when the players are packing up

OFF PLYMOUTH

In the beginning was the Word, &… there is

never an end to the writing of books…

the Gospel according to Borges.

Ouroboros (in a whirl of discourse).

Hamlet with Mousetrap shattering the frame

cannot escape his web.

The python in the grass… aye

there’s the rub (poison in the game).

& yet a fresh wind flows off Plymouth

of a morning… Mayflower

or Normandie.  Your

sister-dove Hermione fluttered her moth-

wings, molted to monarch, starry swallowtail;

the Constitution of your dream

became a Greek trireme (☧)

shrouded in sunny spray like fiery hail.

& at the end of the song, & the late Romance

when the players are packing up

when the ferris wheel slows to a stop

& flickering stars turn in remote silence

then the word grows simple   salt

shines in its Voronezh barrel

your father Truth walks parallel

beside you   & from a dim-lit vault

in that Ravenna sepulcher, a Jordan

river-god accompanies the Dove

the Baptist solemnizes Love

on Earth   anoints a lowly serving-man

4.23.20

the clay wheel of America

HARLORN NINT

The tiny Russian church on Franklin Avenue

like an Easter toy box

– St. Pantaleimon – is

slowly, slowly, expanding in size (cinnamon-blue

eggshell transept… more light from East).

& this is Sirin-Nabokov’s birthday;

my mother’s interest led me

to find him too; Pnin, Pale Fire, a kind of yeast

for hilarious risings into Harlorn Nint

(you sense what he meant).  &

never mind, supercilious gent,

that I myself am bumptious Pantaloon –

(hint, hint).  Her ocarina loon-call

from Petersburg bridge

stays here, with me; the edge

has never left my raven-knife; Hope’s all.

We saw the Pantaleon window, painting light

across the massive maze

at Chartres.  He was

a Nicomedian healer-martyr, “all-compassionate”;

the tromping Emperor (sick Pantalone

himself) despised his expertise.

Some judgement-grave (not nice)

whorls in a spiral from Big Muddy Zone;

the clay wheel of America is heavy

as concrete.  I set my seal

across him swamp-gray dollar bill –

the eye of Providence over the levy

*

dealt by Pharaoh.  Each eye shall be

flooded with Cairo salt

when Black Elk’s figure 8

echoes (6 ways) Ravenna’s quay Rhody.

& then the Isis-eye of that palm-print

curls into acorn coracle…

green glint of dovecote-oracle

(Ionian emerald, honey-gold & mint)

when two wheels meld in one almond

& a blood-red waxen overlay

(the shattering of JFK)

molts Newport ships to ancient Trebizond.

I set my seal there, in a double ring

where the canoe binds equilibria

– Gateway curving to Cahokia

& up & down, from Delta to the spring.

It is a Janus-face – past & future

reconciled there, pain

& hope.  Because the vin

et pain of his free-will suture

like that flint beak of Mandelstam, reaching

into the wound, to heal

will reconcile Love & the Real

with a Redemption already achieved (teaching

of Cullmann, as in Pushkin & Scriabin).

& so the grail-stone of the eucharist

whence the 4 Eden-streams will burst

marks twain upon our Mississippi spin.

4.22.20

only an echo of Jerusalem

SPEECH IMPEDIMENT

Uncanny quiet over the face of the earth

when a plague wind blows

like a Sabbath no one chose.

All the crumpled greed, the burnt-up wrath.

The painter paints, the poet bodies forth

rehearsals of embottled ships.

Righteous Ironsides in death-grips,

waves of evil crashing each wake-froth.

We recall the speech impediment of Moses,

his lame stuttering.

The stubborn mule, his bawling;

how the moth anticipates his metamorphoses.

The beard of flame, the copper serpent…

apotropes for lamb

muzzled to kingdom come –

the mute goodness, whose light is spent

in painful denouements of selfless love.

We know these weary nurses

of the commonweal.  Sursum corda

you sweet Cordelias, sent from above.

Amid stark silence of a vacant Mass

my murmurs of a restoration

seem almost abomination.

You must judge what ought to come to pass.

These incoherent old man’s mutterings.

Only an echo of Jerusalem

to come.  Your Jubilee, I AM –

brilliant integrity of all good things.

We hold these truths to be self-evident –

Williams' Carta (so fair,

kind, true).  Coke’s tender care

breathing to Providence (love’s fundament).

4.21.20

chaired in the adamant of Time

WISDOM-BENCH

He was muttering in his sleep the whole time.

Of things seen & unseen,

emblems of earth & heaven – like

a man in his grave, waiting for his bones to rhyme

again.  His friend Hobo came from Ohio

whistling Carl Sandburg tunes,

Vachel Lindsay refrains;

his duds were dusty, raggedy, his health so-so;

he only loved the calm of the constant River

& the wide distant plains

& the ache in his heart.  Pains

of hard living made him smile (it goes on forever).

He himself was an old Yankee man.

Some Quaker dream tilted his mind

to the redemption of a world unkind,

& mad with rage – a providential plan.

The dream came out of West Branch

one fine day – the black marble

of Isis (planted at the Memorial)

a kind of emblem for her Wisdom-Bench

chaired in the adamant of Time, as Walt

declared.  & we are Hagia Sophia

with a million eyes, maybe… a sigh

instilled by otherworldly grace.  A bolt

of lightning from the Thunderbird.  Thus

Wisdom is justified in all her children –

settled on her lap of twinkling obsidian

beneath the steady circling of milky stars.

4.20.20

part of the main

HEARTH-FIRE

I stepped outside of the quarantine

early this morning (one quiet

crystalline April moment).

A mourning dove, sequestered in a pine

nearby, was practicing, solo (adagio

con molto sentimento d’affetto).

& therefore do not send to know

for whom the bell tolls – Adios, amigo.

We don’t hear them much now, here

as once in Rhode Island.

& it’s hard to comprehend

how time-space telescopes into the mirror

(O my clay-rimmed, worm-riddled heart

& soul)… yet her melancholy

plaint echoes, in me

the solitude that ripens all my art.

We do not belong just to ourselves.

We are part of the main.

I am a half-hitch in a seine

flung from an ark, whose kelson delves

across the Black Sea of the universe.

Borne by embattled star-murmurs,

this pressure on the king spurs

martyrs to out-run the royal curse –

so Socrates & Tommy More, Jesus

absolve the men who killed them;

so their normative love-law anthem

sighs out warm fire into cold sacrifice.

4.19.20

the distinct end of poetry

V-WAKE

The distinct end of poetry is beauty.

& beauty is wholeness, radiance

& harmony, per Stephen Dedalus

– out of Aquinas (Aristotle too, maybe).

Beauty, rounding on itself… dimensional

& resonant.  Unlike the trodden

thoroughfare of explanation,

abstraction (utilitarian, impersonal)

& then Truth stands there, facing you –

smiling, breathing! – the mimesis

resolves at its moral crisis – the

peripeteia of heroine & hero flow through

& it’s all too real, this thunderstorm

in your heart – when Lear

& Cordelia meet again (in fear

& trembling) at the obliteration of all form

all kindly grace, all courtesy & charity

beneath tromping beast-breath

& mincing m’carnal serpent-teeth

– until you hear the tingle of the mercy-

bell (so slight, so bright, so still).  So

I would defend the poets’ cause;

manifest those subtle laws

(human & divine) by which they fulfill

their milky icons, walking through stone

as in an Easter season

at the Great Sabbath Even

when Mary goes to the tomb (afraid, alone)

                         *

& meets the shy gardener (Ever-Living One).

So I would elicit my own

testimony (prodigal son) – &

body forth a pregnant Henry maze, spun

from that seedy Emperor in mid-July

who loved Our American Cousin –

swan-diving into Frisco basin,

branding his heart with fiery Never-Die.

& under the aegis of that orthodox St. Maximus

I would retrace the delicate brushwork

Marsden Hartley (in his Moby Dick

memorial) marked 33 – sea-terminus

or Ocean-birth, Jonah or sepulcher…

black hole or vanishing point,

centering thin, small (paint-

brush) horsehair… your Jerusalem Chamber.

Everything resolving now, in the master play

when Prince Hal meets his father

– O recreant & fickle feather!

Arrogant betrayer!  This your day, boy –

clasp your virulent & blood-soaked crown!

For the rêve-songe in the river-

valley of our May-King quivers

in a V-wake – groans with a birth – your own!

When the Eagle of mute Joachim molts into Dove

& Mammon-prone America restores

Columbia – & when the sun soars

in the oak-bole, & Cordelia mimes… LOVE.

4.17.20