NICHOLAS OF CUSA, SAILING HOME


    
                            Never suppose an inventing mind as source
   Of this idea nor for that mind compose
   A voluminous master folded in his fire.


 
 
 
He was on board ship, sailing from Byzantium
when the moment of illumination came, a flash
of light that staggered him (as happened to Paul
on the Damascus road): when he understood
there can be no ratio, no means of comparison,
no middle term, between the finite and the infinite.
Thus, since God is infinite, we have no means
of knowing Him (invisible, incommensurate); so,
as Paul says, If any man thinks he knows anything,
he has not yet known as he ought to know.
It follows then, for Nicholas (De Docta Ignorantia)
our proper study is, to understand our ignorance.

 
I think of him in Constantinople, looking up
into that limpid sphere, that massive cupola,
Hagia Sophia: gazing back at those gigantic eyes:
Christos Pantokrator, hovering there, magnificent
in lapis lazuli, translucent marble.  He would 
have known that, even then, all-conquering armies
of the Pasha were encroaching on the city gates;
had swept away, already, the last flimsy shreds 
of once-almighty Christian Rome – history itself 
grown incompatible with that triumphant
image glaring down.

     
                         I cannot know You
as You are.  But when I think of you
I think of Bruegel panoramas: there’s Mankind
(a little, furry, muddy, peasant thing – yet
at home upon the earth – its caretaker – self-
conscious, quick – inventive builder, gardener –
blind governor – your tarnished mirror);
and, as he painted in The Road to Calvary,
you hide amongst us, suffering servant, near
the center of our troubles: buried in the crowd:
one of the roughs (disguised, in camouflage, 
unknown).

Jonathan is lifting quatrains. Careful, JM, it's addictive. I am just now recovering from LQPS (Long Quatrain Poem Syndrome), with the help of LSM&WA (no, that's not a railroad, hobos - it's Little Sonnet Men & Women Anonymous).

I am in recoverevery. I have written 12 short poems in 2 weeks, & have posted them all here, for your delectation, dear Desdemona (et al.). I like blogs. If I publish a book someday, so be it, it will be your nickel. For now, I am here, an inexplicable anomaly on the fringe of the inter-planetary system, like Abolone, only more quietuded, dudes & duendas.

School of Phlogiston. I like it!

There should be as many schools of poetry as there are schools of thought.

School of Aptitude Testing
School of Bismarck, ND
School of Schadenfreude
School of Cassandra-Like Madness & Insight
School of Tired
School of Insincerity
School of Total Guilt (Anti-Confessional School)
School of Former Athletic Program Directors
School of Admiration for Kipling & the Canadian Mounties
School of Angry Web Nerd Po-Ethics
School of Ill-Defined Lust, Vanity, etc.
School of Dress-Up
School of Amateur Poets Who Have Admirable Vocations In Other Areas of Social Amelioration
School of Lovers of Folk Music and Howard Dean Who Are Not Bald Or Gray (3 people maximum)
School of Arts Management Professionals
School of I Wish I Had a Better Apartment Poetics
School of School

AN UNFINISHED TALE BY BORGES*

 
     
                             O Domine, suavitas omnis dulcedinis
                             posuisti in libertate mea, ut sim, si
                             voluero mei ipsius.**   – Nicolaus Cusanus

 
This tale depicts a young man named Borges,
terminally ill, slowly going blind, unable to
decide how to spend his last day.  Should
he go outside before the sun goes down,
and lie in the sweet grass one more time,
and gaze up at clouds, passing slowly
across the face of the sky?  Or should he
open the book he’s been meaning to read
(the green volume, waiting so patiently
there by his bed)?  He begins to read.
The tale depicts a young man named
Borges, lying on his deathbed, unable to
decide whether to go outside, or continue
reading.  Finally, the young man sets
aside his book, unfinished.  The light is
going dim, golden.  Trees are murmuring.
Soft air moves the curtains by the open
hospital window, next to his bed.  Borges’
eyes are tired; he can no longer see... so
he shifts himself, slowly, aching, from bed
to wheelchair, forces the wheels to turn,
and rolls (wobbling, slowly) toward the door


 
 
 
* In the Spring 1943 issue of the Buenos Aires literary quarterly Jovanista,
a letter, purportedly written by J.L. Borges, signed “Julio Ciego”, referred
sarcastically to an unwritten (oral?) Borges parody, titled “An Unfinished
Tale by Borges,” performed one evening at the popular Café Manana by 
the poet Ricardo Cesped. 

 
** O Lord, the sweetness of all sweetness, you have given me freedom
to belong to myself, if I will. 

yes, I'm very stubborn; not yet ready to give up on this Johnny Milton thing. here's a revised edition.

ROGER WILLIAMS

   
                 the government shall be upon his shoulder
                                             – Isaiah


 
His statue steps off a cliff at Prospect Park
into the bow of an uncarved canoe –
invisible ship of state, that will embark
buoyant from here, to shape the world anew.
One civil concord, one unswerving keel,
one course whose wake’s dead reckoning is true:
beyond temporal things – in the eternal Real –
the Lord alone will judge: no human lords will do.

 
Political tyrants, pious hypocrites,
religious fabricators, fog machines,
here magnanimity outruns your wits,
here freedom’s lantern plumb line wins
the day.  Away with your burnt offerings;
speak truth, do right: these only shall please.

deleted sonnet posted earlier. old-fashioned, bombastic.

CROCUS TIME
 
 
The purple crocus with the golden cross
my wife uncovered on a cloudy Sunday
raking off the winter leaves, is tiny:
its petals are translucent baby-flesh,
the infant of the season.  As the clouds
roll on, uneasy, overhead, as chilly
air shuffles off dried-up debris,
this little fellow, like a piping clover
(bird, song, flower) feeds on sunlight.

 
A trunk line rumbles just around the corner.
You hear the thunder herd of SUVs,
truck honks, the slow-but-steady roar
of fossil fuels (piped from Saudi sands)
closeting the planet in an overheated,
stuffy greenhouse.  And it seems to me
Detroit and Riyadh aren’t so far apart:
one full of young men burning up the earth,
the other, with the same, burning for heaven.

 
Oases' rich mirages lure you, prince:
whether you’re the bad son of the West
or Sinbad of the East, the same vague form
(reclining figure, in a flying cave –
pure lustrous Paradise, or golden car)
embodies your untouchable desire,
unlimited, immaculate... and guides
you down the subtle, crooked corridors
where guns and butter (slippery) coincide.

 
Daydreams of the desert, smoking wheels
of would-be cowboys, fantasizing sheiks,
complacencies of conquest, opulence...
strangely, I sense the weather changing
at the pivot of the earth (cold passing).
Sad that so much innocence must die
before all crocuses and careful gardeners
(meek tenders at the mortal junction –
earth and heaven) come into their own.

this was originally written in a comment box over at Kasey's, but I repost it here in honor of AWP :

The learned felines settled in their cribs,
and sniffed the weighty tomes, all catnip-scented,
and flipped the pages with their five-clawed nibs,
and purred in praise, or growlingly dissented,
but mostly yawned and stretched their flexive limbs
or curled into tight balls, and snoozed away:
so went the Conference on Cat Prose & Poems
for several nights (they slept right through the day).

 
And all was well, until cats A and B
(I shan't reveal their names) began to yowl
in heat of anger (not the other kind);
they spilled right out of the C.C.P.P.
and took their catfight, cheek by jowl,
into the alley... oh... never mind.

BASILIQUE SAINTE-MADELEINE





 

 

It is because of the inexpressible

in the end, that the world is resolved

(or resolves itself) into poetry;



 

only the large mirror (or the small)

is chaste, is just enough.  Disinterested

as gray pebble, humble word,



 

like a child chasing after his father,

gazing up at her mother, guilelessly

the poem rhymes with its theme.



 

So you attune yourself to sound

and imagery, just as you stand

before a Bruegel panorama:



 

just as Bruegel too stood motionless

while horsehair flickered (lightly,

across canvas) a world to life.



 

And these twin mirrors form a node

or square of light – a vanishing point –

where your heart goes out



 

to the intrepid harmony (Rostropovich

alone, at night, in the cold basilica

in Vezelay.  Wooden cello,



 

catgut strings, horsehair bow... and

Bach sails up into the stony choirs

forever and ever – inexpressible



 

communion, woven

of earth and heaven, laced – a unison

of heartfelt fingers, with – infinity) – 

Once again I've revised a line in a poem posted on March 23rd ("A Rest Note"). Back again to an earlier draft. I think this is a pretty interesting poem, despite some weak spots. A good example of nostalgic echoing of obsolete styles, as Ron would say.

wonder-word from Falstaff : kickshaws - meaning "trifles". From the french, quelques choses.

Meanwhile, up at the Hotel, JL reads a Christian Book.

Reading Henry IV (1 & 2) past couple days. Following up on yesterday's comment:

Shakespeare is intent on thematizing the inescapable riddles & conundrums of lived experience. Thus these plays I'm reading hinge throughout on surprise, the overturning of expectation (most prominently, Prince Hal's overturning his playboy reputation, "to mock the expectation of the world").

His deep contemplation of experience renders his plays close to infinitely interpretable, infinitely accessible. Thus if there are any secret or hidden aspects to them - hermetic in the true sense - these are quite minor effects (topical references hidden, say, out of political caution), compared to the larger, thematic moral mysteries which his characters enact.

I don't think there's a hermetic (in the sense of trobar clus) bone - nay, fingernail, sirrah - in his body.

Ron Silliman argues that the originality of the more original "post-avant" poets wears the mantle of trobar clus - total "engagement", poesie der poesie, as opposed to more watered-down or populist efforts. He's saying that the really good poets perform the really hot stuff for their peers, for the cognoscenti; no one else will get it.

Nice responses in the comment box from Larry Sawyer & Michael Peverett, who brought up Parzival.

My motto is : Ars Est Celare Artem (Art Is To Hide Art). Poetry can exhibit complexities of communication and motive, but hermeticism is not a requirement for their accomplishment.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a direct and reciprocal relationship between originality (&/or technical innovation) and reaching wide audiences. Sometimes. Not always - think of Gongora or Mallarme. But sometimes. Think Whitman, Shakespeare, Dante...

AT CARATUNK


 
 
Beside a spring pond
limpid as Corot
waiting, I found
oak, birch, willow
fed heart grown fond.

 
Some blind bond
drowned long ago;
some old wound
whispering low
in branches, wind.

 
(Signals they send
we don't understand.
Seedlings, sounding
every season's end.)

 
Over flat land
spry flocks row;
under hard ground
small seeds pry
off stiff shells, rend

 
frozen sedge, wend
green stems through.
In an endless round
I'd lose myself (so
into a circle bend).

Mike, here's Wallace Stevens on the elusive "graininess" (vs. English euphony) I was speaking of the other day:

There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

(from "The Poems of Our Climate") In fact this seems a "perfect" (& perfectly ambiguous) comment on the free/form discussion.

A REST NOTE


 
 
Pale sunlight through a dusty windowpane,
where I look out into the yard again
and see the clutter of autumn’s debris –
dead limbs, dead leaves, the trash-gray lees
of winter’s end.  Neglected garden, we
(you and I) might be allowed, eventually
to join an orchestral cacophony –
tuning scratchy instruments, to play
(in March) a movement of Spring Symphony.

 
Progress is measured with a marching score
(more goods, more jobs, more money, more, more)
twirling beneath peak presto movements -
start-ups, mergers, acquisitions, rents,
growth and health, longevity and youth,
success, celebrity, sway, sexiness and couth.
Yet while a jumpy world sings On the Go
nature still murmurs its adagio –
the tuning of a sphere, stately and slow.

 
How human nature’s own modes of delay
– aloof indifference, arrogant display –
jar (so dismally) with hopeful sounds!
So heedless nouveau riche playgrounds
putresce in battered, grimy neighborhoods,
and senators engraft fake common goods
to feed the fancies of pet lobbyists,
and contrite truth upon a scaffold twists
while hatred simmers and the Lie insists.

 
Across the chilly and ramshackle soil
spring stumbles, tentative (a limping girl
- Siberian, perhaps).  Slowly, slowly,
dandelion and skunk cabbage, lowly
grasses, meek and tender buds, emerge.
At night, above some vast, dark verge
of regal evergreens, a new moon floats;
you hear a rainfall, there, of slower notes;
and stillness in the creaking of the boats.

just saw falcon floating outside my window.

This one's a little better, maybe. [To illustrate earlier comments today: note how (not really so) archaic setting plays into archaizing style.]

THE CRUSADER'S LAMENT


 
 
Dispatched to save a fruitful farming town
resembling those of our own lovely shires
assaulted by fierce nomads, like to drown
their dry-baked jealousies in others' tears
I sent for reinforcements to its chief
who answered me, “Thy master is delayed
(by falconry) from bringing swift relief:
I can do nought: may God come to thine aid!”

 
Now raging shadows all around my tent
merge with my shadow and the nightly dark
and terror and indifference are blent
in my own blood.  Lordly denials dent
my helmet, and the skull beneath... O mark
thee, saint and infidel – here’s devil’s work!

"Aha!" I said, thinking I could write
a sonnet in no time.  How wrong
can you get!  I knew it wasn't right
to start this way!  Time's passing,
too - I have to finish this before night-
fall, I guess - that's the hard part - thing
is, it's getting worse by the minute!
This is terrible!  Wait - phone's ring-

 
ing - "Hello?  Mike?  Jonathan?  Who is -"
hung up.  Somebody trying to interrupt
my sonnet, here - hup - now the cat's
whining - sorry, got to go and let
her in - let the warm cat (overheated)
in!  And now my lovely song's completed.

(6 utterly wasted min.)

Think, for further example, of the fey use of traditional form & diction in Ashbery, occasionally, or Jennifer Moxley, for that matter. One could look at this as an option chosen by poets for whom neither obvious traditionalism nor forthright modernist statement quite meet the desired social & political stance. But one could as well imagine the older forms being reworked for the achievement of quite different themes, quite different effects of tone & attitude.

This is what I mean by the unpredictability (& subtlety) of individual practice.