To the Woman I Love

How many years I've loved you, who cannot return
my love, how many tears have wet my broken bed,
like seeds sown in the darkness, where no stem is born,
but where the breath that speaks of love says love is dead,
and sounds like silence, and like depth, and solitude,
that faintly go and then as faintly come around
again, like silent blackbirds in a winter wood,
like violins and voices stilled and void of sound,

until there's no more counting, no more new amount
or number, and we just let go the hem of time
that shrinks and shrivels in the pitch it was made of,
and heart and mind forget what it had meant to count,
and can't conceive the point of meter or of rhyme,
and do not understand at all a word like love.

12.12.2012

Reading Walcott

For Andrew Mandelbaum


When this man writes white almonds, I pretend I'm blind
as a bat that's lying dreaming on a book of Homer,
so I can go on reading, in my head a number
of voices ricocheting, a deliquescent grind
of genuine island lilts and one that's less refined:
my landlocked cracker mimick. No. We must remember
the almonds. White, he said. Alright. I see a comber
Curling in, on top a watermelon rind-

white froth of foam that seems to want to settle down
upon an arc of shoreline where I see together
a woman and a man in daylight sharp as a diamond.
Her hair is dark and flying loose, skin cinnamon-brown,
half-naked, and him the same; they laugh and love the weather.
They wave me over to them, toss me a sweet white almond.

Ballad of Morning Star

I got up sick this morning, Lord,
  it always starts that way,
and found that my old lady
  and my hound dog ran away.
My landlord said, "boy, pony up
  for two months now, or split."
O Lord, you know just what I got,
  but I'm not sayin' it.

I took a bus on into town,
  to find a paying job,
a hard-ass boss just up and said
  I was a no-good slob;
I almost wrung his scrawny throat,
  so angry I could spit,
O Lord you know just what I got,
  but I'm not sayin' it.

I thought about an old guitar
  that I had put away.
I bought it as a strapping lad,
  but could not hardly play.
I'd pluck and strum all night but still
  I'd turn a song to shit,
O Lord, you know just what I got,
  but I'm not sayin' it.

So in a filthy bar I sat down
  with a glass of scotch
to sum up all my good and bad
  and wound up with a botch.
My Daddy said in days long past
  a good man would not quit,
But Lord you know what I still got,
  though I'm not sayin' it.

A sharp young man was sitting tall,
  just down that sticky bar,
who drank out of a shot glass
  with a hand as black as tar;
and with a grin that shadow-man
  shook up my soul a bit:
(O Lord, that man knows what I got,
  though I'm not sayin' it.)

"I'm known as Morning Star," that man said,
  with a frightful hiss,
"though I'm as dark as night and cold
  as any warlock's piss."
His words slid out as chill as mist
  from an unholy pit.
O Lord I saw him plain as day,
  but would not own to it!

"Up in your room, dirty with dust,
  you stow an old guitar,
go find it now and brush up on
  your chops", said Morning Star,
"Tonight is inspiration;
  and tomorrow, bang, a hit!"
O Lord, I saw him through and through,
  but did not own to it!

Tonight I took that old guitar and,
  good Lord, how it rang!
what chords my hands could fashion now,
  how gloriously I sang!
But, Lord, I took that old guitar
  and, in a pious fit,
I cast it down and with an oath said,
  "I'm not playin' it!"

My room got hot, a ghostly moonlight
  through a window sash
lit up that old guitar which now
  was but a mound of ash;
and, nigh but out of sight, old Morning Star
  spat, "I admit,
Your will is strong, your soul is God's,
  and I'm not touching it."

And soon a stormy wind struck up that,
  blowing hard and fast,
wild as a pack of jackals braying
  with a furious blast,
took up that ash and had it spinning
  quick as a hot drill bit...
  ...Still got an old harmonica,
        but I ain't too fond of it.


2004

Windfall

The truth is, I cannot get into the garden
nor come to the sea. Yes, I have been in gardens
and stood at the shores of oceans, but we're speaking
of fictive things, my haunting metaphors.
Nothing has been resolved, nor anything gained
outside of gratuitous pleasure. Now summer
gains its foothold, burns the desert, burns
the stunted hills that here must serve as mountains.

My second son has made his rebellious yawp
and squirms in his mother's arms, suckling
at swollen breasts that conquered and kept me. Time
slides onward, oiled by motion, a measure
and not a thing itself. We should discuss concretes,
before I bury us in a heap of abstractions.

I stand in windfall, the scattered detritus
and still pristine remains of a feast of giants,
drunk of nectar fermenting for ages, sated
of left ambrosia, a cur on a banquet of crumbs.

But there we have it again, not one existent
in that quatrain. Where should we begin?
Begin. The wind sifts round the house, sighs
at windows, knuckles at doors. There is only one door.

Blinds quiver, cheaply manufactured, cracked;
the bougainvillea covers half the driveway:
Michael's legacy. A litter of toys and garbage
spills from the garage. Is anything accomplished?
A threshold crossed? The bougainvillea is real.


June 18-19, 2001

Marriage

To know a woman, you can only wait,
in hope that time will bring some revelation;
and may your patience and your will be great.

The smallest word might move her to a state
of blank disgust, or wide-eyed indignation.
To know a woman, one can only wait

until those sudden, sullen moods abate.
In the meantime, you'll get an education,
if both your patience and your will be great.

Think hard, lips sealed; and join in no debate
you cannot win. In your determination
to know a woman, you can only wait,

for a quick tongue will trip, and seal your fate,
and even a head shake is a provocation;
but if your patience and your will be great

you will not argue, or recriminate,
and find it's mostly sheer humiliation
to know a woman. You must learn to wait,
and may your patience and your will be great.



December 30, 2003

Fragment from The Passing of Flatus (1)

Long lost Elizabethan drama, attributed to Shakespeare


Act one. Scene one. A field.



TREMENS:
He is most foul. Behind our noxious general
Have I in battle marched, in discipline
Unmatched, in loyalty uncompromised;
Most honored of our Roman soldiery;
Yet liefer would I die upon a sword hilt
Than stand as his lieutenant in Valhalla.



SLAPPY:
We like two paddles wielded by an oarsmen
In sweet concordance jointly wend one way.
Here in these shadows let us like two thieves
Concur in means by which to dispossess
Our legion of this windy general.
Tremens, we must incite some mutiny,
And be it lawless and unmilitant:
Some crafty and satanic subterfuge
Wherewith to weaken Flatus and to change
Him from his armor to the less applauded
Costume of a rude civilian.
Let's have a blacksmith's apron round his paunch,
Or sullied vestment of a scullery knave.
He is too noisome and malodorous
To don the raiment of a general.



TREMENS:
Your words have weight to make the burden light
That like a stone hast lain upon my heart
Since first these machinations of revolt
Were whispered here between thy lips and mine.
Slappy, let none have wisdom of our words
Lest our ignoble and unkind designs
Bring disarray or disrepute to Rome.
For we are Rome. Our lips and tongues are Rome;
Our hearts flush with the civil blood of Rome;
Our swords are honed upon the plinths of Rome.
Flatus, albeit of prolific scents,
Of sickly smells and sour obnoxious stinks,
I say, this fuming, this effusive Flatus,
Is also Rome; his bairns, his wife, are Rome.
Therefore let caution join us. We are Roman...



SLAPPY:
Tremens, the horse you beat unmercifully
Now runs upon the sunny plains of Heaven.
Drive not thy boot against the dormant flesh
That, lifeless, draws the fly into the ditch.
Caution shall be our sole conspirator.
Upon this point we stand in such accord
As needs no poetry to give it strength.
In darkness, like two devils in Abaddon,
We whisper, making shadows lisp demonic.
The night hath sympathy, and bringeth soft winds
To mute our sibilant, serpentine connivings. (Rubs hands together)



1999

Fragment from The Passing of Flatus (2)

Long lost Elizabethan drama, attributed to Shakespeare



Act two. Scene three. A field.


SLAPPY:
In sober celebration of the flesh,
In frequent venting of concupiscence,
Make sportive tricks, lascivious caperings;
To truncate suffering, to kill desire,
To turn the cold valves of hard chastity,
To flush the chilled-fast vein with amorous fever,
Fill eyes with ardor, lips with wantonness;
To linger kissing at the coronet
That crowns with pink the sweet unsettled fat
Soft-covered in white silk: to lift, to weigh
The supple globes, to bring an agitation,
To set them dancing, pendulously bellied;
To brace the rider as she sits a' saddle
Rocking moist in fever, eyes full-lustered
As if made bright with wine: but ne'er have spirits
Kindled those orbs to blaze with such wild fire,
Nay, but thy johnson, Flatus, doth the trick,
That tickler of a lady's nether parts,
That prickling rogue, that bold up-popping jack,
That meddling serpent: he it is that maketh
Etnas of those soft-tufted mounds of Venus.


FLATUS:
Of all the fancies that a god designs
And plants within the gardens of men's brains,
Can any be less sensible than Love?
Pernicious little elf! No viler cherub
Did from Olympia, like foul weather, come.


SLAPPY:
Equestrienne, she vaunts her cloven haunches
And ruts upon the rigid post: she slides
And tugs and urges with her slippery cleft.
Her lips she bites, and thro' hard-clenched teeth
Makes a licentious and unsyllabled moan.
A moment's pause: her opulent rump she rests,
Now richly radiant with damp scented musk.
Anon she chomps the bit, is fain to ride.
Cry "tally-ho!" and beat the bushes, liege; but whither
Goest Raynard? He hast hied him to that furrow,
That steeped crevasse, that gorge of living blood,
And butts his nose in darkness, like a mole,
And tunnels further in the teeming trench.


FLATUS:
Of all the mad dreams which a man invents
And sows among the pastures of his heart
There can be none of greater detriment
Than that obnoxious malady called 'Love'.
'Tis a disease which thrives upon his blood
And rages in his veins like potent drink.
It makes a man a fool with tongue unloosed
Who in the street cries nightly like an owl,
"Tu-whit! To-whoo!", who in full wretchedness
Leans under ladies' windows, eyes uprolled,
His hands upon a full wide-bottomed lute,
Who with rude breath, wrought of the stench of love,
Sings some cracked tune to win him but a kiss!


SLAPPY:
Our rider, perched high in her wonted seat,
She gallops on apace, now all unkempt
And covered with a sheen of salty sweats;
Her breasts, like fruits grown soft and over-ripe,
Tumescent, turgid with excess of juice,
Depend and sway. Now in thy fetching fingers
Gather good harvest, hold, palpate, and press;
Stretch toes to the horizon. Hot purgation
Cleanseth the vein: froth of the seeded spate,
Spat foam of expiation, pulsed expulsion
Of lecherous lust. From such brief violence
Is wrung a season of tranquility,
Of tender-taken breath, of mellowed blood,
That tempers now the chambers of the heart.
Now johnson nods his head; he curleth up
And slips into the coverlet of sleep.


FLATUS:
I say love doth engender silliness
And drives a man to ponder strange designs;
Makes him to lie supine upon a hill
And then discern wild creatures in the clouds.
Love makes a man a coward: he will leave
His sword upon his hip and bends him low
To pluck a rose, and there he stands and grins,
Comparing leaves to lips, and dreams a sonnet!


SLAPPY:
Nay, but thou wilt not hear me, liege. Wilt hear?
Nay, but thou wilt not. Liege, if it so please thee,
I'll take my leave. There is some trouble yonder,
Some noise or other.


FLATUS:
I hear nothing. Wither?


SLAPPY:
(points distractedly) Thither. (runs off, rubbing hands together)



1999

Odysseus (From the Horse's Mouth)

Hell take the ships that were exalted shapes
On the canvas of your mind's eye, heroic vessels
That crested mountainous waves, that flew
With sails full blown in wind and rain:
All finery of a poet's vision, a blind
Fireside singer who, by immaculate singing,
Held my name from oblivion and turned
My deeds to legend. Now to the ash pit alarums
And clash of shields, the brazen shouts of war,
To Acheron the blood, the bristling of swords,
The heap of bodies in the languor of death,
For here is the matter in plain speech: I sailed
And battled with man and beast, redoubtable
In valor, braved the ire of jealous gods
On land and sea, knocked pell-mell like a doll.
But this is merely prop and scenery,
Superfluous adornment, artifice.
No, when you speak of me, say that I was
A soldier, a seafaring gentleman.
Forget the empyrean lineage, forget
All talk of body's prowess, strength of sinew,
All incidental by-the-ways that gild
A common story. When you speak of me,
Recall I had a wife, a son. Say this:
He was a simple and self-centered man
Who strove for nothing but his hearth and home.



1999, or thereabouts

At Wounded Knee (revised version)

Three days, and no-one comes to close my eyes.
I am as cold and quiet as a stone
on the white ground. I wait and cannot rise.

Death steals less swiftly than a bullet flies:
the ache has time to settle in the bone.
Three days, and no-one comes to close my eyes.

Snow falls and whips; the wind still rips, and cries.
Here I remain like something broken, thrown
to the white ground. I wait, and cannot rise,

nor yet lie easy, as a dead man lies,
though surely death has claimed me for his own.
Three days, and no-one comes to close my eyes.

My spirit beats its awkward wings and tries
to take the air, but, like the snow, is blown
to the white ground. I wait and cannot rise

to charge like lightning through these winter skies
with ghosts of kin who see how still I've grown
in three days. No-one comes to close my eyes.
On the white ground I wait and cannot rise.

This is Going to Take a While (a shortened villanelle)

My love, we said that one day we'd forget
exactly how this all began, remember?
I've not forgotten. I remember. Yet,

it seems so short a time. I'd rather let
another summer pass. Let's say September,
my love, we'll choose the right day to forget?

You know that when the summer's past I get
morose and sentimental. Maybe November?
I've not forgotten. I remember. Yet,

November's dreary: half snowed-in, half wet;
a month of indecision. In December,
my love, let's choose the right day to forget.

Remember how we argued when we met?
I said it was a spark, and you, an ember.
I've not forgotten. I remember yet.

My love, we said that one day we'd forget...





8.13&27.2012

a-b-b-a

Abba O Father
a-b-b-a In Memoriam
rime scheme
I always favord

Veils
verses
Hymns
2 Him

left & right
on off
symmetry
opposites & relations

all equations
tripartite
triumverate
trio (Rush)

Dante's Divinia Commedia
in tercets
for a reason
not the caprice of man

3
Trinity
Father Son
Holy Ghost

subject. object. Whole
is
greater than the
sum of its parts

:triUnityUSA

William Wallace trans.
Hegel three-parted
system of philosophy
start with the preface

G0d is in the details
pay heed to translators, editors,
compilers, scribes, ink-
fingered

monks, friars, as Melville recommends
in the prologemena
to his masterpiece see you
learned a new word pat pat pat

halvziez

333
what is 333
geometric notation Regular 5-cell
regular convex polychora,

Schläfli symbol {3,3,3} but
something else
half of 666
nevermind, but could have

portent
what is the difficulty?
What is coming
what 

My Silent Love

It curld up in the darkness like a rose
in winter's night  its crimson petals pressd
& cleavd together & would not disclose
the secret that grew colder in its breast

It bowed its head & beads of dewdrops pearld
and glimmerd  fashiond by long fruitless years
upon its leaves  closed-fast  in silence furld
to die at last  felld by its frozen tears 




8.8.2012

Orion's Lady

Over our heads now he stands
forever alert and on guard,
be you sleeping or waking, he mans
his post in the night, silver-starred.

His Father's eye catches each sparrow
that falls, and none hide from His sight; 
Orion, your flame-feathered arrow
wards off the dark angels of night.

An archer, a soldier,
he keeps with his bow
the peace of the innocent,
sleeping below.

Armadas of unearthly galleons
pass silently through the void.
Is there but a moment for dalliance?
Can love in his heart be enjoyed?

A watcher, a warden,
he keeps with his bow
the peace of the innocent,
sleeping below.

O Where does your fair lady shine, Orion?
I've looked far and wide at the fires that flicker there,
in the farthest fields of Heaven, my eye on
the curve of her breast or the sign of her sable hair.

7.28.2012

Hymn 42

O Lord protect the innocent, whose heart

had neither time nor will to rail at Thee;

protect the infant born too late, the child

too young to grapple with Thy mystery;

protect the ignorant who never heard

tell of his Maker, and the simpleton
who heard but could not understand; forgive
the thinker in whose mind false doctrine shone

as truth, the theologian, the acute

apologist, the keen philosopher;
forgive the poet, baffled and amazed
by nature's bounty, who exalted her

without acknowledging Thy providence;

also the steward of science, who would prove
a universe without Thee. Hear me, Lord;
keep safe all these, in Thy sweet grace and love.

6.29.2012

 

Hymn 41

I hear the wind, my Lord,
rage up against my house,
like sea waves pounding shoreward;
while inside I afford
love to each friend or louse,
A rough beast slouches forward.

The casement windows shake;
storm rattles roof and rafter,
and my soul under them.
All things in the world break.
Absurd and ancient laughter
cackles near Bethlehem.

6.29.2012

Nobody's Heart

The darklashed eyes half opened,
the port-red lips half shut,
the seal of the letter broken,
the long-held secret out,

she turns with a sad pirouette,
and for a last second fancies
a clutch of fine-chinned silhouettes
of tophatted old-moneyed dandies.

So somebody thinks she's something,
Who's thinking of her as he slinks
in the shadows across the road, mumbling
and stumbling along as he thinks

that if Helen's face set off a thousand
trim-sailed fire-fighting ships,
then she'd wake the dead to carouse &
raise hell with the swell of her hips.

But her cold heart is hard and her sights
are set on the gold,
and a word's worth to her is a half-penny
sadly neglected;

and a scribbler's art is a trifle,
a rhyme is a tale twice-told,
and the name that she saw was the one
that was least expected.

 Nobody's heart gets broken
over and over again;
over and over again.

So now she knows it, he mentions
off-handedly in his own ear;
but it was with the best of intentions
that he'd made his affections clear.

Of course she was disappointed,
That Cupid's anointed dart
was once again errantly pointed
at some low-born nobody's heart.

War Party

While far behind our hearths and halls
are fire-warm and woman-rich,
the icy rain shakes down in squalls
that holler like a banshee bitch.
No giving up, no turning in,
no time to worry or wonder;
just grit your teeth and take it straight,
and shake your fist at the thunder.

With miles to go through muck and mire, 
the sickle moon rides high in the night;
a silver splinter of Heaven's fire,
a wink of God's eye, burning bright.
No time to sleep, no time to dream,
no peace for the man that wallows;
no doubt for him it will be grim
when he meets with the One that follows.

Raise your shields against the storm, boys,
Drive on, be hale and hearty;
the eyes of your women keep you warm, boys,
Ride on, as one, war party.

The hills are hard and the weather evil
but soon we'll see that dawn of gold 
that stirs our hearts and drives the Devil
back to his dark, deep-harrowed hole.
The sun will rise and bless your eyes
just when your hopes had dwindled;
and those who were slain will rise again
in the stars, their brave hearts kindled.

 

Ballad of Jack Kettle

Longshanks sat in the corner
his back against the wall,
he'd come from beyond the border
where evil had laid its pall.
You could feel the darkness on him
Like ice it burned you cold;
but the devil had never won him,
in his eye that truth was told.

A mug of ale and a tall tale
we'll have if the teller's awake and able;
but if he's gone we'll laugh till dawn
and leave some coin on the oaken table.

Betimes beer tricks a fellow
and makes his reason wink;
the man's far better off yellow
whose heart-fire comes from drink;
so up says young Jack Kettle,
armed with his bunched-up fists,
bristled with ale-born mettle,
and all of his senses dismissed:

"Stranger, I see you're bigger than me
but I reckon not half those tales are true,
that say you've spat in the devil's hat
and that he had nary a lick for you."

Remember the night Jack Kettle was pissed
and took a swing at a man and missed;
remember the tale and tell your young
what havoc comes of a wagging tongue.

Longshanks donned his kid gloves
when it came time to settle
a score that rose in a beer mug
and in the hot head of Jack Kettle;
one mop in the hand of a barmaid
sopped up the blood that was spilled
from that sawed-off wanna-be David
who was lucky he wasn't killed.

Aster

TIME

It rose up like a black ship from the sea,
that top hinge of a giant serpent-mouth,
and broke the dipping sunlight on its teeth.
The poets lobbed out ordnance from the quay:
tick-tocking iambs beat an ancient pulse
as tongue and breath were yoked in ritual;
spruce measures pattered on its hide like knells,
or, lighting in that maw, were swallowed whole.

The bottomless gullet sucked up dribbled edges
of dazzling tropes and metaphors, duets
of perfect rimes flew in a desperate volley;
but when the sunset’s dazzling pinks and oranges
gave way, and far white stars winked like shallots,
then silence blossomed in the monster’s belly.


RUSE

The poets agreed in their subterrenean nave
to write more poems in praise of monsters, though
that would not waylay Time whose tongues of snow
inexorably licked each architrave,
blew gales of slow frost on each martyred figure
frozen in glass, snuffed out their sputtering tapers,
curled up and browned the edges of their papers,
contained one acolyte in ten with rigor

mortis. And so they sank leviathans
into the mundane deeps, set basilisks
on bridges, sang out Gaudete as griffins
stormed ramparts with their wings like m‘s, or chevrons.
Mastodons rode men upon their tusks
and Jacks with bright knives divvied up the women.


SOLO

Their one goal was to keep the people guessing,
and so they delved an apsis underground,
beneath the sound of heel and radial passing,
hidden away from even their maker’s hand
that scooped out blindly with a lifer’s spoon
the earth in rinds as hard as baker’s chocolate:
a buried enclave or ulterior Camelot
where in reverberating baritone

they summoned every lusus naturae
that answered their demonic invocations:
chimera, hydra, gargoyle, cockatrice;
and yet those apples of the devil’s eye
would still, despite a thousand permutations,
confess their sire, a chafing onanist.


ASTER

He scratched his head and thought of naval ships
at war upon some master’s oily water:
the canvas flying in flames, the shredded banners,
cannons firing billowy mushroom shapes.
He realized he’d given up his secrets:
he couldn’t see it straight, the ding an sich,
but twice removed he rifled through the pockets
of those to whom his beggaring lines were schtick,

the junk and jetsam of a live half-lived,
the stale bilgewater of a secondhander.
And so he rallied all those bogeymen
with which his suicidal brain was gravid
and watched his tiny reputation founder:
one title less for his memorial stone.


ABADDON

Despite it all he winds down fractured stairs
turning wide-eyed in cloudy dream spirals
that might be akin to those legendary gyres
he heard tell of. The yattering tongues of bells
still flood the echoing dark with o‘s like obols,
where mouths that never kiss still omm in ovals.

But he knew that before the poem started,
that it was never the brighter thresh of sleighbells
or happier clicks and clacks of jacks or marbles
that drew him inexorably to his inverted
Pleasure Dome, his topsy-turvy Eldorado,
mock-gothic and profane basilica,
darkling Atlantis, gloomy Shangri-la:
another dupe to his dear Amontillado.


CHTHONIC

There he scanned the breadth of his brain’s horizon
like one plunged headlong in the ultimate pit:
some vengeful Lucifer or madcap Urizen
droning his self-obsessed magnificat -

while in a derelict garden statuary
stood tiptoe in the rain and minor angels
wrestled in windfall when an ordinary
sunset flared the stark walls of Tintagel
stuck on its evergreen and desolate hill
hard by an unbroken sea no man could ride,
its waters churned white by the serpent’s tail -

and heard the dead men cross the Bridge of Sighs
heading for holes in the ground that were the size
of graves, where they were buried until they died.


SIGHTINGS

On Presidents’ and Independence day
the colors in the evening sky flashed
in the Hudson River whose slow waters washed
against his feet. Better recall July
than bleak and gaunt-boughed, icy February
when wind swept off the sleepy river and smashed
the glass of his gollum-eyes to a fire-splashed
blur. In summer time he watched ships ferry
up and down the river, past Bannerman’s Island.

He only saw it from the shore: a brushwork
rook-shape in the air was all he gleaned
of a castle, once fortress and stockpiled armory.
The Indians said the place was haunted. Naturally
The locals saw strange lights there in the dark.


HAUNTED

He never saw those lights, though often he gazed
out toward that island from the mountain road
above West Point or from the riverside
where it was said a failed cadet composed
his Ulalume. Now maybe there’s your ghost,
he thought, that gloomy subterranean bard
remembered for his bells and his black bird?

And yet he knows there really is no ghost,
knows that the dead are happy in their tombs;
that though the eye is easily tricked the mind
is the softer touch; that even if men were blind
the dark would resonate with spirit voices
crying out angrily from forsaken places
or whispering to themselves in empty rooms.

The Reynolds Poems

WAMBLE

Reynolds and me we roamed like vaqueros,
spat on the range, ate gooseberry pie
on checkered table cloth. A buxom blonde
with bouncing locks brought in a bisquit basket.

Old father Hubbard wouldn’t let us feed
until we lowered our pates and panted amens
so Penny the meatfed farmer’s daughter
calmly her words loured over us like clouds

while long the lank bookseller leaned
his phiz slant on the board and nodded
ably along I raised my stubble chin
and so took in the breach between her breasts:

like Christmas loaves, like partridges,
like banks of snow or gabardine.
Reynolds was later on to claim
he sniffed invective in the snapping

knuckles of the farmhands, sure,
but all was well and over the trilling hills
the churchbells clinked like ice-chunks
in that big-ticket manse of a hash house

by shitfouled water near the sapless tracks
on which Old George was flattened,
leastways his rendered smiler embossed
on strangely expendable two-bit pieces,

for how could those scabkneed ragamuffins’
pockets tinkle with mugs and buffaloes?
which isn’t to say they weren’t toughened
by threadbare denim or queer duck aunts

who fixed their shoes with cardboard snipped
from cereal boxes where black cooks beamed
and proffered bowls of steaming meal,
but none for me nuncle no for me neither.

Now see how one in a kerchief slimmed
and gained in cultural cool and hip aplomb
what she had lost in the crupper (which
is also good for something), still,

our corporate suits are taking baby steps
toward civility, which reminds me,
Reynolds, I said, we never do what we say,
we always talk too much and never get on with it:

we said we’d jump a train to Baltimore,
stow-away on a cargo ship to San Juan.
We’ll see those palms and temples of the south
before we croak. But as it happens

we slouched along and found Camp Crook,
a couple of rattlebrained galoots,
and no one nowhere, no, not anyone,
will ever tell our sorry story.



AMERICANS (MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND)

They come with shades propped like tiaras,
like royalty, says Reynolds, pushing up his shirtsleeves,
they keep falling down, he says, turning up another roll
sodden with sweat and fouled bleachwater.

What a way to make a living. A pidgeon beats
out of the dumpster like some greasy phoenix,
clank of bottles, fetor of beer, milkfat rice krispies.
Scared the piss out of me too, the bugger.

That’s what this town has done, he says,
lighting a smoke, made cadgers of the birds,
made their lives too easy, like under the Bridge
those ducks paddling fatly along like pontoons.

But isn’t that the nature of living things,
to take the easiest way? I says, and he flips
the cigarette to the other side of his mouth
like he was Clint Eastwood and the sun glaring

like a nimbus over his hat, sure, but it doesn’t
mean I have to like it. Look at that one, proud
as a peacock, lord of that pile of residuum.
You’re no poet, I say, a pidgeon like a peacock.

Meanwhile some genius in his courtly muscle shirt
left us a dead battery on the tarmac,
smack in the middle of a parking lot, like he figures
there’s no lawnorder here in Mayberry,

and that’s really what he thinks, he says,
look, there’s an El Camino with some screaming
retards in the back stopped dead in conversation
with some other screaming retards in an Escalade

fuckdab in the middle of the avenue.
Seven bullets for seven screaming retards.
But I know he doesn’t mean it, that’s Reynolds
for you, he’s just can’t stand the fact

that he’s good for nothing but this kind of grind,
he knows it and I know it, but thanks
to good oldfashioned human ingenuity
we can bury the facts in a slagheap of becauses

and even dodge our faces in the mirror,
except when we shave, when we do, at which times
we’re bashful like suicide girls with no beads
and boy’s hair dyed pitch and impeccant breasts.



UPSTATE NEW YORK BY AUTOMOBILE

Take those coal-gathering Chinamen, he says, dangling
like Christmas lights, and slides his finger straight
to skim the foam, or those Lakota Sioux
they rounded up like a bunch of knock-off Hummels:

We’re planted when they’ve tapped us of our resources,
when we can’t make the mercury budge its scant degree,
or curios, uncle-eyed in sepia prints,
praised for our wisdom and dancing, then scattered like dung.

In North Plank Tavern, under the highest ceiling
I ever saw in a fuddlehole, we got stiff.
The barman took our money and poured our lagers
in schooners where the sediment swam like sea-monkeys.

Monks brewed this stuff. It’s punchy like wine. So easy.
Well, I was way beyond easy, so Reynolds, he hied me
home in that tight little saffron Karmann Ghia.
There’s not much else to this story, says Reynolds,

hands on the clock, taking tree-skirted turns
as savvy as a gigilo under the hood
or behind her wheel, letting her do the driving.
The snow doesn’t care, or cud in the hinged cow-mouth,

rocks in the fences wet since Washington,
silos’ cracks, dodgy salamanders’ spots.
I showed him my poems, but Reynolds, he just shied,
blonde unbeliever with long-soured Mayflower blood.



OF DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF THE HALF-DEAD

The question is never should I or can I or when
but how, and it has to be quick, no chance to back out,
no chance of failure, he says, and stares through drapes
that have become nostalgic, so memorably ugly,

at farm equipment scattered like artworks: tires
long still, weed-bellied; tractors; worn-out backhoes,
combines, furrow ploughs; coiled chickenwire.
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, you only skewer them,

compass-straight through fields, random clumps
of trees no bumpkin scribbler oded, patches of snow.
He stares in the rancid cloud of hangover, eyes
chasing the clamoring rigs that blacken the banks

on either side of the highway, oily gutturals
loud and punctual; and here they equal ritual,
ground the wanderer like the tink of churchbells,
taillights at sunset melancholy, like candles.

Here I am wondering if he really means it,
and sip warm water from the clotted taphole,
bully through channels where a tenor drawl
is absurdly normal, like rips in a shower curtain,

a bald spot in the carpet, blanched and crepe-flat,
the bolted-down remote, the absence of spirits,
and decide right then and there, Reynolds, I say,
this is the place, right here. Let’s haunt it: shriek

by the ice machine, nocturnal god whose voice
is a glassy harrumph, by the front desk, out in the gravel
where radials come crunching and reluctantly stop,
blow out gray windows and the tacky drapes

with death-breath, boozy from some vague beyond,
make neatly wrapped soap wafers levitate,
make plastic cups buoy up and break the mirrors.
He smiles, turning from the window, from the song

of semis, and he says, there should be a law, he says,
no mirrors in these havens of the half-dead
who have passed from vanity into nonchalance,
from bloodwet life to strawy limbo. Hollowmen.

So he takes his belt for its heavy buckle and whacks
with a quick whine of lashwind and gladly cracks
his leaping reflection, the shockhole and its deltas
of tiny fissures scream once and once only,

an impotent exlamation, coward’s signature,
material fullstop for a weakling’s sentence.
It won’t be seen, but new bedding will be smoothed
by hands not watched by dead eyes buried in the sky.



THE DEATH OF ROMANCE

We walked over the hill behind the house
where Reynolds was whelped, heads stoned with lead
cloud, gray mist, smoke. My strange hands curled
like marionettes.

I swept my arm to refer to the square fields,
and fancied a battlescene. He just snickered,
but that was his power, the ever-present elbow
in the kidney.

I thought of Napoleon’s armies or some king’s:
a country quilt’s innocuous slide across linen,
the bloodless advance of logic and order
over stone fences

across the field’s furrows, wintered hard.
Imagine a skinny horn pressed to a mouth
still barely dry from its mother’s nipple, breath
from a virgin’s piehole

threading the brass throat, aspirates hallooed
in gold fear-pitch. And bullets punching zeroes
in birch trees where they stood like girls behind
the marching tyros,

white, switch-waisted. By that quick dismissal
he gave me the wrench for my silly machine
that chugged and coughed: faces that stared skyward,
eyes turned off.



SACCHARINE

Reynolds said Parker Dam looked a sight better steeped
in sugar, lime and salt. All those daiquiris,
pina coladas, margaritas: they sat in the belly
heavily like the drawl in drinking songs.

No spittoons, but you could smell the flannel,
the chaw-grueled sawdust, hear the specious twang
of leatherskinned and bottleblonde-mopped
California girls under ridiculous hats.

I was saying I took a girl here once, changing
the subject. Which was? She drank cape cods
and poked odd numbers into clattering cups.
Eyes applauded, fastened on copper-rivets.

Did you ever think you could have everything?
Yes, when I kissed her later. But that fancy was dead
in the chute, killed by a slow sunrise, back-strain
and headache, lemon-sharp light, lemon-bitter.

The heart is a mayfly, but a fool’s delusion
won’t cost him. See, the pendulum swings narrow,
closer to the pulling core, each interval
between soft clicks drawing toward silence.



GAIA THE GREEN GODDESS

I spared a thought for Gaia the green goddess
under the bridge where the Colorado seethed
with shadowy sucker fish. Knees to the chain,
I cast out pellets bought from a gumball machine

for panhandling ducks and gulls. Reynolds ogled
wandering hennas and washing-instruction tags.
Notice, he says, the eyes are dark enigmas
furtive behind reflecting shades because

in everything, Americans have it backwards:
soul-windows shuttered and kept for lovers, asses
out like bedsheets drying down Maple Drives.
Take Gaia for instance, he says, the deified

collective guilt of the not-me generation,
a fresh spook for the Olympian compost heap.
It wasn’t enough they roasted Servetus
or buried the living in the Dungeons of Venice,

drove Nietzsche mad or made those leggy blondes
crusade down boulevards in Sin City
with pamphlets and a balsawood cross to claim
if you don’t know Him you’ll gnash your teeth forever.

They make her up sexy and sleek as a pop icon,
the first tight-bottomed queen of the universe
with breasts like adams apples, jewel-bellied,
sweatbanded wrists and a bitchy middle-finger

saluting Yahweh and every swaggering cock
that crows at His command; but still she’s spun
of the same old stuff: hominian dreams of dominion,
vanity trumped up, dressed in a beggar’s togs,

contempt for brains and a cowardly wish to snuff them
out like tapers. There’s one of them there,
that knapsacked wanderer with her arms stretched out
like Jesus, tie-dyed sleeves dotted with birdshit.





THE BEARD


He could be all of us turning up at once:
a quetching chorus in the skull machine,
the I of yesterday in a fresh skin-layer,
or, as Odysseus said to the one-eyed giant,
No-man. Let him rein this Rosinante and tilt
at will-o’-the-wisps, shoulder the tongue’s slips,
the accidents of misremembering.

He has his shoulder to the wheel, his nose
to the smell of his belly-hole. He can lie
and swear, his hand in the honey jar,
slide through the rabbit hole, a greasy thief.

Let him come up in a flash of sulphur,
Gehenna-dragon, Mephistopheles,
and drop his poison in my ear, possess
each neuron, make me over. He was tall
in the snow-fringed furrows, weed-savvy
seed-finder and bud collector, gaunt Fagin
who got me sotted in the farmer’s fields
from a flask in his old topcoat, iconoclast
who hated poems and prefered the aphotic
mysteries in motors. I see him masked

in the light of a welder’s arc, my father’s son
who never was. But he is Janus-faced,
not only this friend of oily metal but grunt
and greenhorn, fingers chafed with bleach and fouled
water who haunts with fat birds in the stink
of scrapheaps. He’s my good friend, Reynolds.

Viva Italia

Howard Moss was a prophet
is a prophet his book finally came to me
& his poem
Movies for the Home

Watch the silver screen Shalimar
God’s alive inside a movie
Procul Harum Keith Reid
also a prophet

Praise God and glorify Him always
Fellini Sophia Marcello
reality seamlessly drifts
into dreams

as in reality 8 1/2
he helps his father into the grave
Another film repulses
the sickening decadence of

a fallen Empire
flatulent flabby gluttonous grotesque
without the Law
O Italia

fountainhead of glory and decadence
Truth and death and
Beauty: the sickness of the unfounded ego
the beautiful ship set adrift

without a Pilot
in love with its reflection
Narcissus
in love with the creature instead of the Creator

in love with the pot instead of the Potter
Who will destroy
and unmake and set at nothing
piddling potters and creators

who glorify the crooked
twisted playthings
of men who have not
cast off the skin

of the old man
(he helps his father into the grave)
and put on the pure white robe of the new
washed clean in the blood of the Lamb

Hymn Prime

How will I do this, with a whisper, then?
And do it right? I know not. All I know
Is that Thou knowest aught, all, everything.
I thank Thee for the hours, the days and years
I wasted, Father, Who wert ever with me,
From the beginning; for all that I remember,
And all that I forget, now; for the seconds
Of every minute spilled pell-mell and willy-
Nilly; for every moment, every wink
Of sleeping and forgetting, every wee
And fleeting infinitesimal strand or string
That Thou hast set in motion, with a bang!
Or whimper, Father; and for every beginning
Of every song or story without end.


2.24.2012

Hymns; First Four Decads

FIRST DECAD

~~

Hymn 1

If I could give my love full rein,

That Thou, my Lord, might see it plain,

Then would my love were like a steed,

With milk-white mane, and strength and speed;

And would, my Lord, my love could fly

As swift as sunbeams in the sky,

Then it might leap, with flaming heart,

And light in Heaven, where Thou art.

2.28.2012

~~

Hymn 2

Thou hast my heart, my Lord,

    Now and forever;

Writ on my heart, Thy Word

    Will leave me never;

But guide, and mind the way

    Thro' dark of even,

To Thy eternal day,

    By Light of Heaven.

Thou hast my soul, my King,

    From its first dawn:

A small and tender thing,

    From darkness drawn

So gently, toward the Light

    Thy Father made;

Wrapt in a blanket white,

    In comfort laid.

Thou hast my thought, my Lord,

    My mind, in awe;

Transformed, and in accord

    With Thy just Law;

To be subservient

    Eternally;

Glad and obedient,

    To worship Thee.

Thou hast my flesh, my God,

    My body Thine;

Beholden to Thy rod,

    Thy rule divine;

Thou hast my all, my Lord,

    Free from Thee never;

So great Thy grace, Thy Word,

    Thy Love, forever.

3.2.2012

~

Hymn 3

How would I balm Thy feet

    And salve Thy shoulders, Lord,

    That art the Living Word,

And King in Heaven's seat;

How would I free Thy hands

    And save Thee from all harm;

    But I have not Thine arm

Whose might all men commands;

For I am but the clay

    That God gave Life with Breath,

    As Thou took me from Death

And gave Eternity;

By taking on my Sin

    As tho' it all were Thine,

    And by such means Divine

Made my new Life begin.

Then shall I not forget

    Thy Blood on Calvary,

    Nor that I owe to Thee

An everlasting debt.

But O so dearly priced,

    The gift that Thou hast given,

    My Lord, Who art in Heaven,

My God, my King, my Christ.

3/3/2012

~~

Hymn 4

Oh let Thy kingdom come, sweet Lord,

The world to know Thy Love's increase

A thousand years of fruitful Peace,

The promise of Thy holy Word.

Make all men's hearts, sweet Lord, to turn

From selfish pride and vanity

To duty and humanity

And thus make way for Thy return.

3.4.2012

~~

Hymn 5

I live in fear of Thee, my Lord,

    By day I tremble in Thy Light,

In reverence of Thy Holy Word

    Upon my bed I weep by night;
From dawn till dusk, although in Faith,

    With sealed eyes and with bowing head,

I swear, my Lord, with every breath,

    That Thy stern judgment still I dread.

Washed in Thy Blood, my Lord, I pray

    That Thy sweet Mercy I might gain

When on that sudden, fateful Day

    Thou, as Thou promised, come again;

When kings will cower from Thy Face,

    When leaders of all nations fall

As one, beholden to Thy Grace,

    O King and Captor of us all.

Now then, my heart, tho' fraught with fear,

    A song of sweet compliance raise

To Him Who is forever near

    To Whom thou ow'st thy constant praise;

Whose Love is such that now thou art

    But willing prisoner, blushing bride;

O happy slave, O now, my heart,

    Surrender; and Thou, Lord, preside.

3.4.2012

~~

Hymn 6

I love Thee, Lord; I know not if

    Thou lovest me;

My Love for Thee is all my life,

    By night, by day.

I cannot eat, sweet morsels cloyeth

    My arid mouth;

All drink is bitter, water annoyeth;

    My tongue is drouth.

Then if I sing the words are dust,

    The winds will scatter;

An Thou shant hear, yet sing I must,

    Albeit the matter

Be wasted on the air, the sense

    By none received;

But lost is better than by men's

    Ears unbelieved.

And so I love Thee, Lord, and still

    Though it be vain,

It is of no event, I will

    But love again.

I love Thee, Lord, though I be wife

    in Groom's despite;

My Love for Thee is all my life,

    By day, by night.

3/6/2012

~~

Hymn 7 (On the Incomprehensible Feminine; a Marian Hymn)

Think that Our God, the Father, and His Son,

    Seek comfort and a time of rest;

And think that ere Creation had begun

    That there was Mother Mary's breast.

O sweet Celestial Mother, if it be

    At all permissible to dwell

On what to Man is solemn Mystery,

    Then wilt Thou let my fancy tell

        What wonders it should find,

        E'n but contained to Mind,

Were it but granted such unbounded Liberty?

At once my eyes are blind; and in my Soul

    I travel in the darkness, far;

Methinks that I am captain, and control

    My faring, by my Faith's bright star;

But all is gloomy overhead, the sky lit

    By constellations faintly glowing

Thro' canopies of cloud. O Lord, my Pilot,

    Thou hast the wheel of my Unknowing,

        And bringest me, with speed,

        To wheresoe'er I need,

Be it my bed, or sunny isle; or day or night; or twilit.

3.6.2012

~~

Hymn 8

Lord, should some morsel now alight

    Upon my tongue, to give me pleasure,

Some whipt confection sweet and light,

        In perfect measure;

I would but spit that trifle out,

    As it were surely something bitter;

For I had tasted of Love's drought

        And found it sweeter.

Though I were in a desert parched

    With but an empty cup in hand

And found, however I had searched

        No drink but sand;

Still would I deem myself as blest

    To be so happily accurst,

That Love of Thee, that burnt my breast,

        Had quenched my thirst.

3.7.2012

~~

Hymn 9 (On Herbert's sonnet, The Holy Scriptures 2)

I find that in Thy Word I am betrayed:

Though this page miss or that,

The third will find me, as Thy poet said

In that last read magnificat.

Thumb as I will, at random here and there,

Like some low criminal in the dark,

Yet Thou wilt find me, when most unaware,

With an alarum I must mark.

3.7.2012

~~

Hymn 10

God separated dark from light,

    And by that first decision

He made a world of wrong and right,

    And every known division:

The male and female; yea and no;

    On, off; and plus and minus;

And by these balances to show

    His order and align us.

The night shall always follow day,

    And dawn shall follow even;

Which show'th there is a single way

    And manner unto Heaven;

By day the circuit of the sun

    Is such, not what she chooseth;

As every star shall likewise run

    And none her way she loseth.

Tho' man from ancient time hath made

    His learned remonstration,

It is but silence, and a shade

    Of God's sublime Creation;

Thy words are shadows, darkling speak

    Philosophy and science;

Man, God is strong, and thou art weak;

    On Him have thy reliance.

3.9.2012

~~

SECOND DECAD

~~

Hymn 11 (a sonnet of praise)

I look upon the ebon fields of night,

Bright-lit with stars, with massive constellations;

With galaxies that dance in Thy first Light

In blackest space, all mindful of their stations;

I cannot see the nearest, meanest stone

That sails in silence round its ancient track;

But only Thy Light, and that Light alone

That guideth through Time's ocean, cold and black.

Which Light, O Lord, fortified with Thy Word,

That came to earth as man, Thine only Son,

Who, gentle as a Lamb, wast sacrificed

That man should gain Thy mercy and be heard

On that last day when Thy Will shall be done;

Thy Will, my Lord; my King, my God, my Christ.

3.10.2012

~~

Hymn 12

When Thou hast come again, my Lord,

        The seas will swell and roll

        And every man his soul

Shall tremble, and consult Thy Word.

When Thou hast come again, My God,

        The earth will shift, and shake,

        And continents will break,

Beaten to rubble with Thy rod.

When Thou hast come again, My King,

        The skies will run with red

        For Blood that Thou hast shed,

That man be spared Death's bitter sting.

When Thou hast come again, my Christ,

        Spring shall be born again,

        Likewise the soul of man,

For whom, Lord, Thou hast sacrificed.

3.10.2012

~~

Hymn 13

Now let my soul with readiness be dressed,

Much like a maiden, robed in purest white;

I wait with patience, in this still midnight,

For One Whose Holy Will shalt manifest;

For Him Who cleansed my soul; at Whose behest

The corridors of space were frilled with Light;

For Whom the winds blow; and to Whose great might

All men will kneel: north, south; and east, and west.

There will be none in hiding from His eyes,

None in the wildered jungle, or lone isle;

None on the snowy peaks, or deserts wide;

None in the deep, black bellies of the seas.

He shall see all, and find, and bring to trial.

Yet trust Him still; for thine own sake He died.

3.10.2012

~~

Hymn 14

Now, like a slave in bands of iron bound

        At neck and feet,

I have, My Lord, despite my struggle, found

        This bondage sweet.

I cannot fly, to ring that steeple's bell,

        Nor spin that vane,

Nor like the wind go make the ocean swell,

        Or summon rain;

Yet can I turn, and find Thee there, my King.

        With opened eyes

I see Thy work: Now comes the infant Spring,

        With azure skies

And birds whose wings make chevrons in the blue,

        And fruitful hours

Of longer days with gentler air to strew

        The scents of flowers.

Thou art a goodly Bondsman, Christ, my Lord.

        I know not why

I ought look elsewhere for my keep and ward.

        This Liberty

I hear men speak of is a thing of favor,

        Yet in excess,
Like salt, is cloying and bereft of savor,

        And gives distress.

O stay, My King, and never yield Thy rule,

        Be Master when

The constellations dim, and suns go cool,

        Then burn again;

From Thy sweet yoke, my Captor, I desire

        No false relief,

But constant watch; what term I have, be dire;

        What freedom, brief.

3.11.2012

~~

Hymn 15

I lay but could not sleep, but toss
 and turn; and when
I thought I slept, it seemed I was
 awake again.
For dreams of You would come and go.
I saw Your face, My Lord, but no—
it was a ghost, a glimpse, and so
 I lost it then.

I heard such crying in the dark,
 as still I lay:
a cricket's chirp, a canid's bark,
 each had its say;
but none of them disturbed my rest
more than this threshing in my breast,
each time that glance that I love best
 was turned away.

O stay, my Lord, and let me glean
 one gold-shot ray
from Your own eye, that long has seen
 the stars at play.
For but one beam—a second's shine,
a scattered dream! — if it were mine,
I'd think each sleepless night divine,
 All darkness, day.

 - revised May, 2015

3.11.2012

~~

Hymn 16

If not for Him, there are

        No joys,  

Just diffident despair 

        That cloys

To waylay happiness

        And love,

And from life's easiness

        Remove

The soul, to set apart,

        Unbind

The marriage of the heart

        And mind.

Therfore I go in peace

        Toward

Him. Christ's my Shepherd. He's

        My Lord.

3.12.2012

~~

Hymn 17

The day is dressed in sunset gold,

And all the wind seems now at bay;

The lambs are gathered in the fold;

The wolves are driven far away.

All is at peace, and tranquilly

The Shepherd sits and takes His rest;

I know He watches over me

While light fades slowly in the west.

3.12.2012

~~

Hymn 18 (On verse making and Liberty)

I like the narrow space

    my little feet can tread;

I send them out apace

    And count them in my head;

There's two, and three, and four,

    They patter in their rows;

I might send out a score,

    Or legions, if I chose.

When I my Fancy study,

    I find much Liberty;

It moves more than my body,

    And even dares to fly.

It swims the widest ocean,

    And in the heavens soars,

Unhindered in its motion,

    And varied in its course.

Is it a just complaint

    When someone is divested

Of freedom by constraint,

    Or by brute force arrested?

Look to the matter rightly,

    Let men trust each their word;

Take not one issue lightly

    And let the least be heard.

Then thou wilt see there's justice

    When reason is well-grounded

In One in Whom all trust is,

    Who cannot be confounded;

Let son look up to father,

    And all men in accord

Exalt the Single Author

    Who lived in Christ, our Lord.

3.13.2012

~~

Hymn 19

It matters not how small the gift,

So long as Charity is given;

For were that lacking, then there's thrift

In alms, and it comes not from Heaven;

Seek not thy purse, for in thy heart

The Lord hath sown a rich affection,

The fruit thereof the tender part

Of either side of the collection.

3.14.2012

~~

Hymn 20

That I am clay and figured by

        Thy Hand, my Lord,

Is all I have of certainty:

        Thy Living Word

Inscribed with perfect clarity

        And loving art;

Thy Signature is plain to me,

        Upon my heart.

That I do know of nothing more,

        My Lord, is given,

Save that my Master I adore,

        And long for Heaven:

To be perpetually reminded

        Of Thy Glory.

To see my Savior and be blinded

        Be my story.

3.15.2012

~~

THIRD DECAD

~~

Hymn 21 (To a Celebrity)

Mayflower, Flower

Of May, set sail

Again, that power

Of God prevail.

William & Mary

Will come again,

& marry; make merry

The hearts of men.

Mayflower, father

And mother, come;

And bring fair weather

And wisdom home.

*

The laugher & singer

I see, ahoy!

Thou good ship, bringer

Of Life & Joy.

3.16.2012

~~

Hymn 22 (On the Pauline Gospel)

So glad I listen, Lord,

and hear Thy perfect Word,

Clear as the trills of flutes

Unlike the grunts of brutes,

But as a polished horn

As mellow as the morn;

Mindful of reprimands:

To mark the work of hands,

And know their proper place

In terms of use and praise.

Mine ears are opened wide

And gratefully abide

The whisperings of wit,

And bursts of Holy Writ

That sound out clarion calls

In the spirit's baffled halls,

And sonorously awaken

All souls, from slumber shaken.

3.18.2012

~~

Hymn 23

    In subtle form the hemispheres

Of east and west, and north and south, conjoin

    To mark that which to us appears

The perfect round in our conception:

    That which subsumes and constitutes

All beings, and the space wherein they live;

    The common ground of men and brutes,

And living things that in that context thrive.

    Which gives us cause to cast an eye

On things of form and shapeliness possessed:

    The human figure's symmetry,

A woman's face and eyes, her smile, her breast;

    A ripened fruit: a purple plum,

Or sweet, cleft peach frilled with a drop of rain

    That glisters coolly; or the bloom

Of plump white grapes that mellow into wine.

    Though it were better we should look

At evening's splendor where, if skies are clear,

    The Lord hath opened up His book

For all: the vast, celestial chandelier

    Of moon and sun and galaxies;

His order and His majesty divine.

    The place where lieth Eternal peace

And where His mercy and His glory shine.

3.19.2012

~~

Hymn 24

Tho' devils tread

Around my bed

I will not fear

That they be near;

Tho' demons taunt

They shall avaunt

From nigh my soul

And naught control,

For I have Christ,

Who sacrificed

His Blood for me

And set me free

Of carnal chains

And worldly gains,

That I might rest

In His sweet breast.  Amen.

3.20.2012

~~

Hymn 25

The ghostly visions of the dark

      Will not deride me,

Nor ghastly creatures that I mark

      As if beside me;

        For I have heard

        The Gospel's Word,

And therein I confide me.

No thing from Hell shall turn my heart

      With sumptuous vision,

Though it be fair and make me start

      By sly derision;

        For I the Lord

        Cry on, my ward,

Whose Blood hath saved me from perdition.

When evil whispereth in the night,

      My soul alarming,

Telling of bodily delight

      In manner charming,

        I shall not move

        Suchwise to prove

The flesh's habit of disarming,

But steadfast hope on Thee, my Lord,

      With full attention;

My heart and mind in full accord

      To Thy intention.

        Let spirits unnamed

        Be gone, ashamed,

And scarcely worth a moment's mention.

3.20.2012

~~

Hymn 26 (The greatest fear)

I find I cannot look but see Thee, Lord.

    No matter where I choose to turn

The vivid pattern of thy Living Word

    In sign and signature is borne:

Sublime geometry, arithmetic

    Of number and relation; there

And here, it's written, large or small, or thick

    Or thin; it's graven everywhere.

But not in any place more clearly seen

    Than in my heart; Thy Word

Hath no more clarity, nor brighter sheen

    Than when it's in my conscience heard.

There Thou hast stamped Thy just, eternal Law,

    That I may not misunderstand

Nor have removed, tho' buffed by timorous awe

    And fear of Thy Almighty Hand.

3.21.2012

~~

Hymn 27

Only a moment past we spoke.

    You whispered in my ear;

My eyes upon an open book:

        I saw You there.

Moment to moment I am bound,

    By iron bands, from here

To there, I tremble in Your hand,

        Your prisoner.

Will You release me? Pray You, never,

    I'd rather die, my Lord,

A thousand times times ten forever,

        By cross or sword.

I cried for missing You today.

    You saw my tears and heard

My melancholy melt away,

        My Christ, my Lord.

3.22.2012

~~

Hymn 28

        I will not let You go;

Not though I die a thousand times

        A million, You will know

        I will not let You go.

        I will forget You never;

Beyond the ending of the ten

        Thousand and tenth forever,

        I will forget You never.

        Forever, I surrender

My life, my waking will, My King;

        My all to You I tender;

        Forever I surrender.

3.23.2012

~~

Hymn 29

I will prepare my heart with all that's good,

    And sweep it though it were a room,

And make it fitting for the Grace of God,

    Wherein the bride awaits her Groom.

I look in corners for what mites of dust

    Are gathered there, and pluck them up;

Observe the balance of the love and trust

    That God has poured in my heart's cup.

Straighten, my gracious Lord, the crooked cracks

    Graven therein by lust and pride,

And make that perfect where my work most lacks,

    That You may come in and preside.

3.23.2012

~~

Hymn 30

In my dreams I go looking for You,

Upstairs and down, through vacant rooms

Where there is only loss and absence,

A curtain billows, like the back of your raiment

Riffling with the effluence of Limbo

As You descended, Your halo like a helmet,

Into the darkness. I would creep after You,

But I cannot, nor can You turn to show me

Your face, which my heart desires,

Your eyes, Your cheeks, Your lips,

Which I would kiss though it would burn

Me to a withering nothing,

A smoking remnant of Hope

And infinite Love, my Lord, my King.

3.25.2012

FOURTH DECAD

~

Hymn 31 (Isaiah 27)

I hear myself found out.

I find myself discovered,

A beast in the depths,

Leviathan, the crooked serpent,

Which is myself,

My offense to You,

I see it before me and hear

The wrath of Your judgment;

I sit and read in this narrrow room

The Word that finds me,

Here, in the dark, a bent

And curved abomination,

Unsightly creature, O

Lord, my Father, my Christ,

You have reached me, even here,

Even in this dark, sunless

Nothing, this filthy

Chamber,

Your Light has seen through the depths

And the blackness of the waters;

You have found me.

3.26.2012

~~

Hymn 32

But to lift and cleanse me, Lord,

From those atlantean depths

Where I beheld

Creatures the likes of which no

frame could render:

Of such enormity

And filth, dull, black-eyed

demigods of the deep;

Slow, tortured shapes, filmed

And phlegmed with their ancient

Hate; those ghosts of cold

Submeridian twilight,

Wandering stars, golems,

Crookspined, hunch-

Backed, curved

Blasphemies, horrors,

Sunken in darkness,

Shriveled with absence.

3.27.2012

~~

Hymn 33

Aum

3.30.2012

~~

Hymn 34

I yearn and thirst, that right prevail,

Yet I am crooked as the whale:

Leviathan, that thorny beast,

Who on a trillion glides to feast,

Has sewn his seed upon my spine

    To make it like the fish that swerve

    And through the waters dart and curve

Rather than swim a perfect line.

I know what in my heart is good,

My Lord: but love and brotherhood.

I rid myself of Babel's lies;

Long to be charitable and wise.

Come, kill the flower of my desire.

    I pray with whispers in the dark,
    That You, my Lord, should see the mark,

And purify my soul in fire.

4.1.2012

~~

Hymn 35 (on Andrea Mantegna's 'Christ's Descent into Limbo')

My King descends to Limbo and I pray,

      I will not let Thee go.

And should He leave me there, then I will stay,

        And He will go.

I hold the bottom of His robe, my clasp

      Is hard and won't undo.

And so into the darkness. Still I grasp

        My Lord, and go.

Down to the deepest depths, I go along

      And will not let Him go.

And though He leave me and my stay be long,

        I watch Him go.

4.3.2012

~~

Hymn 36

Let come a time when men believe

Those signals in the blood that leave,

As evidence of their ignition,

The resonance of intuition;

When eyes, cast round at varied signs,

Espy the truth in God's designs;

And Love, writ on the flesh of hearts,

Discerns the Whole despite its parts;

When of the All, the One is found,

Conjoined in an Eternal Ground,

Where light is dark, where even's odd;

Where Christ is Love, and Love is God.

4.3.2012

~~

Hymn 37

Were I to hear You whisper in the garden,

I would come close, and closer still, my Lord,

A thing flat on its face (to hear Your burden,

My gentle King, my guardian and ward),

An infinitesimal nothing, clay or clod

Blest with the Breath of life; a subtle worm,

Or mole, blind by the Light and Grace of God,

Creeping upon its belly for a term

From out the earth, a wet, reptilian growth

Compared to Thee; then slide in silence, steal

Closer to You, my Lord, to touch the cloth

That touched You, howsoever slight the veil

Between us, Master; but to hear Your voice

Tender consent; to listen, and rejoice.

4.6.2012

~~

Hymn 38

This sunny Easter morning is as calm

as any day or night that I remember.

The April air goes riffling through a palm

I planted way back then, in late November.

Some twenty years ago I heard a psalm

in Spanish, of a Zion to remember;

the words were full of sorrow, but the calm

of voices singing made the music tender.

The desert spring is like an eastern summer;

the winter here is mild: with sweating palms

go boys and girls, even in deep December.

It's easier on the ones who ask for alms

on roadsides, who with crudely printed boards

and backpacks hold fast to the hope that someday

some soul will come and understand the words

they wrote with shaking hands on this bright Sunday.

4.8.2012

~~

Hymn 39

        Let there be none

Left in the darkness and forsaken,

        But let God's Son

Enlighten all, and all awaken.

        Be this my prayer:

My Lord's sweet love to all be given;

        Christ, everywhere,

Indwell in all, bring all to Heaven.

        O Father, hear

My faint heart's hope, my soul's desire,

        That none will bear

The sentence of eternal fire,

        But come to Thee,

Out of all worldly devastation;

        Thy Son's death be

The means to every soul's salvation. Amen.

4.16.2012

Hymn 40

Though I am not forsaken,

I cry into the bedsheet,

my fists in waiting, wrenching,

like virgin's fingers, tender

and pink, with whitened knuckles.

I wait through silent evening

and wish a swift tomorrow

here sobbing in the shadows

beneath a twisted blanket

and coverlet in passion,

not bleak, like lover's sorrow,

but cloyed with such rejoicing

that breath is rich and ravished

and all the flesh enraptured

and tears fall on the pillow.

5.11.2012