HEART THREAD Parts Twenty-Five and Twenty-Six

25.

Open the carpenter take out the door

electric circuits switch in cut-open thorax

the whole world an autopsy of God you say

but mind is the only kind

girls are prettiest when they stand on bridges

men so empty on the way to work

soon forget how I began

her green Celt eyes do work for everything that lives

motherhood is made of gift

no man has a father a father passes

I was getting ready to revise the planet

carried some old books up the stairs to bed.

 

26.

Now to come at last to answer me

a bookcase on the moon he found

deer browsing in the surf

what is there for a Christian in all these trees

civilized by language the Irish slept

is there no question ever for all my answers

I have tried so hard to say them clear

clouds white as nuns pass without remark

every percept demands memorial

an alternate universe made of simple sentences

suppose there were a gender to each thing

rufous towhee in the bayberries loud.

 

HEART THREAD Parts Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four

23.

                                                                         in mem. M.R.K.

Who did you want to be mother

I saw the queenly countenance old photo

those eyes knew me from another place before I was

I knew I never understood and do not know

how a star person consents to earth beast life

all the doors of fairyland open outward

to open my life a mouth among stars

to give a voice to what is never silent

to answer the tower when it falls

to kiss the acrobat in mid-flight

touch each tessera in the dome of light

this machine will be my faithful son. 

 

24.

For we are various and beautiful and dumb

as an outfielder the clouds abaft the east

a language of dwarves a language of giants

I want to know what this very light is called

this Sunday light island light land light

broken china on the kitchen floor a song

at savage theaters bareback tragedians

give them words and leave the deeds to them

there is no action like a heartbeat

wet tea leaves in a sieve the resinous mind

be wishful what you care for the sea

endures what we say of it all talk no listening.

 

HEART THREAD Parts Twenty-One and Twenty-Two

21.

Don’t live forever they don’t count the stars

it’s a kind of broken pavement

music gushes out of crevices each gap a sore

earth is the ventriloquist who tunes our lips

the cries of children turn out to be

grownups turn into conversation

Whitman wrote nothing but the cries of children

our only real poet avoided writing poems

I call it semaphore because he  bears a sign

I can’t read it can you? A sign of itself

a revelation of revelation a storm in the mirror

no air left to write the answer down. 

 

22.

A raft is remembrance

should you wake beside direction

and where we went an apple gate

dark with understanding and a touch

so later off  the esplanade one Danish ship

seen in a sluice of fog a word misused

loved for the juice of it the slip of mouth

the president waved from his open car

I stood on the corner with John Kennedy

one rainy afternoon when Carthage fell

forgive the immigrants the land cried out for

the white man failed the lesson of the earth. 

 

HEART THREAD Parts Nineteen and Twenty

19.

Of course it went the other way, Chartres,

a carriage down Warren Street, rich people everywhere

and in a chophouse decent grub — he said

but that was Thames where Andrewes walked along

thinking out loud, how beautiful the churches are

despite what they say, the genetic imperfections of belief,

rosemary flowers for the Queen of Hungary

sad liquid gold pours from the carnal machinery

they never understand the ecstasy of rain

the purest gift is from the unimagined

Montaigne explained his dislike of the continuous

walk down the street with me holding the mean-eyed cat. 

 

20.

Leave that rainbow gouged into the sky

let the clouds come down and talk like Christian men

have your nephelometer ready your cheesecloth your checkbook

earwax to polish close-grained briar

blond pilasters at the gate of ivory

between armoire and fish tank why the long hall

but  other mother came out of the hill again

reaching towards the moon she turned the trains off

businessmen wandered through the prairie

we passed a wolf on our sidewalk

creature of gold-eyed dignity

but she was sleeping with the mirror’s mother. 

HEART THREAD Parts Seventeen and Eighteen

17.

Amaze me then you paladins

toaster oven of the alchemists

a microwave is just a little moon

rising and falling in the Brookline kitchens

where anxious matrons test their kids’ IQ

just write down what they tell you and all will be well

Mercutio falls the stage fills up with eels

close the book and answer the phone

false no friend would ever call so early

I have no phone I have just my voice

aged animal growling at the moon

start howling or the door will close.

 

18. 

Because a stone on the road is a fish that stopped swimming

pick it up and pocket it you’ll bring the ocean home

children are waiting for Christmas every day

double-boiler full of eggs the Virgin’s Bath

have you ever heard the cry of milk

the sob of bread baking in the oven

machinery is your friend machines are gods

because the world is little you are big

there are no strangers on this kind of island

the wind reads the papers for you

the hawk dries his feathers in your special tree

for lo the storm is ended the boy-girl wind went north.

HEART THREAD Parts Fifteen and Sixteen

15.

Catastrophe a downturn

in the affairs of men a broken staircase

they hop after women bearing seed

what men call catastrophe nature calls change

transformation of every species start with me

rocks are living too I am the first Posthuman

water has even more life than I

unstanched by identity

fierce well-unintenioned sea

we go to war with subtle instruments

Scots mixing buttermilk and beer

lamps they have they pass to others

others wander in the ill-lit street.

                                                           

16.

Passacaglias don’t come every day

true or false, false, the street

always beckons, the ricercare though is

especially of six voices rare

abandon all pretense before the Wood of Nakedness

where the owls turn into savvy virgins

rather fierce around the hipbones nanofiber

your dream is wind from Above

false a dream is a dream and so is this

a good argument for turning on the light

elsewhere a gander gabbles on a gable

and poetry somehow will never quite give up.  

RK reads for Bard Alumni Day, 25 October 2014

HEART THREAD Parts Thirteen and Fourteen

13.

Need a machine knows how to point

three women swimming in the pool

white one-piece mind

Easter parade to honor Wittgenstein

to turn away from what is most one’s own

the story breaks once the hero’s horn is heard

goats digging in their hooves uphill

sometimes long after she vanished

you hear her voice come out of the slope

soft throat but another language

each part of the body a trump in a lost game

do you remember what to call me?

14.

Fields of Russia white with images

Ilya Repin canvas of a peasant shack

but o the shutters and the cries of birds

girls in the meadow pretending to be boys

so much is lost before you learn to feel

cast a number in bronze

nail it to that rock and call it measure

one day at lunch with A.J. Ayer

there is nothing left to say about the mind

that’s where poetry comes in

the art of making everything happen again

and be new the art of meaning something else.

HEART THREAD Parts Eleven and Twelve

11.

Narrative happens to a reader’s mind

nothing else is going on

anemometer twirls round and round

measuring the neighbor’s wind

numbers down below

this cave mouth to our city come

sink into the bliss of ordinary streets

thighing around ordinary houses

you live here so I do too

mute connectedness of ball and bat

web of Indra plight with jewels

simple in his long complexity.

12.

Remarkable for dawn

Latin promise all fulfilled

heartbreak and doctorate

call the birds to witness

this man sits still

imagine the sea moves

imagines women and their men come from the sea

imagine the invaders are just like me

when even you aren’t

a shoelace lying on the beach a flipflop lost

follow the grain of wood and enter in

blazing tachometer dashboard of tropic wood.

HEART THREAD Part Ten

10.

Because you have to believe something

without punctuation

hard to get the hang of a day

of time the unrememberer the lost brother

the girl who stepped back below the hill

chilly now and ardent then

a heart is the lung of the sea

suddenly the horizon rushes in

a multiple blue person enters my body

you bring me to shore

the mist is not moving

the land we love does not stay still.

HEART THREAD, Part Nine

9.

Catch what we can to clutch

cheesemaker up to her elbows in whey

the curds form by themselves

we gather we gather

we are so poor in Pyrenees

uphill but no sheep

psychiatrist but no peace

it would be easier if we had souls

but nothing measures nothing means

parse the situation with wet lips

reach out from your name

out from the clock.  

HEART THREAD, Part Eight

8.

O it’s obvious enough

the way things are

oil burner grumbles on

chilly premises of northern philosophy

what is the matter with the English?

Why can’t they decide

the mind knows nothing about the mind

every table cut flowers in a terra cotta pot

remember every day and night

the promises you made to the sky

our everlasting witness

the house around our house.  

HEART THREAD, Part Seven

7.

Liturgy enough for aftermath

aftermath enough for anybody

am radio on Sinai

she stood before us

made of color horns of her hips

broken plaster would you wall

even everything after all

I learned to listen to her bones

foreign woman but not so far

so pale the ruler of this house

frantic elsewhere sand in the shoe

we move swimming through the breath.

HEART THREAD: A Fugue, Part Six

6.

Empty wineglass in the other’s hand

haven’t felt this free in weeks

yellow fruit smatter of purple finches

legitimate inferences from the sciences

how little we kiss

could you build a car from scratch

a jet engine even a radio?

we have so much and know so little

it’s all just put in our hands

no wonder a devil

hide in the attic

archaic paperweight family Testament. 

MEMO TO SELF

Dear Self,

               I have adored you

all our lives

and you come first

all the time

Did I spoil you?

Did you spoil me?

Even now we’re sharing this cup of coffee

brewed in our hotel room

just like the real thing

in this city where we were born.

But I wonder how real we are.

If you’re real, then what am I?

And if you’re not,  who

have I been taking care of all these years?

HEART THREAD: A Fugue, Part Five

5.

Headlines from harmony — are you awake?

bulletin for a coward

chisel made of alphabets

blissman Africa Blueland blooming

a conga-line of white-collar mercenaries

old movies tell new truths

fold yourself back into fable

the feasts of Magdalen

on your white napkin I wipe my bloody lips

downstairs curtains in the rain

the sound of wet wood

hypothetical distances.  

HEART THREAD: A Fugue, Part Four

4.

Trying to avoid thinking he counted instead

ample precedence for this mistake

soft answers

theologians distinguish the qualities of the unknowable

divided nation

richest supported fiercely by the poorest

ugliest oligarch masks as democrat

tribal values clan corn stalks ratty barns

all the way to the horizon

this is the day of wheat the day of chaff

in the shrine one candle burning

salt shaker shattered on glass top table.

THE MAXIMS OF MARTIN TRAUBENRITTER 
is now available on Metambesen:
http://www.metambesen.org/books/

HEART THREAD: A Fugue, Part Three

3.

All professions are full of grief

the west wind’s ghost stories all night long

sometimes is cold enough

to be at peace

nail half an orange to the rail

finches love to plunge in

and walk downhill on someone else’s feet

sarabande of rainy morning

old Scottish battlecry measure the sky with your hands

rain on the windowpane

tiny boxing gloves from rearview mirror slung

still at sea  but married young.

HEART THREAD: A Fugue, Part Two

2.

There was an analyst who worked free

nobody believed him

so he had nothing on his conscience

it might be a father a lover one’s own lost self —

be kind to anyone you meet in mind’s eye

say:  this is a conversation in my head with someone who isn’t there

stop this, say what you like but only out loud

things can only happen once

in the mind or out there, out here.

Don’t use up the event imagining--

things like this are what he must have said. 

HEART THREAD: A Fugue, Part One

1.

Liturgical responses of all
wind and rain are answers
let an island be a proposition
in Euclid.  Parse the rapture.
Words that need to be said over and over
no measure 
if you can’t count them are they really there?
Who is the enemy in the epic?
Is it the king or the thought of the king?
Cold knees of chivalry
brooms for breakfast and a horse
hawk aloft small birds will flee.

12 October 2014

Was that a yellow bird that flew across the yard
into the wind it went so not a leaf
now when leaves are yellow?  Some bird
unknown, a newfound cave in Celebes
where a woman with a long slim hand
(an Air hand we palmists say) pressed
her hand against the wall forty
thousand years ago and calcite covered it
so we can feel her touch still, long
pinky slender thumb, so prone to love
and art, that other wonder thing.
Was she our mother?  Too many
questions I ask, keep asking.  Where
are the answers I used to tell?

SEA BREEZE final section

7.

But am I sure?

                               Why do I see a crown

idling over her head,

                                                is she a queen of it

or even more?

                               Did I hear her first

in the wilderness,

                                      Old Mill,  Murray Hill, Joshua Tree?

The crown persists,

                                           her forehead fits

so this must be the one,

                                                    I pull

with all my night

                                      the stone from the stone

and veer hard

into her royalty.

                                      Because these stories

live us still.

                        And not just me.

SEA BREEZE Part Six

6.

It meant an island where the rabbits ran.

No island anymore, no bunnies.  No wolves

to eat them.

                             I listened with my eyes

to the words of your journey

on the silent glossophone,

it rang around me, dark as I was,

                                                          the spurs

of words caught in my trouser cuffs.

I am far

                   away in place but in spirit a pine tree

nearby lets a single clench of needles on my table,

here, I’m writing around it,

                                                            four needle fingers

on one hand,

                             I spread out and count them to make sure.

SEA BREEZE Parts Four and Five

4.

But um,

the light changed,

                                        her thigh beside you

safe beyond the crevasse of machinery,

her thigh you imagine beside you,

imagine.  Desire

is like a windshield wiper,

                                                          comes and goes,

obliterates

                             all that it has seen,

swipes clean.  You have seen

nothing.

                   No image left.

5.

So the sea was natural enough

to come to

                       in its way—

phasellus

                      a yacht or little sailboat,

by Catullus, young poet frequently marvelous.

Sail away with me she said you thought.

The grammar of analytic languages

perplexes with contingency.

                                                              Who said?

Who thought?

                                We were speaking

we were young,

                                      speaking something

like Chinese in Coney Island.

Or was it Brighton Beach.

                                                          Or was it raining.

SEA BREEZE Part Three

3.

Everlasting maze.

                                        For you, my friend,

you went through it

and out her other side

                                                 but you were there

abaft the barnacled bottoms of old books,

sleek traffic, sand in your Nikes

everything was yours.  She drove.

No need for caution, kept your thoughts

to yourself,

                         you always do,

                                                          the night

was like a crucifix

                                      on the wall over somebody’s bed.

What does that mean?

                                                  You know,

you always know,

                                      just stop thinking

and start talking.

SEA BREEZE Part Two

2.

that’s why we chose

to be in body in the first place

or be in her

                             in grace of union,

and no word said,

                                      I am the hum of whom

she has chosen,

                                 small trout

busy in her stream,

broken kayaks litter her backyard,

                                                                             capisce?

I didn’t, I thought he wrote capsize

and laughed,

                             he slugged me

the way they do, men,

                                                and I was only ten

or something, who knows

how old anybody really is.

SEA BREEZE Part One

                                                          for Tamas in Brooklyn

1.

Luxurious antidotes,

                                                phasellus ille,

the sea

                   you mean to float on is

                                                                coterminous

with her affections

                                          (Coney Island, minuit)

midnight, I see it already, the car

she’s driving

                             down Ocean,

the stately Jewish houses,

                                                          then shining

boardwalk full of maybes

and far away the curl of moonlight

on the tenth-night wave

                                                   cresting way out there

the way they do,

                                      where sharks calve and play,

happy hunting, lover,

                                                the stick-shift

never felt so good, staggered green lights,

a car knows how to go,

Betty Reid Mandell (Charlotte's mother, my mother-in-law), 1924-2014

GRAVITY FEED Part Seventeen (final section)

17.

But Hammerklavier is what he wrote

music defined by its instrument,

the womb that bore it

brass and wood and steel

as if I were to call these words

men or women walking in a peculiar land

because you are my music too

I heard you with my hands.

FIN