Section 312 of a work in progress

312.

A poem is guided meditation

mild propulsion of the written world

when it stops the process it launched sails on

knowing the mind

clear light between the names of things

between the things

so.ma the bright between

the new the fresh the uncontrived

your mind finds by itself

sacred absence in the core of you

all the holiness and shadows pass

maidens and heroes and sunlight on the sea.

(A recent section from a work in progress)

191.

He will be safer as a ferly-man if men they have or are

he will be a leper-man in ordinary land

his voice the bell to warn away the fearful

because language is a holy terror believe me

hide yourself in the silence of story

there’s always something left to believe

dust for sparrows said the old aesthete

be bathed clean in what defiles us

Arbeit, heilende Welle in what defines us

how far inland we’ve been carried by the wave

left where no other wave can come

lost among friends in a house of one’s own. 

ON A SCALE OF 1 TO 10

                                                            for Betty

On a scale of 1 to 10

the rain falls wet

Lenin's mummy outlasts glasnost.

The kingdom of cicadas rises and falls,

on a scale of 1 to 10

our caves are brighter now and less dank

diner coffee keeps getting better

waitresses get older and blonder

and I don't know for sure where all this goes

Nero Wolfe would call it amphigory, 

nonsense verse, nonsense with numbers,

on a scale of 1 to 10

I've hardly begun

the muddy Orinoco impregnates the sea,

the Homestead Act is far away

but the prairies are still there

people I knew got acres in Alaska

even in the 1950s -- ah, 

there's a number at last, or four of them,

all of them but one on a scale of 1 to 10

and that one was none

so on a scale of 1 to 10

the world has not even yet begun

and all the pizza parlors and battleships

are just illusions and I'm beginning

(speaking of beginnings)

to wonder about me, 

on a scale of 1 to 10 am I here yet, 

is there anyone behind this noise you hear,

people buzzing about the cicadas, poor things,

they don't even exist on a scale of 1 to 10,

only André Breton has got their number, 

Arcane 17 from long ago Gaspé, and Canada,

what is Canada on a scale of 1 to 10,

and shall I count the ways,

let alone Massachusetts?

On a scale of 1 to 10

pain for instance is usually at zero or eleven

but pleasure measures 

itself meekly, how rarely joys

or even blisses

get past 8 or 9, 

and from what we read in the Bible

heaven doesn't even get to 7,

all those feathers, all that 

stone-age music on tin harps.

But where was I on a scale of 1 to 10,

was I a pirate was I a priest,

all nouns are 10 all verbs are maybe

depending on who's looking, 

on who's talking, 

and who is listening?

On a scale of 1 to 10

is it you or is it him,

the man in the moon, the woman in the wind

or is it window, on a scale

of 1 to 10 is it even now yet, 

this bright day I'm trying to believe

all the numbers scattered round my feet,

birds chasing beetles, shadows chasing sun,

on a scale of 1 to 10

am I even me?  

TRAGACANTH

                    Maybe. 

Or gum from the peach tree

in the Hungarian back yard —

how many years.

I had an alchemical

laboratory in the cellar

and didn’t know it. 

I thought it was all logwood,

spirit lamp, daydreams, silverfish,

window screen, dust, dark weeds outside,

the peach tree wrapped in burlap, sulfur,

test tube, book. 

But it was alchemy. 

My parents told me so

by leaving me and it alone.

                                                            3 June 2013

Sunday on Cuttyhunk, cold bright wind from the sea, big waves rolling in.  We're happy to be here.

When the violin climbs the stairs

and the cello dithers down below

we know an assignation’s forward,

a pretty girl up there

with her arms full of violets.  

AMONG THE BASSOON

                                                            for David Adam Nagy

Flügel, grand piano

piano with a wing

uplifted,

             shadow of the raised top

on the conservatory wall—

gnomon of the sundial

cast by the low-slung light

dramatic lighting

                              and the bassoon.

2.

Bach first.  Prelude

to everything

else,

          he

is our B.C., the primal one,

the tone

             cast on all time to come

the shadow

of the bassoon rises and falls.

This instrument

always sounds wrong,

comes from outside music

from a land of being,

of suffering and running away

and coming home,

                              wrong

by its nature, the way nature

is wrong too,

                    as if a beast had to die

in pain to breathe such sounds,

but that’s only natural,

nature’s like that,

                              sings

truest as it goes.

Goes away.

                    Shadows

dimming into the dark.

Cherry blossoms

falling in the prime.

3.

Or on our little island

there is a single solitary tree

in the graveyard,

                              a paulownia

or princess tree,

its flowers come before the leaves

and when those fragrant purple blossoms fall

they leave seed capsules behind,

pointed ovals,

                    hollow, cracking open, hard,

hollow as wood, hollow as the sound of the bassoon.

4.

He transposes what Beethoven

heard (or wanted to hear)

on the cello for the bassoon.

A rounded box with strings

becomes a man with breath

pouting into a hollow tube

though quivering reeds.

American day aj, day of the reed,

tube, rushes, human spine

up which all the messages pass

or sing, trying to reach the mother brain

so far below the music.

5.

Seize the moment

the music doesn’t last,

the pretty girl is pretty

for a minute

then the tide comes in

goes out again and the house

is empty, sea-birds

noisy on the cliffs,

if you’re lucky there’s

still a wind for you to hear.

6.

The look on our faces

is to be heard.

Listeners are performers too.

Eyes open in the light

receiving light, the ears

too are ridden by some

sorrow that comes before

anything we ever knew

to make us sad,

                                        a requiem

built into the nature of the world,

a mortal sorrow

before anyone ever died,

like that village

the Buddha sent the mother to

to find her dead child.

7.

All the bodies with their breaths and fingers

all together now understanding out loud,

make us be the animal we pretend to be,

human love human fear human history

and we are really nothing at all but

bright joyous spirit playing brief on a field of ash

                                                                      13 April 2013