etched in vernacular

BEEHIVE WITNESS

Dante’s rambles round the tamarack swamps

outside Ravenna.  Beached

hulks of Byzantium reach

toward the sea.  Inside, smoke-lamps

phosphoresce hieratic grandeur

(kind bovine gaze of Empress,

Emperor).  Alighieri’s

impressed – ecco l’ora serale

in those green sheepfold meadows

where Time does not run.

He pursues his martyrion –

Crusader grandfather, circle of Mars.

He etches in vernacular his answer

out of deep parish history

to the welded Roman panoply

(Arcadian melody, Virgilian whisper).

I am a scribe who when Love speaks

hastens after, hearkening

noting everything down.

I haven’t heard from Bea in weeks.

I remember lips set with a grim reproof.

Down at the borderland

(Texas to Samarkand) –

Coatlicue, Tezcalipoca... beetling roof

of squalling Raven years.  Esta

su iglesia, Henrique?

She’ll be coming like Elijah,

not Europa, now (beehive witness).

6.24.19

woodcut by Mary Ravlin Gould

something not rotten

BENT WOOD

Two lean ancient red pines

standing blue-green beside

Grandpa’s old house, abide

fanfares of trumpet-vines

(pure orange bugling).  Something

not rotten in the state

of Norway, loco Hamlet –

needles for constant farthering,

an evergreen encounter with the Pole.

A fado rudder for America...

mercurial Columbia

glows with her dusky song, high, whole –

hidden in clouds of starry Eire

that slake eddies of fear

into limey atmosphere

like elfin emeralds from the mire.

These curves along Rhode Island Way!

Hieratical Byzantium

leans down beside a tomb

hunched in Ravenna tamaracks – Dante

& Roger shaking hands (the ghost

of Beatrice will not bow

before the imperial scow,

nor heed the plutocratic boast

of idle punts).  Just a bivalve ark

(tender ellipse of fatherhood)

redeems the bent wood

Caesar to seahorse – shark to lark.

9.14.16

Deserto Rosso

RAVEN-VERSTS

In the film like a dream, or film-like dream,

amid inalienable pine-

swamps of yourself, a line

scratched by crow divides team

from ox, sheep from flock.  Ineluctable

quiddity of ramshackle

vernacular.  You will tackle

each day’s unaccountable trouble,

snaking sly-inching replicas

of raven-versts across

your brow (Voronezh

barb-shears).  & those hills, alas!

in Tuscany... & here the tang

of spoiled fish, seaweed,

salt-marsh...  Hobo-reedy

outcast, you’ll note the rusty clang

from vertical train-tracks – glamorous

icons of onion-dome

supremacy, driven home

by battery ram.  Yet chasteness

still shines from Black Sea mirror

(gray pebble in a seagull’s

beak).  Galilean silence

rustles on lakeshore.  After the furor

of a jealous djinn tears past, the sun

will peek forth without wrath –

retrace your raven-path

in filaments of violet, moss-green.

12.14.15

(Chester, live cat, in the rocker; metal replica of Pushkin on the floor)

Nostalgia for world culture

Quick stray thoughts tonight... Osip Mandelstam once defined the impulse of the Acmeist movement (early 20th cent. Russian poetry) as "nostalgia for world culture."  Nostalgia for world culture.  Implying that "world culture" once existed (or still existed, elsewhere).  But then Acmeism also promoted a Bergsonian, anachronistic anti-sense of Time - what was deep in the past (Ovid, Dante) was actually calling to us from the future.  (In this he may have been attempting to one-up the contemporary Futurist movement, among other things.)

But what would be a real world culture?  A global culture, life-supporting, life-enhancing, humane, refined, playful.  Not the world as we know it today... but maybe an aspiration.

Then again one way of thinking of culture is as an inherently parasitic lichen-like growth.  Culture is opportunist.  For example, the culture of the "divine king", established around the world in various phases & formations - the culture of powerful rulers and autocrats, with their enormous suction machines for collecting & channeling the labor of millions of slaves (see : pyramids) - the culture of royal power might be seen as a defense mechanism of the kings themselves.  A survival mechanism, in other words, insinuated into society by the rulers, to protect themselves from being divided up and eaten, tossed about in communal games, by the whole peon mass of the tribe itself (see A.M. Hocart's Kings and Councillors for a consideration of such phenomena).

Then imagine that the speedy vine-growth of culture takes another world-historical bend, once the ziggurat of royal power & totalitarian government reaches its apex : I mean the turn toward apocalyptic messianism (see Norman Cohn's classic study of the Iranian-Zoroastrian roots of same, Cosmos, chaos & the world to come).  Here religious thinking happens upon a viral antidote to overweening political power : the idea of the return of the God-King - the uber-King, the "King of Kings", who will finally put the tyrants in their place (like Yurtle the Turtle, at the bottom of the pond).

I think of these parasitic culture-shifts as edge-phenomena, happening on the margins of something even deeper & more invisible & slow.  I'm thinking of the historical project of "species-Man", homo sapiens, seeking equilibrium.  Humankind is still building the conceptual house which is truly life-enhancing, lovable, livable.  This, as it happens, is another theme which turns up in Mandelstam's version of Acmeism : the idea that poetry has a role to play in the human project to "domesticate" life on earth.  "Domestic hellenism", he called it.

What would be a really "domestic" global culture?  Livable, lovable, familial, gemutlich?  It would have to involve the old English theme of liberty - the freedom from encroachment by tyrannical government.  But, on the other side, it would also have to involve something beyond pure individualism : the active engagement in the common good, the commonweal, the welfare of the whole community.  (These are, you may have noticed, the primal ideals, respectively, of the two major political parties in the U.S. - yet how sadly & stupidly & rigidly & uselessly & backwardly & corruptly & blindly & dogmatically & inflexibly they have worked themselves out in the electoral process.)

What's really needed in order to stimulate Mandelstam's "world culture" - what's required at the most basic level of conception - is a spiritual orientation.  Pope Francis, it seems to me, is saying some of the right things in that direction.  The "poor church" is the global house we share.  The spiritual attitude is one that sets aside narrow pleasures & greedy ambitions & haughty pride on behalf of a sense of wholeness : a "gratitude for existence" (another Brodskian, Gumilevian, Mandelshtamian theme).

How is this possible?  I'm not an advocate by any means of any kind of theocracy : don't get me wrong.  Rather I am talking about something much more basic, simple, and primitive - the kind of childlike faith represented by the original St. Francis.  How can we live in the global house if we cannot trust in the benevolent love of the Spirit that formed & created it all?  How can we build a future without a sense of being "at home" in the universe?  I think of Jesus, the first "son" of God, as playing the middle C on the piano, of a major chord of affirmation - of union with the source of Being.  Francis only echoed the same.  "Unless you turn & become as little children, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

Granted much of this will strike many as idiocy or ideology, or both.  So be it.  The poet represents a "nostalgia for world culture".  As such he or she represents a link in the spine of historical time - a time working itself out in the human sense of reality & possibility.  The poet's vision is grounded in harmony, triggered by a basic sense of wonder : of wonder at all that exists, majestically, from nothing at all.

The personal, subjective & familial love we experience among ordinary friends, strangers, & family, might someday be echoed & reinforced by culture at large - & this might, actually, be a return to "Nature" itself - the natural cosmos stamped by the seal of divine Providence.  "The Son of Man is coming, & he will restore all things."  O ye of little faith!  Sursum corda.

Seeker or Jihadist ?

Arrived back in Providence last night, after 5 weeks in St. Paul.  It's been a long time.  First thing I did after removing luggage from car was to shovel enormous mountain of snow out of driveway so I could actually park.

This week Pres. Obama is hosting a big conference at the White House to discuss ways to counteract appeal & tactics of terrorism.  Obama sounded the right note when he stated that government alone cannot solve these problems, but must work with individuals, families & communities.  In fact, with respect to Islamic terrorism at least, this may be doubly true.  Government, at least in Western nations, is necessarily, and rightly, secular : yet perhaps the most profound approach to the problem of religious fundamentalism is an approach which is itself grounded in religious belief, in theology.

Why?  Because, from a religious perspective at least, the root of the problem of violent religious extremism is this : its perpetrators have lost, or have never found, God.

The lead propagandists of the ISIS phenomenon - cynically or fanatically, I'm not sure which - uphold a kind of caricature of God as an avenging judge.  Allah & Muhammad serve as dual totem, or mythical facade (like the warlike friezes on Aztec temples), for an essentially political will-to-power, which is characterized by oppression, by tyranny, by the domination, victimization, and enslavement of others.  The movement is akin in some ways to other totalitarian movements in history : it flourishes in the soil of a utopian, all-encompassing vision of unlimited power & glory on earth, and vindication in the afterlife.

This utopia of vengeance, violence and military glory is the essence of its seductive appeal to alienated young Muslims in both the Middle East and the West, and elsewhere in the world.  One of the ironies is that ISIS may in fact be driven by aggrieved former officers of Saddam Hussein's regime - a regime which was characterized by a kind of Stalinist reign-of-terror program, cloaked (in later years) in faux-Islamic propaganda.  If this is actually true, it would help explain a certain creepily parodic, surreal aspect to its gruesome demonstrations of public cruelty.  This is an enterprise which uses violence as a tactic - as provocation, symbol, propaganda - with the dehumanized coolness of a Stalin or Hitler.

It seems to me that one way to defeat ISIS is to offer a clear public counter-message with a theological basis.  Obviously this is something that Western governments are not in a position to do.  But it is something that individuals and faith communities - Jewish, Muslim, Christian - can do, in different ways and in different spheres, on their own.  They can offer to alienated, angry young men perhaps the one thing they need most : a true understanding of God.

The true Abrahamic image of God is that of a loving Creator, who loves all the marvels of a universe s/he has brought forth from nothing.  This God has made humankind in his/her image; God's desire is for human beings to live in the benign shade of the divine wisdom, goodness, lovingkindness, righteousness.  God wishes Man to draw near, by putting away the things that are not God, and recognizing the divine wholeness & goodness of all things.

One of the distinct historical endowments to the theological knowledge of God was offered right here in Providence, by the teachings and example of Roger Williams.  Williams called himself a "Seeker".  His imposed exile from the theocracy of colonial Boston hinged on the central emphasis of his preaching : that no government could impose belief by force.  "Enforced belief" represents an oxymoron, a theological contradiction in terms, since God's greatest gift to the human person is free will.  A person must choose wisdom and righteousness; they cannot be imposed by political means.  Faith and wisdom are spiritual gifts offered directly to the person by God.  Williams called this sense of things "soul liberty".

This spiritual orientation is obviously in direct opposition to the theocratic/propagandistic vision offered by ISIS and related groups.  For Williams, it is the primal need for God which drives Man to become a spiritual seeker.  Yet the God he finds is not a vengeful ruler or tyrannical authority : God is the opposite of all this.  "God is Love."  God is the root of human freedom and moral choice.  Williams' newfound political entity (the colony of Rhode Island) was chartered - for the first time in history - on universal religious tolerance, and the separation of church and state.

Maybe what's needed in the U.S. and Europe today are three-person teams of "Abrahamic" spiritual advisors.  A priest, a rabbi, an imam, working together with troubled youth, specifically to offer a different, more humane (& accurate) vision of God.  This might be the most direct way to counteract the totalitarian/utopian propaganda of violent political jihadism.

Jesus Thoughts (9) : Election affinities

As it's Election Day here in the U.S., I will endeavor to steer this imaginary conversation toward the galaxy of spiritual election.

Cosmic oceans of ink have been spilled on the subject of monotheism, its historical/cultural development, & (recently) on the shifting, tricksterish, unaccountable personality of Yahweh as portrayed in the Bible.  I'm just going to try to articulate what strike me as the most basic & important features of this portrait.

Three features stand out :
1) this God is a Creator.  As I tried to describe early on in this thread, the Genesis story of "creation in 7 days" sets the cosmos within a solar/planetary framework of day, week and year - a way of "domesticating" the universe for Man.  The seasonal rituals of Judaism are in part, then, a kind of annual dance of celebration within this scheme.  And this feature lays the groundwork for :
 2) this God is a Savior.  This may be the most distinctive aspect of Yahweh : he enters History as an agent on behalf of the lowly & the oppressed (saving the Hebrews from exile and oppression in Egypt : leading them to their Promised Land).  The Bible is in this sense an epic, quasi-historical chronicle - a "transgressive" mix-up of genres (theology, history, poetry).  Which leads to the third, fateful characteristic :
3) this God is Universal.  The texts of the prophets make two great claims in the latter portions of the Bible : first, that Yahweh is the God of all things and all people, who has called the Jews to be a "priestly nation", offering worship and sacrifice for all nations; and second, that the Messiah promised through Moses is coming, at some future time, to complete the salvation of Israel and the whole world.

When, firstly, the Bible portrays a personal (though at the same time invisible, ineffable) God, who intervenes in history in order to establish his elect - his chosen people - for the purposes of world salvation - and then, secondly, declares through his prophets that he will send his Messiah - the combination of these two elements lays the ineluctable groundwork for the appearance of one who will claim that mantle, bring it to fruition (the Messiah).  The Messiah, as the personal "representative" of a personal God, is what you might call "the elect of the elect" : one can imagine the wonder, unease and tumult that such a claim would unleash at any time or place.

I want to go back to the 2nd of the three original characteristics of Yahweh for a moment, since the Messiah is, again, presenting an enactment of salvation.  The Hebrew "God as Savior" is distinct from other gods and religions in that, rather than being welded into a hierarchical, authoritarian structure of cultural power (say the Egyptian or Assyrian sacred kings), Yahweh is the God of the lowly, the poor & the oppressed : he challenges, undermines, and overthrows kings and empires on behalf of a universal spiritual relation between every person and his or her Creator.  We need to underline this distinctive quality of the Bible (pointed out memorably by Eric Auerbach in his masterwork, Mimesis) : here even the great kings and priests of Israel (Moses, David, Solomon...) are delineated in all their comical human weakness and imperfection - as wholly dependent on the grace of their saving God.

One of the implications of this egalitarian emphasis is that it short-circuits, again, the official mediation of "sacred rulers" (priests or kings), who would "authorize" the relation between human persons and God.  The barrier is beginning to be broken down.  But the radical claim of Jesus : to be the Messiah himself, to be, in fact, "one with the Father" - coexistent with the eternal Spirit of God - completely dissolves that barrier of mediating authority.  The personal God has manifested in person : the circle has come round.  Man and woman - persons - made "in the image of God" have been set in a contextual frame of earthly time and space (of history) which incarnates, embodies, this abstract ratio (Logos).  The spiritual relation between God and Man has been simultaneously universalized and personalized.  The "God of slaves and servants" has appeared fully embodied, as Isaiah predicted, "in the form of a servant" : but in this lowly approach (through suffering), Jesus serves by opening the cosmic door : the "Way" which unites the cosmic Source with the "children of God", and the children with each other.

Many of the early Christians suffered persecution and martyrdom as they traveled through the Roman Empire proclaiming this new "kingdom" of God.  But a pivotal change took place when, in a.d. 313, Emperor Constantine ended the suppression of Christian worship.  The Church, especially in the East, gradually became aligned with the authority of the State; while in the West, the decline of the Empire and the social disorder caused by the barbarian invasions forced the Church to take on many of the former responsibilities of government; bishops oversaw the safety and welfare of local communities.  The development of the Byzantine theocracy and medieval feudalism not only re-established archaic forms of mediating authority between the person and God; they also set in motion fateful changes in the relationship between Christians and Jews.  What had formerly been a matter of polemic and religious debate, became a rule of enforcement and discrimination (once Christianity became aligned with the power of the State).  The destiny of this fateful divide unfolded catastrophically in the 20th century, when malevolent Nazism exploited ancient religious divides and social enmities, the deep & poisoned well of anti-semitism.

The original message to Man is direct, without mediation of any earthbound authority.  It is a personal spiritual invitation to believe and understand.  Roger Williams (of Rhode Island) - who called himself a "seeker" - is the great saint of this principle, which he termed "soul liberty."  Williams' Rhode Island colony is considered the first government in history founded on an explicit separation of church and state.

I feel a curious personal connection with this particular story, since I was born on May 29, 1952, & thus celebrated my first birthday exactly 500 years after the fall of the Byzantine Empire (the conquest of Constantinople, 5.29.1453).