening constancy.

Mute gesture from crow’s-nest G-ray!

Memory, beyond time

salts a Boethian rhyme-

beat... in quella Roma onde

Cristo è Romano.  Staunch ruddy

steersman indicates

the palm, the fiery gates,

Pacific O... – Eternity! is all his study.

6.7.16

Map of Rhode Island, 1780

& so concludes Ravenna Diagram, bk 5

BRIGHT PENNY

J was for Juniper (Maia genus,

Jenna) – an ordinary

quiet little tree –

you find them everywhere in Rus,

U.S.  One of the cedar family –

of which great masts are made

in Massa Maritima, she said;

& note the canoe, so beautifully

wrought, that graces this garage

full of rusted implements,

old iron junk (ribs,

tubes, gunnels, disjecta, garbage)...

– no, don’t kiss me now, it’s almost

Valentine’s.  Here’s a letter

in the litter, from your brother

in Minneapolis (him & his boats!) –

expatiating on that Inland Ocean

stretching from Superior’s

index, through Mississippi

dells & vales (his new obsession)

leaving these microscopic spirals

...in the pervasive buttery

limestone underbelly

of the land... seashells, fan-whorls;

epitomized in one moist flesh-toned

stony nave & spire

(near 34th & 34).

Meek modern well-proportioned

masterpiece, harmonic matrix

of father & son (elegant

Eero, eerie Eliel) – bent

Saarinen ark, soaring to Beatrix

rondure... O navigators!  Inching

over gravity waves,

black holes, ripe graves

of wombified Vikings... cinching

one planet with your splintery

kaleidoscopes (wind-

buffeted facets of land

& sea) under Dancing Bear, Polaris!

I would scratch my cartoon of your fellowship

with the circumference

                *

of an almond salience –

one bright Penny’s (legal, tender) skip.

A dove circles the Bay there, Columbia –

where the beats gather

spliced to twine pillar,

shrouds & safety nets of a still Finlandia –

wheeling wings, massed between sea

& cedar palisades,

Pacific rock parades

& sigh of spray... enveloping, visionary

finish at the prow of fiery

sunsets!  & I recall

the rudder of it all –

kind capitan of Little Rhody,

prophet of soul liberty –

gold Independent Man

atop the mobile span

of Providence – abeam with charity!

Wrapped in cloud, the binding peaks

wink now with S.O.S.

Laurentian Divide is

where the waters separate – soul seeks

her Earth, commensurate with hope

– justice of Manitou

sluicing like rain (for you

& me) across wide prairie slope

to live-oak bottomland.  My faint

hen-scratch... mere filament

to trace the lineament

of Kalevala-coracle – St.

Mary’s fishing-boat, or Paul’s

(vain little man, whose plan

would hook Leviathan) –

one rosy ark, riding the squalls

where refugees huddle for warmth & light.

O womb abrim with life,

grail-casket, Raven-knife –

matrix of River’s coppery might –

lift up your little pine apex!

Crown my origami fleet

with fir-green fin – beat

time with silver oar (moon reflex).

2.11.16

Through human sleep

Christopher Columbus is a divisive historical figure.  The Columbus Day holiday brings out clashing perspectives.  I'm aware of his mixed legacy : symbol of exploration, expanding human horizons, a round globe - and also an image of Western imperialism, cultural hegemony, genocide.  I know today's entry in the Ravenna Diagram series will come across (to most, perhaps) as culturally & stylistically obsolete.  But a poet has a right to be out-of-touch & ridiculous, occasionally.  Sometimes we have to follow the poem's lead.  Now & then a poem unfolds in a metamorphosis, transfigurement.  Symbols molt into something new.  I don't know if that's happened here, though; it's just another Henry sketch.

TREASURE CHEST

A bird hums low through human sleep,

hums softly lullaby,

aubade.  Ohio

bifocals their Burchfields reap.

Columbus is a Jonah still.

The outcast Genoese

casts off, a shifty breeze

of shuttered Inquisition swells

bright spinnaker for Spanish Main.

Indies glimmer in the grain;

Powhatan’s skipping maid

knots scalp & quipu in one braid –

taps down lost gold of tumbleweed

& prairie memory

to one wide planetary

estuary (harvest mead).

The bird floats feathered in her gypsy

treasure chest.  The ship

is Holigost – Time’s keep

(unfathomed yet).  Each Henry V,

grandee Philip will drop the knee

her way; each hungry soul

will stand renewed & whole

upon New Land someday (you’ll see).

Thus in the globe of Jonah’s word

the world comes round, & so

one wing’s carefree proportion

curls each creaking mast homeward.

10.13.15

Statue of Columbus (Elmwood Avenue, Providence)

& the ship sails on

CAUTANTOWWIT

The sweet old pussy willow’s gone

that once o’ershadowed Pushkin’s

backyard grave (great Russian

cat).  Leaves not a leaf behind –

only an empty space (alas, 

alack) anchors a magic

carpet o’ masticated

stump.  So we hung up our lyres

on the bow of that stubby caravel,

Acacia – stuffed to the gills

with incoherent motorings,

burbling Barranca Straits – with Mal

& Papa consulting the cabinet

non-stop... coat, liquor...

What have I left her,

now, here?  These were all spirits,

veering toward Prince Eddy’s Island.

Wracking my brains... hollow

ravine in the pupil, valley

so low... black hole of Depression

Inlet.  Perdita, somewhere in

the safety net, under

the ark at Porta Aurea –

dear lightsome daughter!  Ravlin,

unraveled so.  Now rainbows flash

Medusa-shells, O

Mountainous Sad Shadowship –

to wit, to woo... (by Narragansett ash).

9.25.15

where was the willow once

Pushkin

something mini-medieval from The Grassblade Light :

 17


  
 I built a way-too-delicate
 ship-in-a-bottle and threw it
 into the sea.  Was it Lucky
 or Sophie – or only

  
 Titanic ox taught to float
 too soon toward no one?
 A wheel was borne
 down to the delta (a

  
 paddle-wheeler, lazy
 catamaroon) into New
 Orleans, like an ark of J
 d'Esprit or some Degas

  
 jetty-gazetteer-in-brick
 Isaac molded for gargoyle
 atop Notre Dame.  Soil-
 heavy, a thrown-back

  
 blue-gill forehead-
 figured she-Marie or
 Rust & Rosie O'Green
 maybe – a Marian, sad-

  
 happy-again at the
 cap-tall pen-arcadia
 turkey-shoot.  A florid,
 a rapt – windjimmirror.

  
 Some medieval mother
 wounded by arrows.  Your
 forged seventh to the fourth is
 one loft-angle-barn green anchor.


      
                        6.9.99

a freighter christened Amazon 

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!]

textual note on poem posted yesterday : a "hermaphrodite" is a type of brig (which is a type of 2-masted sailing ship).