Reynolds & Midway 69

Must it be us & ampersands? he sd

& swishd & swiveld amid the booted girls

that throngd in leggy thongy fleshiness

& selfie-taking phone distracted clutches

all about him in the ailses of boxes—

goods squared up & shined to draw the eye

that some say came by accident & some

say was designed, like clocks & Swiss wristwatches—

Yes, it must be, by the mustard jars

which minds me of those mustard scansions I

could never grok nor reckon writ by Crane

Not Stephen but the other one, that Hart

who leapt into the sea to still his heart

& made those bridges clearer in our heads

for why & wherefore who knows only Who

wich is to cap the double you to say

we mean the Big Guy (Note the capital G).

in any case we hope that Hart found rest

& also John who jumpt, & Sylvia

who breathd her last to gain euphoria

oblivion or quiddity & Ann

who suckd death from an engine was it, sounds

easy, for I'm not one to cut or dive, I want

a bloodless slipping into being nothing,

or hell or heaven, who knows. Only One

wich is to say not witch nor majik— note

the tres chic ultra-modern spelling—but

One Only, whither wheresoever He

Or She may be has been discussd aforetime

& by much smarter creatures—let it be known

that there is nothing new under the sun

& everything that ever could be done's

been done a thousand times a million x

a trillion, also there is nothing written

that has not heretofore been written better

& brighter than our brightest, list to Pound's

Kung to his pupils in that brilliant canto

or to the horse's mouth, in ancient x

& all around the world was wisdom won

in heads of men & women thinking things

& dreaming, sossd or sober, in their tents

wigwams igloos clayhuts, caves & ditches.

5.10.16

Reynolds and Midway 43

                 ...when loth at landfall soft I leave.

                        - John Berryman, Dream Song 12 

Now let us tell of Bawby, most hushhush

and bring the whole tale out. Let William Tell

the truth, and nodding but,

but sideways slantwise lest the prickéd ears

and opend eyes of lil ones lying abed

take fright and swing their bedfellows to bear

adown the necks of them that tuck them in !

We heard that minstrel in the gallery

who sang of sperm in gutters by the Thames,

who whistled on the 7^th day and piped

in woodes and in the valleys, who purchásed

6 bay mares and 6 golden apples, who

astride his horse of air did gallop by

Scotch Corner at one hundred 20 M

PH and paid the Piper w/ a tenner;

who [summoned am to tourney] came w/ hair

of Adam, Abraham, and Allen, who

was Kral Majales, King of May, and crownd

and carried beaming proud like Quasimodo,

whose 1 good eye was teary and whose ears

were stufft with bronze from bells too deftly swung

like birches, which now swings us back to Robert,

not that Robert, Duncan neither, nor

that Celtic Plant who pushd love to his baaaaaabe

(whom Midway hereabouts sang heretofore)

in wanton song and denim, for this Bob

is mine alone, and he is quite a dry-Bob,

neither Sordello's, nor that Zimmerman

who fancied southern Timrod° in Deluth—

Henry,° like him whom John Allyn Smith

fashiond in Dream Songs, like those Henrys

Stephen made, whom Willa Cather sd

was not a poet, though War Is Not Kind

but red and of whom Junior wrote a book,

before he went one day and, Brodie-like,

leapt to the Mississippi far below

to rid himself of 45 sad yrs

of anger and forgiveness— How I wish

his beard would billow and his fall estÓp

or he be caught midfall by Jesus Christ

… Amen at 44°59'N 93°16'W …

and taken to the Father's loving breast

and laid more gently down to rest.

6.10.14

Reynolds and Midway 42

          First part: Misery of man without God. 
          Second part: Happiness of man with God. 
          Or, First part: That nature is corrupt. Proved by nature itself. 
          Second part: That there is a Redeemer. Proved by Scripture. 
                              
                                - Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Section II, 60



Hcav*ns, what a ftrange difeafe is this!—That lov^

Should fo change men, that one can hardly fwear

They are the fame!—No mortal liv'd

Lcls weak, more grave» more temperate than he,

—But who comes yonder ?—Gnatho, as I live ^

The Captain's paraiite! and brings along

The Virgin for a prefent: oh rare wench !

f How beautiful! I (hall come off, I doubt^

But fcurvily with my decrepid Eunuch.

This girl furpaflcs ev'n Thais herfelf —

George Colman's plays of Terence were renderd thus ^

whan Kindld from the archive whither Midway

hied. A lass! He cried, but did not, did he? Not.

But in the inside of his noodle thought:

we ought not build unto th' already skying

Tower of Babel not a single brick

since tongues are crissd and crosst enow as is,

ne ought we trowel and mortar walls anew

ne add more height and reaching unto God

lest some should shimmy up and at the top

be there confounded furthermore and drop ¬

so off we went and Midway said, 2 bills

of greeny money is the all we've got

and is the sum and total of our wad,

and thinking, Reynolds sd we ought to read

O'Brian, sallied gladdend thro' St. Vinny's,

whan Lo! behold to our right shoulder, propt

primly, there it was, hardcoverd, stood

right on its ends up: H.M.S. Surprise !

Now who dove guest at ? Naturally, we went

the few mean steps it took to gang anear

that high white shelf and gently claspt the buik,

than opend it to check the pencilld cost—

you guessd aright, a twain of bucks| Now Midway

ell-o-elld whenas his windows lighted

on that number, and he thankd his Lord

and put his tender index to the Cross

and to the Son that sufferd there and Christ

His arms spread wide in terrible restraint,

His slender body bleeding, hands and feet

transfixt, that we might here with joy endite :
His yoke is easy, and His burden, light.

6.8.14

Reynolds & Midway XIX

Use The Force, Luke, quoth that Obi Wan,

God told me to endite this daye the twentieth
~ One minus wich ~ November, there ! to him
That hath an ear, pray, let him listen than
& heede what we wi Christes' succor spieth
As thro' the luikinge glass our eye descryeth,
Quod Reynolds, in the welkin waxen dim

And thicke with mony spiral galaxies,

And nebulas, and vasty constellations,
Wherein we may imagine sundrie things
Swich as the Scorpion, that poisond is;
The greate Beare; & the Haywaine; & creations
Of still more coy and subtile variations
To glad the harts of pauperes and of kings

Of any race of loose or stiffneckd people,

Whether they haile out of the balmy dessert
Or northen tundras of quhite ice and snowe
That braketh mony a prow & goode shippes cripple.
'Tis written there for any quho will hazard
Ane upward glance. Ye need not bene a wizzard
To see the signes and signals wrote thereto,

Made large by One whose hand doth never shirke
Nor vainly tarry on a trivial matter,
But is the Fountainhead of Industrie,
The Prime, set standard of all goodly werke,
Who in th' eternal void the Light did scatter;
Who on the globe divided erde and water,
And lit His living lanterne in the skie.

11.21.13

[Chaucer, Douglas, Spenser, Berryman]

Blinds

What if I said that among your crowning virtues
are the shape of your mouth pronouncing spoon,
the bend of your neck, and the suggestive arc
of your brown and furrowed forehead when
you fasten a sandal buckle? You would level
your serious eyes no doubt, and your Latin tongue
would gather its quick strength and call it drivel.

You stand at the window, where the poolside palms
flicker through old cracked blinds, half-closed,
and men are tossing pruned fronds in a truck,
grunting in beery gutturals, their sculpted
brawn sheened with sweat. Now, should I complain,
you'd say, "they're butchering the trees", or, "Christ,
that noise", and squeeze the light out with the chain.

A Call to Shadows

I summon to me again the sentient ghosts
who've lain in dormant purgatorial sleep:
in Spiritus Mundi (stolen from Yeats again),
storehouse of fey flotsam and jetsam. I knock
at the colossal whorl of a giant's ear
who sleeps as long as a river, shout helloes
in cavernous hollows, in the din of echoes.

O come, they said, some twenty years ago,
and whispered in a gossamer singing: come,
a little kiss of silk on the tender ear.
Seductive shapes danced sinuously, dressed
in diaphanous gold, windswept; Ovidian
lanternslides upon the inner eye -
and now I bid them all return to me,

my loves, my flickering fireflies that gemmed
hours of boyhood's darkness: dark of nights
or dark of days lived in desire or dread.
I summon back. I rummage among shadows,
as one who channels in a circle of stones.
O come, I said. In silent wells of thought,
a drop: the birth of ever-widening rings.