Law & Language

In addition to law and language generally, this blog explores philosophy, translation, poetry (including my own poetry and translations), legal education reform, genealogy, rhetoric, politics, and other things that interest me from time to time. I consider all my poems and translations flawed works in progress, tweak them unpredictably, and consider the latest-posted versions the latest "final" forms. I'd enjoy others' thoughts on anything posted. © Harold Anthony Lloyd 2024

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Either Oar (A Book of Original Verse & Translations)

Table Of Contents

Preface

Part I: Songs of Truth and Knowledge

Part II: Songs of Language and Reality

Part III: Songs of Mind

Part IV: Songs of Self

Part V: Songs of Time

Part VI: Songs of Higher Things

Part VII: Songs of Art and Literature

Part VIII: Miscellaneous Songs

Part IX: Songs To Apollo

Part X: Four Cantos Of Sophias

Appendix A: Translations

Appendix B: Juvenilia

Dedicated to:
Thaddy Cockrill

PREFACE

Carolina Parakeet

I wonder who will sing for me.

With no brood of my own

Extinction means no echoes of

These measures when I’m done.

Last Carolina Parakeet,

I sing on in a tree

Mid wonder in the coming days

Just who will sing for me.

PART I: SONGS OF TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE

American Debate

I. The Conservative Mind

At best, for all we know mind’s round

So any way we’re bound

Will lead us back where we began.

We rest the wiser man.

At worst, for all we know it’s flat

With un-fenced edges that

Imperil travel. Thus it’s best

For all we know to rest.

II. The Liberal Mind

The form must fit the thing and not

The other way around.

The head is right and not the hat

When lack of fit is found.

If spheres restrict our motions or

Planes cannot hold us we

Pack them away instead of us.

The closet is for them.

Conquistadors

Europe’s knights of course were horrified

At butcher priests who did as heaven bids

In taking hearts and wearing others’ hide

On Montezuma's hills and pyramids.

Presumably, such high minds judged a word

By how it bettered man or made him worse.

Indignant, Europe’s knights thus sepulchered

Such priests and burned their codices and verse

Though somehow missing their own words that wear

Men in the Aztec fashion. Those, too, stitch

Strange costumes out of flayed and tortured skin

Of men to fit the text, an awful switch

Of roles--though essences poke here and there

From out grim wrappings sewn to hold them in.

Ignorance And Bliss

It wings as though it will forever fly--

God spared the sparrow knowledge it will die.

For it there are no final chances, broods,

No sadness ever of one fewer spring

Or its attendant Canterbury moods,

No end of little arias to sing.

It lives without all knowledge of an end

To ills increasing as it ages when

Time freezes joints and adds new parasites.

Nor even in the clutches of a kite’s

Sharp talons that are shredding up its skin

Can that poor sparrow know that pain will end.

It cries as though it will forever cry--

God spared the sparrow knowledge it will die.

Reflections

We had a budgerigar that spent most days

Tapping a caged window where his bud

Returned the rhythm from the other side

In silly proof that opposites attract,

That opposites can both have boyish blue.

How foolish, yet how pleasing to the birds

And us in watching them, in watching us

Take images for things though they but bounce

Off rougher glass of grass or tree or post

Or us who would our greater reason boast.

Lee’s Statue In A Southern Park

In decades past, some sculptor plied his art

Perhaps for its own sake but, too, in part

To advertise for further work. His ad

In stone brought no commissions now. Instead,

The gnomon tethered shadows that a lad

Clocked. “Merely atoms,” Chemistry now said,

"Not art." Bat-echoed obstacle at night,

The landmark guided pigeons in the light

And served as paperweight that held the park

In place on windy days. There dogs could bark

While spraying stone to set out metes and bounds

That squirrels ignored while making frenzied rounds.

A place for vandals’ work, there Hylas read

“All’s in a mind—Philonous” brushed in red.

Habitats

An Answer in its habitat

Lives well--there’s no surprise

In that (or in the converse that

In hostile climes it dies).

Belief

A tramp (if that’s the term)

Converses with a long-time airy friend

None has disproved beyond all certainty.

Such comrades ruminate about the fiend

Beyond disproof as well within the lamp

That flickers on the corner of “their” street.

The hieroglyphics in the movements of

The flame serve as their focus in between

The random clinks of quarters in a cup.

The half that’s visible would break the code

In terms of verticality of strokes

With all remainder merely ornament.

The half unseen holds a more complex view

Of fiery alphabets. With flourish but

A form of beauty and therefore of good,

It contradicts the notion of a fiend’s

Cuneiform embellishing a stroke.

Bums snipe therefore in shifting measures clocked

By an old cup and quarter metronome.

A petty thief slinks by

Observing too few coins to justify

The labor requisite for felony.

His left shoe brushes close beside the cup

That jingles to his ear the same as to

The tramps’ though each one hears a different cup

In value and entitlement. The thief

Has learned the Ptolemaic principles

Of ownership merely to interact

With those medievals round him. He himself

Is scientific. Properties are sensed--

They’re fictions otherwise. Thus, property

Is not a property and he’s no thief

Or unicorn or other thing unseen.

A suicide searches

His trousers for coin he tosses in

The cup. “What need have I of it?” he thinks.

“God bless,” the unseen hobo quips unheard

While his seen friend works on translations still.

“There is no purpose in this strange machine

Transporting us we know not where. How can

There be a course without a pilot or

At least a wheel upon the deck? I’m not

A fool or worse delusional. I’m smart

And man enough to take my leaping chance

Before the crash of any craft.” He takes

A rope into the park behind the block.

A simpleton (if that’s

The term) can no more see some pilotless

Craft in this world than coins not claimable

Or messages in flames. There’s better, too,

Coherent with the sights and sounds about--

Some purpose in conveyance is as safe

From disproof as are demons in a lamp

Or vacuums of the suicide. He thinks,

“Why not embrace the kinder certainty?

If that defines the ‘fool,’ that’s fine by me.”

Good Science

“Good science is objective, has no trace

Of taste or other bias that would bend

The mirror. Right reflection must depend

On flawless optics. Humor has its place

Perhaps in circuses. A concave glass

That warps for laughs might serve clowns. It’s a fraud

In laboratories. Truth of course is flawed

By all distortions.” “Which means every glass

One grinds without a purpose or a bent

Lacks science. It’s a square? Just one and three

Lines? Four? Two twos? To do geometry,

Choice is imposed. Which suits? It’s evident

That science in itself can never be

Without some taste and some morality.”

Reason’s Da Capo

Behold eternal Spring

Around me! Blossoms will

Splash endless colors, bring

Fixed fragrances that fill

Gilt halls where angels sing.

And then the furrow comes

From naught, an unforeseen

And ugly harbinger

Of worse. The visage warps.

Legs slow from weight of snow

Piled more upon on the crown.

Frost spreads its fingers, too,

Around the throat and worse

To make it silly now

To nip no Heaven. Thus,

Communion calls. I shall

Behold eternal Spring

Around me. Blossoms will

Splash endless colors, bring

Fixed fragrances that fill

Gilt halls where angels sing.

PART II: SONGS OF LANGUAGE AND REALITY

Hold

No mile is more or less

Than any other. Walked,

The definition holds

Despite the variables

Of weather or incline.

No minute’s more or less

Than any other. Clocked,

The definition holds

Despite the sermon’s drag

Or pleasure’s brevity.

All disconnect is but

Illusion in us till

The definitions’ hold

Slips as we age beyond

The language and its reach

To pigeonhole and preach.

The Darkroom

There must be error in a language that

Would label violets violet although

Such color is the only tincture that

The little petals will not keep but throw

Off fast as offered up. How can a tongue

That calls the summer green and autumn red

Not knot itself , misspeak and get it wrong

As fall in fact keeps green, the summer red?

But words of course just ape the senses in

Their hues, and Plato missed a flaw within

This shadow-copy, image world of men:

One must be careful to remember when

One talks about this world in which we live,

One handles not the print but negative.

Alphabet Tea

Where’s the exotic beach

Where letters wash

Against the thing, wet line

Of mush between

The spray of word and the

Referred? I’ve heard

The little roar in shells

A captain calls

The Lord’s Victrolas, heard

The waves, yet found

No shore that bound the thing

And sound, no place

Where name’s teeth sink and link

The word and the referred.

No screen between the parts,

I am estopped

In cafes to complain

One failed to strain

That comma or a T

Left in my tea.

Drowning

(Or Burial At Land)

Deflated, wordless my

Now frayed and punctured craft

No longer glides across

The choppy continents

Whose undulations take

Millennia to make.

I slip airless into

Those slower unsaid tides

Without sufficient breath

To fill a vest. With no

Lines left, I flail about,

No longer draw me out,

Distinguish foot or hand

From ripples in the land.

Mountlawn*

“It’s by your fruits I shall know ye.”

Mere dust (our end) we are

Thus cast as roses also are

By hips, not blooms. To be,

Crab grasses crawl sideways across

Gravestones erasing them

Despite the herbicide. They hide

Names old baptisms tied

“Forever” to the coffined. No

Names. Only dust. Fonts lied

Or failed the bones that journeyed out

To names that also died.

*A Cemetery in Wilkes County, N.C. where much of my family is buried.

Unmarked Plots

To ration stones is right.

One would not spend one night

In “graveyards” save upon

A dare perhaps or on

Some Halloween in some

Prank festival. Too glum

For other days, we stay

“Elsewhere,” sleep safe away

At graveless “home” we raised

Where countless others razed

Before most surely fell.

Well spoken, we don’t dwell

On such eternities

Before us, on the bees,

Rats, birds and hominids

Who fell where language rids

Their mortuaries. We’re

Much wiser knowing fear

Is easily tongue tied,

That words need not abide

The dead beyond the sphere

Where they would interfere.

Urban Planning

Perhaps those tall dump walls do well obscure

Some glasses that smell somewhat fetid now

That the eyes that used them once are either dirt

Or sliming in the sockets still. Perhaps

Some handgun’s sulfur smell needs stifling.

Perhaps some bought teeth do indeed reek where

Slick worms floss gaps words once slipped through with their

Slick barbs, woos, gests, gossips and promises.

Perhaps there are unpleasant odors, too,

In some torn doll some child now either dead

In ground or in adulthood once held close.

Perhaps some molding coat fool’s fashion dumped

Unfrayed would have decayed much worse upon

The back of some poor shivering soul. Regret

Is nasty, too. There’s much to sanitize.

Mind reasons out of mind qualms that arise,

Builds dumps outside its cities of white lies

“That might offend the nose,” we euphemize.

Why Not Translate A Rose?

Why not translate a rose

To meter? It cannot

Be blasphemy. No pens

Presume improvement of

The work itself--God’s art.

Which elements, pray, are

The Lord’s pure handiwork?

The “splash of pink”? The “whiff”?

The greater baggage “bloom”?

Which endless others? Choice

Imposed, the poet tries

Diversity of eyes

Not satisfied with those

Birth gave him. Lazy prose

Instead should scandalize.

Ra’s Poet

Ra’s poet mummified a rose

And laid it in a tome,

Bloom nature chose to decompose

Penned in a catacomb.

Winged Egg

That egg-thing still stands up. Although

We've passed the first of spring*,

It seems to have no trouble no

Less. Listen to it sing

Dumb as I do. Refuse to "know"

The essence of the "thing”--

Untamed by all our phrases, no

Words lime its shell or wing.

*Some claim eggs can stand on end at the equinox.

Imitations

The thing’s poor imitation of

The word. Things never can

Quite measure up. I’ve never found

A straight line or straight man.

The thing’s poor image of the word.

It never captures all

Thank God. By “Sin” and “Fear” the things

Themselves don’t stand as tall.

Mimesis

If thoughts are mirrors of the world
The most reflective head
Is like the stillest waters or
In other words is dead.

Weathermen

A gadget turns. “The wind has blown.”

Some tubes rise. “There must be

Some temperature.” Hair length has grown.

“There is humidity.”

There’s stillness. Melancholy’s high.

I ask how long the spell.

“When nothing moves?” Neckties reply:

“The question’s not put well.”

Map’s Ball

I’ve rhythm in cartography.

The lines I use are not

The same each moment. Constantly

My zero’s shifting. What

Greenwich does is dance with me.

Each map is a gavotte.

Plain English

I know a simple word. It's "all."

And since I know its sense

Am I all knowing? May I call

My usage of it hence

Precisest verse in but a breath

Of boundless universe

(With every life and every death)

In plainest, purest verse?

PART III: SONGS OF MIND

On William James

Mozart of me, my bars encage
     Fit melodies instead
Of me. The chords of others round
     My neck seem to my head
An abject yoke. I sing therefore
     A world for me instead
Of them which means I also sing
     For them as well. I’m led
By songs of conscience, too, whereby
     Polyphonies are bred.

Sinking Solipsism

Perhaps I live with faces, nothing more

Than masks borne up by mere frames aping more.

Perhaps I live with less, with nothing more

Than un-extended sense I took for more.

Perhaps I'm loving nothing and no less

Despising nothing when I see things less

Their coverings. Perhaps all fails unless

Admitting only me. Yet am I less

As well? Perhaps unmasked I, too, am no

More than a face borne up by mere props. No

Mere solitary comforts even? No

I? Horror serves the answer here: as no

Truth fails to work, no truth denies us when

The moral sense requires a world of men.

Pearls

Enameling around

Shards caught within, the gut

Diligently dulls

Rough edges that might cut

Deep. Viscera’s still paste

Of smooth repression may

Pearl over coarseness that

Is better kept away

From inner softness. Hate’s

Smoothly re-skinned, love, too,

In that mute oyster’s craft

That generally will do--

Though syllables sometimes

Prove safer coatings for

The sharpest splinters that

Eviscerate. Therefore,

One plasters round the void

With purpose, better, best,

Until it’s rolling round

A jewel in the chest.

Work

In sinless suicide,

Pull down the coffin lid

From dawn to dusk and hide

Within that sturdy box.

Shelve volumes and take notes,

Sip tea and watch the clocks

Till dark most dark has hid

And resurrection comes.

Crawl out, leave wide the lid

Till break of dawn, till one

Crawls back into the vault

Where another death’s begun.

Weather In The Brain

There’s weather in the brain. Aloft,

Cows trail long shadows down

On folds they pasture over till

Transformed to serpents grown

From cumulous inconstancy--

Or maybe mind’s instead--

There’s weather in the weather. Hail

Smarts bouncing in the head.

Doing Fractions

The schoolboy and the man

Fear fractions that they must

Combine, subtract, divide

And multiply—school boys

Upon the page and men

Upon themselves forewarned

By younger ink that aped

(In black or blue instead)

The convoluted red

Of ciphering on life

Where nothing’s perfect, whole,

Where all combines and parts

In pieces, ends and starts.

Hardest Rocks

The hardest rocks that I've to move

Are weightless. Hercules'

Grand boulders pale beside and prove

The heaviest are these:

The weighted fear and leaden doubt

And ballast of the night

From quarries no one talks about

Yet works beyond the light.

Lights Out

In art, the perfect as a goal delights.

In life, it tortures, taunts, demeans, and slights.

It slips its bogeymen beneath the bed

Or in the closet when the day is dead,

When few distractions serve to keep the dread

Yet unrelenting nightly thoughts at bay

Of patent, latent flaws and what they weigh.

20/20

Fear’s eyes are fragile, too. They therefore turn

Unthinking from more blinding actual frights

To darker, conjured ones that do not singe

The retinas that instinct would keep keen

To vex as sharp tomorrow and as mean.

Mourning Depression

At sunrise, lashed heads wrestle like poor flies

Against threads spun at night. Their web has bound

Them firmly to their bedding. Though they’ve found

No reason for the effort, still they rise

To pick the web off as the spider lies

In wait to weave again when night comes round.

Due Diligence

Ed noticed in his tree a small, low limb

Had withered. He grabbed clippers given him

By his dead father years ago. As he

Prepared to do the little snip, a plea

Lashed out from a pedantic neighbor: “Freeze!

How do you know those aren’t protected trees?

How do you know the blades within the shears

Aren’t toxic to that kind of tree?” Such fears

Expressed, the neighbor thought of others: “When

Does city code permit such work? And then

Do those times mesh with county, federal, state

Or other timing regulations? Wait!

Are there endangered species living on

Or in the limb or others that are gone

But will return and need it?” Questions raised,

Ed found that careful reason rather dazed

Than gave enlightenment. Perhaps the cut

Could let in fatal germs good bark had shut

Out. Maybe changing one limb’s symmetry

Might make the winds work harsher on the tree.

More research was required than Ed had time

Or willingness to undertake--from time

To time, his father told him anything

Worth doing was worth doing right. The thing

Was clear therefore. One should not snip the limb

And Ed put back the clippers given him.

PART IV: SONGS OF SELF

Gibberish

I'm crowded in yet lonely out.

I've worlds to tell the world about

If only I were spoken there.

In & Out

The world we see

Is in our head

Yet floats around

Outside instead

So you’re in me

And I’m in you

No matter what

Our members do.

They Christened Me

They tied me to a font with their choice name--

No matter what I do I'm called the same.

They've roped me tight with air until I'm through

With chords designed to moor my phantom, too.

Free Fall

My optimism set, too, with the sun

That whited out lock-stepping stars by day.

My little hope at night was in the way

Clouds sometimes covered up their endless run

Around unmoved Polaris. I was one

Who feared the implications of those tracks,

Those constant circles. For if Heaven lacks

More freedom, what hope in comparison

Had man? The thought was too depressing. I

Had turned to remedies of blindness, of

Concealment till a chance look at the sky

Conveyed a different message from above--

A star had stepped out in a fiery fall

And brought down hope of freedom after all.

Writer’s Block

If we're so bright, then why

In our mythologies

Are gods first? Brighter men

Would use a different pen.

Moses Or The Muses I

It's Moses or the Muses? No

Dilemma here since both horns grow

From that same skull, that Western Head.

Let's sharpen both for use instead

Of severing one and running on

Like bulls with half their prowess gone.

Moses Or The Muses II

It’s Moses or the Muses. One

Can’t square the two. Therefore be done

With killing babies, calling plagues.

Instead have wine, attend good plays,

And love in all your normal ways.

“Pretty” Love

Love has its fashions, too.

Some colors do not go

Together well nor do

Some genders mix--or so

Designers maintain who

Take sums for what they do.

The Human Physic

The human physic is bizarre

In mapping how its members are--

I'm minor in though major seem

By markings of the herd,

And so I pass among the team

With light commotion stirred.

Inversion

Deflated, I stood outside looking in

At opposites, at all the boys reversed

From me. I studied their strange ways, rehearsed

Their words from right to left. That taken in,

I painted masks that reproduced my skin

As theirs. And yet no matter how immersed

Within such backward play, how un-coerced

The drama seemed, years gutted me within

Till I heard Lettie yelping when she caught

Her backward bitches taunting in the glass

That held reflections of me, too, who ought

To focus right. If mirrored in the mass,

I must adjust for the inversion, must

Be in if out, hold warped those posing just.

Debate

“I’d do more living, pick

A bloom or two to stick

In vases weren’t they prone

In hairs’ breadths to be gone.

“I’d do more history

Did past not also flee

As fast as well, did all

Museums, too, not fall

“Inevitably. Bound

Straight back into the ground,

I shirk now, shirk then. I’m

A realist toward time.”

“I think instead you prove

The opposite. I’d move

But faster for a taste

The surer of the haste.”

Goethe And Chapman

Each generation forms implicitly

A secret and a closed society

With rituals each takes for granted and

Assumes eternal--till the last one stands

Deprived of that most fundamental right

Of judgment by a jury of one's peers.

Ghost

Sometimes I fear I may have passed away.

How might I know? They close a corpse’s eyes

Of course. Yet might one sense death otherwise?

With ears embalmed, could one still hear them say

How lifelike one appeared, how peaceful lay

One’s visage in the box, how Lettie cries?

Could one still smell the moth-balled coats and ties

In circumambulation after they

Embalmed the nose? That’s possible and yet

The facts aren’t questionable: the pen is no

More noticed than the voice, I move and yet

Do so among the shadows here below

As spirit rarely heard or seen by most.

In English is such phantom not a ghost?

Alive At Last

He’d feared he’d stopped too late

To conjugate “to be”

In life’s right grammar--right

Inflexions on the tongue

Had somehow not expressed

The reference. Though am

That’s mirrored in the breath

That’s mastered early kept

A present orbit, too,

Somehow he’d foundered with

That heavier reference words

But modeled in the air,

Had long mixed am beyond

The bounds of sense into

The morrow, little marked

The nonce that limed the self,

Had lived not for today

But for tomorrow. Old,

Yet physically still in

The present, now he had

Found morrow never holds

A beating heart. Illumed,

He’d not lament the loss

On balance of his life.

Regret would transpose, too,

The tenses and espouse

The airy then for now,

Slip his gold wedding ring

On former clock hands whose

Now vacant substance would

Drop bands, recalling thus

Some meter he once read

Etched on a tilting wall:

“Twelve Lines Of A Poor Bard

On Loving What Is Barred.

The hand that’s not, next hour’s,

Is never now’s or ours.

Embrace the moment. Seize

Its hand, the one one sees,

And ring it, tie the knot.

Fools pine for what is not.

The morrow ducks the here

And now the live can’t hear

Or see past. No gold band

Fits shadow fingers banned

From present altars. Air

Would be their only heir.”

June 18^th

I am not captain of the world!

However it may reel

Or list its axes in the void

I do not hold the wheel.

How plain--and yet how facile to

Commit the fallacy

Of care for what I do not do

And bear the weight on me.

No, let the poles and mantles go,

Loose their fictitious weight,

And row but self and finally know

That larger smaller freight

Whose vassal vessel spares

The chains the helmsman wears.

His Tale Wags Man

His tale wags man--defined by intellect

That moves in time, it’s simple thus to tell

Man’s essence is the story. (For what else

Is mind in motion but recounting?) Thus,

Fantastic tales are mummified and kept

In common vaults called past wherein they lie

(Yes, lie) with former blooms, picked summer crops,

Dropped autumn colors, and long-melted snows

In inventories quick men rearrange

And supplement each year to prove at last

The present more fantastic than the past.

PART V: SONGS OF TIME

The Adams Stone

In Halifax’s Graveyard

Beside an hourglass upon its side,

An earthworm wriggled metronomically

Till dinner for a crow. I can’t decide

If the tombstone told the truth or if it lied.

Time's A Poor Liar

"The present holds." Omitting the "for now,"

Time's hardly-clever perjury would shame

A half-wit if attributed to him.

"I shuffle--take your time," Time tells the child

Who nonetheless sees days accelerate

Till eighty years are nothing much to count.

Trust not its meters. Time betrays itself.

Turning Forty

I wed those lips forever! But I fear

They're tempted by variety. Each year

The feigning seems more certain in the glass.

I see temptation growing. Every pass

Reflects a deeper shame they spent the night

With tempted ears and legs who've lost delight

In me. Tomorrow will I wake alone?

A pile of cuckold jilted to the bone?

Among The Fastest Lies

Were I to draw a list of fastest lies,

Near the top I’d set out Horace’s “time flies.”

Equivocating, “time is fast within

The present,” he maintains, “since one’s within

The here and now with no recourse to quit

The present while one’s time continues.” (It

Is years and years since I was born. Yet I’m

As mired in present now as then.) Thus, time

Is fast all right though never fast enough

To break the present bondage of that tough

And tiny cell between infinities

That Horace could not burst with sophistries--

Time’s limed so fast “non tempus fugit” proves

The phrase for such a bird that never moves.

Reunion

Some summers they allot

A summary weekend To

Come inventory what

Once was and wasn’t, too.

This summer one had found

New mettle. Having earned

New metal, he was bound

To have him, had returned

To seek him out at last,

Unwavering till he lost

His bearings as he passed

The bald and bloated ghost

That crossing campus made

Brief note, too, of his shade.

Clavier Construction

A string of hammers tapped one day

In steady carpentry.

The box already finished they

Would frame the melody

In tight security.

They’d kept a single key.

They'd have no burglary.

But Time did not agree.

He swapped them peace for piece and stole away.

Metamorphoses

A bit of serpentine hose left behind

Brings Ovid’s Metamorphoses to mind.

The scaly garment lies on blades transformed

From Plato’s Formal Green. Though newly formed,

Such green soon morphs again. A brittle limb

Shakes pears brushed with a nervous jade that leaps

To moss around the trunk till emerald seeps

In man, Othello’s eyes, the rest of him.

The wind coagulates. Flies pirouette

Within a thickening breeze not curdled yet

To clouds. Red robin clots stick to a limb

Until the airy flow dislodges them

As drafts once stirred up Shakespeare’s clotting till

The congealed breath dissolved, the voice was still.

Moon Envy

I'd scoff at each declining phase.

I'd count the meager, fleeting days

Until I waxed again complete

With means to re-perform the feat--

I'd rarely chant a minor tune

If I could wane as you, O Moon,

And know that time would surely share

Another youthful face to wear.

Newton Must Have Lied

I've found a warp this summer's night

That turns the out inside

And brings the boy again! Delight!

I'm where I started! Hold the light

As crickets sing "the heart is right!"

I'll think it now (though impolite):

Old Newton must have lied.

Autumn Should Be Read

Judge tomes not by their covers, hard advice

In Autumn’s case with brilliance of its spine,

Its crimson front, its golden back, its fine

Leaf traceries not found at any price

In frontispieces man has minted. Price

Not books by such bright bindings though they aim

For parity with sunrise, boast the same

Splashy effect and pallet. Hard advice

Until we notice little movements in

The corners, till we see some extra thread

Appended to our things. Eight legs have read

The volume not the cover and thus spin

Their final webs round doors they creep inside

To prey until the last red ember’s died.

Falls

Flower Fall,

Flare Fall,

Foliage Fall,

Flake Fall,

Time’s always dropping

Itself and not-self

In seeming circles somehow.

Closing

It was a lovely village looking east.

I quickly put a contract on a new

White bungalow before the price increased,

Before a strangely sour odor drew

Attention to the west. On turning round,

I caught the village graveyard. Occident

Dwarfed orient--prospects of gothic ground,

Of graves collapsed and others holding blent

With the horizon. Retching, I beheld

Bones of all sizes, shreds of flesh and hair,

Foul residues of countless faiths time felled

Midst systems’ cogs, crown fragments littered there.

To breach or not to breach? It differed not--

Dead deal or dream in either case was rot.

Cousins

Good rounds in flesh (like those in fleeting air
Expressed) will twice be forfeited should their
Notes not be chorded in some sheets of songs.
Each loss (of present understanding plus
Ancestors never known in future) wrongs
Live melody as well as dead whose strains
Of rising, falling tones in such refrains
Give undulating joy and counsel. Thus,
Years' notes we keep for us and those of us.

PART VI: SONGS OF HIGHER THINGS

Star Of Bethlehem

Though no celestial maps then showed it there,

A little fire began up in the air

that overturned all language everywhere.

Did that not show us revelation can

at any moment alter any can-

ons altars tell us nothing ever can?

Revelation

We never close the canons of the dead

Or living as more words may lie ahead--

Should we uncover lost Cardenio

We’d revel in another Shakespeare play,

And should the attic yield another note

Grandfather penned there’s more of what he wrote.

And yet eternal speakers past and now

Have no more words that altars would allow?

Holy, True?

They say it is a sin to desecrate

The scriptures although God himself commits

That very deed. He stubbornly wipes clean

All paragraphs with ink-dissolving rain

We sometimes thwart awhile with shelters. Not

Deterred, he sets the very air and light

Upon the page and ink in gradual

Mute vandalism that re-renders both

Dust in mere fractions of his cosmic span.

Determined by his endless efforts to

Erase them can he find them wholly true?

On Proverbs

God's Word is pure*--complete--how add

A note to what's so true

And stitch in texts that we are bad

As crafty preachers do?

*Proverbs 30:5-9

Piracy

Beware of human vessels.

Like a yacht,

Religion can be hijacked.

God cannot.

Graven Image

Religion is a poor

Substitute for God,

A swap of course which makes

A graven image, breaks

The Decalogue. How odd

That’s nothing to deplore.

Silence

How comes disorder when

He holds the thunderbolt?

By what mandate can we

Chastise a schism on

Such principal’s behalf

Who’s quiet though the church

Is rent, though Philistines

Live regally? No sound

Is often sound if heard.

Like Holmes’ mute dog at night,

So much is said in naught

Though often missed, untaught.

The stick is fallacy

As he of course must know

No less than Cicero

Nor sway less perfectly.

Sky Bible

Will we need scriptures up in Heaven, too?

If so, will those two testaments still do?

Can angels juxtapose with pearl and gold

The gore of men and animals that's told

In "holy books" of him and slaughtered towns?

Must women angels cover up their crowns

With veils and lock their lips? Must slaves recall

The men who chained their bodies reading Paul?

Would we still need to measure symmetries

Of priestly testicles by books like these^*?

Unless right double-speaks it would seem clear

We need those books there just as much as here

And thus I go on quite consistently

Without such talk, with only God with me.

*See Leviticus 21:17-21.

Font On High

If God's unchristened how can we

Address him in a prayer

And know the one who hears is he

And not some devil there?

Yet if he's christened how can we

Pretend to know his name?

We've never seen the registry--

Our quandary’s still the same.

A Response To

Father Cadfael

I'd give confession to a tree

Whose limbs link Heaven here with me.

Although denied a Roman seal

Its rods and staffs are no less real.

It wears no needless priestly rags.

The cross it bears it plainly drags

Un-planed to stand an upright post

For any missives mortals post.

Anselm To Franklin

(Or A Monk On Deism)

If on the seventh day the Lord

Had nothing left to do,

That perfect mind would have been bored.

That is a contradiction: “ bored”

Lacks something; “perfect” cannot. You

Cannot say God withdrew.

Akhenaten’s Fool

If it’s more primitive to praise
A group of two than one,
Does that same logic not require
The worshipping of none?

Incarnations I

Truth must concede the Devil did it first,

That incarnation's happened more than once.

While God remained on his resplendent throne

In heaven's comforts, Satan first dared drop

New skinned into our crueler habitat.

At harshest levels of the serpent, he

Slinked wholly snake, yet wholly Devil, too,

In that first incarnation paradox

That's rarely parsed out by the orthodox.

Incarnations II

How hard is it believing in

The manger given we

Are inundated with all forms

Of skinned eternity?

It's wearing robin feathers for

Some worms it's come to bite.

It's hanging head-down in a cave

For insects out at night.

It wears a chunk of floating ice

For men upon the sea.

It wears a gentle shawl of mist

For drivers who must see.

It picks from endless skins the one

In each case that is right

To introduce itself. How hard

Is faith in Christmas night?

Rebuke

I’ve met a man who’d judge men by their face

Yet piously condemn as “primitive”

Those Hindu gods with several heads? But, sir,

If we assume a face a hieroglyph,

Won’t God need more than man? And does man’s one

You think you see now even make the whole

Inscription? No, unlike the scrolls I’ve seen

That end and that begin, I’ve yet to find

A man unrolling all his faces. (I’ve

Not seen my own--the quill’s not quit the ink

Were I so brave to do the reading--and

A hieroglyph may tell a fiction just

As well as truth.) No, here, too, Reverend, we’d

Be wiser not believing all we’d read.

The Maker Cannot Be Conservative

So many lenses grinded differently

And glued in such diversity of orbs
Encased within such panoplies of heads

On varied scaffoldings of legs and wings

Evolving over time must all disprove

The conservation long of any view
Despite "closed" canons that conservatives

Claim are the word of God, that same God who

Not only makes such lenses but disease,

Beasts, and time's scythe to further scramble sight.

That unmade maker of discordant eyes

Through eyes would have his creatures realize:

Prodigious views, none suffered long to live,

The maker cannot be conservative.

Spring Cleaning

He’s perfect and can’t be

Too lazy, cluttered. He

Throws dogs and fathers out*

Therefore each year. No doubt

He can’t do differently.

*My father, Abby, and Lettie all died in the Spring.

Experiments

I love test blooms (don’t get me wrong)

God resurrects each Spring.

But wonder why he takes so long

In the attempt to bring

Back Daddy. I would settle for

Just Spring returns we see

Experiments with crocus prove

A possibility.

Resurrection

The Resurrection’s glorified

But I confess am terrified.

Which I will rise that day?

There's much I'd tuck away.

God’s Acrostic?

Seared pigeon chicks shriek as sparks light their nest.

Old turtles hiss as shells melt. Much distressed,

Deer shake off orange cinders from their breast.

Once-flawless roses flame. Howling wolves halt

Mid fires to have a lick of Lot’s wife’s salt.

Clean Title

I would forego a Jericho

If blood is on the deed

Though God would sanction taking it,

Such fee I'd rather cede.

Hazing

Although roots of the rituals are lost

Somewhere in prior ages, still the new

Initiates endure the ancient cost

Of rites the universe would have them do.

Thus trees still dress as whores come every spring.

Perfumed and flowered first, they change into

Their greens then redder garments that they fling

To stand ashamed and naked where they grew.

Thus raindrops still climb up into the sky

So they can plunge in terror from above.

Thus beings do the rites, do not ask why

They’re being hazed, why there is horror of

That first night of a newborn in its room

Or that first evening spent within the tomb.

Eager Martyrs

Like moths into a flame, repeatedly

They throw themselves in much harm’s way. Mere clay,

They do not fret the damage. They would say

Instead they have religiosity

That buys a bargain. God’s annuity

Thus purchased dwarfs the premiums they would pay.

“Earth’s fleeting. Quick! More pain!” they pray. Do they

Strike clever deals? Or do they wretchedly

But crucify themselves in foul foretaste

Of worse? “Bear up your cross without complaint!”

Not “any cross”-- “your cross”--not others you

Choose? Seeking other pain befits a saint

Whose true cross lies abandoned in fool’s haste?

“Your cross!” May one seek pain and Heaven, too?

Dry Worlds

The different's good. Just see his seal,

That rainbow in the sky,

Proof multi-color is ideal

In worlds now promised dry.

On The Epistle Of James

When widows die before their husbands, when

Half’s whole and circles have their corners, when

Thought and belief can be disjoined from their

Effects, one need not fear for Christians who

Are saved by faith and not by what they do.

Acolytes

What is a fitting faith today

When one can't drag a cross

On planes or elevators whose

Widths tend too small across?

Knew Aborting New

I read somewhere the Lord at judgment time

Will punish those who failed to put to rhyme

What talent had allowed by reading each

Aborted work aloud to them—He’d teach

The measure of the loss thereby to those

Responsible and by such lines impose

The proper dose of guilt. The lesson? One

As much as murders new things unbegun--

And yet how so if new lives nonetheless

For reading at the judgment? One must guess

He knew aborting new, a crime as grim

As any sloth had done the homonym?

Economics

They tell me Heaven’s paved in gold.

With gilding everywhere,

The surplus shining stuff must be

Deflated in the air.

I’m told it’s full of good souls, too,

While short of bad ones. By

Their rarity, the vilest must

Be precious in the sky.

PART VII: SONGS OF ART AND LITERATURE

Three Paintings

1-Whistler’s Symphony In White

Embellished in the purity of fair

Folds, virtue’s marble blossom in her hands,

A white façade in right demeanor stands

On an eviscerated feral bear

Whose lifeless mouth lies in its pseudo roar

Of untamed, unconverted life. A bloom

Dropped on that grizzly fur that rugs a room

Goes almost unobserved among a more

Impressive floral pattered rug. What’s right

In fact? The painted buds? The creature that

Has spread a being as a surplus throw

Upon a floor already rugged? Or might

It be the beast despite its mouth and eyes

Suggesting life where only carnage lies?

2- Turner’s Approach To Venice

What inference do we draw about a Sun

That never tries the night though weaker Moon

Swings both ways rising up before day’s done

As readily as at night? One might soon

Conclude the frailer orb the braver or

The more inquisitive, industrious

Could such bold reasoning somehow ignore

The damage to the language. It can’t. Thus,

One says it’s not the Sun but is the night

That flees the Sun, that logic by some sleight

Has cleaved the two. Where Sun is day is, too--

One’s words demand that Sun could never do

As moon. Obedient, the Sun retires

So mind might have those shadows it requires.

3-Boudin’s Beach At Villerville

They prop their little world upon the sand

With axis uninclined. Erect they stand

(Or sit unslouching) as their rules demand

For such an upright orb no forward hand

Dare spin. From there they fix their glance beyond

That upright sphere in some astronomy

Of distant clouds in ethers that abscond

Some yellow planet and a galaxy

Of salt suspended in geometry

Their Newton might “decipher,” too, should he

Desire. Where pretense meets the chaos sea

And clouds may wreak at will, unwillingly

The dog holds back. When he must correspond

With separate spheres at once, how else respond?

Shadow After Poe

We noticed there was pestilence about
And played instead of passive victim an
Aggressive agent capable of plan
And execution. In, we locked it out,

A simple action, really, which we sealed
With weighty velvet curtains drawn across
An iron door bolted tight. “Our gain, Hell’s loss!”
We toasted with good bourbon and were steeled.

“God helps who helps himself,” we boasted till
We saw a shadow by a comrade still
And cold throughout the reverie. It hid

As quick within the heavy draperies. Did
Drink fool? No. Oh, no fancy has composed
Such vast lost voices in a single ghost.

Hawthorne’s Window

An urchin’s barrel-organ down below
Encases some still human figurines.
He turns the crank, spills out twelve strings of notes
To animate the figures. To one tune,
The maiden milks enthusiastically,
The scholar reads, the miser boxes gold,
The lady fans, the lover woos, the smith
Strikes anvils while the soldier swings a blade.
Moved, too, we marvel at the progress till
The boy’s arm tires abandoning the crank.
The figures stop themselves where they began
As though they never hoped or labored. We
Include ourselves. Retreating from the pane,
We shall not be so gullible again.

Je meurs de soif auprès de la fontaine*

I’ve never sensed more depth within a soul--

The waters must indeed run deep behind

That visage. Nor would I too much extol

His beauty claiming I shall never find

Apollo’s twin again. I’m of a mind

To stroll across the plaza, show him how

(In urgent manner though yet still refined)

I die of thirst. Beside the fountain now

Where he is standing, I, too, pitch a roll

Of pennies in the spray till his eyes find

My own. Alas, in perfect self-control

His eyes keep moving focusing behind

Me on another as though he were blind

To my imploring glances. Yet I vow

To persevere (why not?) because I find

I die of thirst beside the fountain now.

And yet it takes quite little to cajole

Those deep-blue eyes back round where they then find

My own in horror. I cannot control

The way my thoughts and feelings have combined

Insatiably. Alas, I am consigned

To everlasting thirst no matter how

Abundantly he shares. My fate’s unkind.

I die of thirst beside the fountain now.

Pour me! I’m caught within a cureless bind.

Oh, Duke, no matter what he would allow

(No sips, a few or all that I’m inclined)

I die of thirst beside the fountain now.

*The Duke of Orleans supposedly held a ballade composition contest using this refrain. In modern times, Richard Wilbur has also taken up the challenge.

PART VIII: MISCELLANEOUS SONGS

The Garden After Rain

And we, that now make merry in the Room
They left, and Summer dresses in new bloom,
Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth
Descend-ourselves to make a Couch-for whom?

--Fitzgerald

Events unfolded after heavy rain

Late yesterday exposing once again

The thinness of my garden’s showy skin.

Beneath the petals and the feathers in

The day, came evidence that depths of black

Hid underneath. Smoke signals through no crack

Apparent in the garden slowly rose

In low, thick puffs of gray. Up wafted prose

Of Indian ciphers from the clays below.

Funereal signs! Grateful I could not know

The meanings of these missives I in lieu

Observed a beam of sunlight breaking through

At last. It fried a rock whose verges next

Commenced a subtle steaming hiss that vexed

Me worse than any slinking serpents I

Had seen. How many former snakes must lie

Below that rock now hissing for them? Cold

And clammy updrafts brushed by me. They told

Of agitations underneath. I feared

The ground would tremble, too. Quakes have appeared

In these parts, too. I dropped my silly dream

My garden’s much. However buds may seem,

Beneath the garden’s painted membrane squirms

Much humbled jumbled rot among its worms.

Fossil Fueled

We’re warmed by death,

We’re moved by death--

Though death is still and cold

We’re told.

Père Lachaise

Put Callas in a jar?

Was done. I’ve seen the shelf

At Père Lachaise myself-

Some carbon in a jar

Might fuel a house or car

Not far.

Ken Hovey (10/17/1945 to 5/25/2006)

Keen as his name suggests (his mother had

Evoked him right from the beginning) I

Now try to do him justice in five lines:

He platted places maps omitted, searched

Old charted places now disfavored. His

Vast globe held ever-greening continents

Enticing those who spun it—till green Time

Yearned for a master’s undivided craft.

Joyce Sidden's Dead

She made some fields out of her bed

And violets from her sheet

And smelled the garden in her head

As frost set in her feet.

She saw a bee that wasn't there

That didn't want to stay--

As lab coats said "How sad, Unfair!"

She followed it away.

Light-years

Our science says if one knows where to look,

There should be light from all the years that were

Which means still yet my father's days are mixed

With mine within the universal light.

I scan the Heavens wondering which stars

Drop that December's light when he was born

Or that more recent light when he first spoke

Or turned a man or when he wed or when

He brought his first child home or when he lived

Those countless other days whose hours converge

With mine no less today than otherwise

Both here and in the heavens. In that cross

Of faith and science I know past the sun

The father still looks down upon the son.

Slept Standing

My chair slept standing like a cow

On four legs through the night

In easy sleep the gods allow

To those who live upright.

Playing Abraham

"The world will see how good I am!"

Shout tyrants playing Abraham.

"I'll stab my own,

My proof is shown,

As long as I've a lamb!"

Spinoza

We operate without a knife,

Grind lenses that explore,

Remove, repair, add here and there

Without blood, scarring or

Trauma to stitch. Reversible,

No eye is altered for

The rest of days since spectacles

Come off. In peace and war,

Appeal to force is fallacy.

Best doctoring therefore

Is verse. Just like Spinoza, we

Grind glass and nothing more.

Three Keys

Sing notes in one, in two, in three,

The basic keys in poetry.

The best must sing in all of these--

Sing Tao and Pound and Auden. Please

Fill opera halls with all of these!

(Note: Compare C.S. Peirce’s Firstness, Secondness, & Thirdness.)

Abomination

Sea creatures are defined

As “fish” so one must find

A tale and fin to eat

“Seafood”—not scallop’s meat

Or shrimp’s. Too, one cannot

Mix fabrics or one’s crops

Unless a loose tongue drops

Some category lines

In better grammar. It’s

Abominable indeed

To mold oneself to words

And thereby mutilate

God’s image, make the tool

And not the wielder rule.

Best Medicine

The kindest medicine

For eyes is poetry.

No knives, just glasses we

Can wear or not within

Our own discretion, try

Without scarring an eye.

PART IX: SONGS TO APOLLO

Now is the time that gods came walking out

of lived-in Things . . . .

Rilke

Invocation

Do masculine inflections used

On me by those who “know”

The language fit? Apollo, show

Me whether yes or no,

O sun, wherein the traits are fused

Archetypically so.

Reason Alone

His Reason is peculiar to mankind

When other traits are shared. Beasts breathe the same

Air, spiders work, are two legged (if we maim

Them), parrots speak, chimps play; good dogs are kind,

The lone dove mourns, wasp swarms are evil when

They sting, hyenas laugh. A single thing--

Reversed ex machina--God drops a string

From his vast ball of Reason down to men,

A loan that hoists his image he is bound

To raise above the dirt. The public show

Of worlds suspended proves such Reason--though

Alone, such Reason's harder to be found--

Some nights disoriented by the door

Shut, we have gone back out and mixed some more.

Dogged Reason

I’ve Reason. I can play with numbers, prove

That Nature must abhor a vacuum, know

How silverware is placed, attempt to show

The Lord exists by how the planets move.

I’ve reason to believe beasts sink below

Mankind because our kind’s the only one

That reasons--though the logic here is done

With residue admittedly. Although

I’ve Reason, I can never hear the dead

Conversing or their rappings at the door

Or smell their little trails across the floor

And with good reason double up, am led

To supplement the greatness. Thus I’ll beg

For Abby to come curl beside my leg.

Root

Unlike the beasts, I’ve in my pedigree

That shoot called Reason. Genealogist,

I rooted round for details I could list

Within the branches of that family tree.

I formulated an hypothesis

That Reason is progenitor of genes

That seek the truth (since reasoned action means

Right acts). And yet I soon abandoned this

Since Abby only tries to lick the hand

That’s truly there, since even butterflies

Suck only real blooms, since I realize

That mockingbirds just set sights for and land

On real limbs not illusions and the tick

Bites only on real flesh where pincers stick.

Tongue

Tongue is the magic trait of man and thus

Of Reason I’ve good reason to believe.

God is the Word. Believers should believe

That very likeness, too, was pressed on us,

And Reason even pagans should agree

Is words inside--our syllogisms burn

Just them, no other fuel--which means in turn

That man runs on the same, his quiddity--

Except that Abby understands her name

And other terms in My-speak not to speak

Of Abby-speak she teaches every week,

Except we’d contradict ourselves, be same

No more. If Reason, we would ebb and flow

With wine, with sleep, with how our phrases go.

Via Negativa

Then I am what I’m not. My Reason flies

Above mere sense beside Apollo in

That streaking solar car above the din

Of passion and of earthly things some eyes

Fix on. Ignoring those red herrings low

To ground, my sights are set high. I would win

Or lose upon the merits. Fools who pin

Worlds on blind faith aren’t “rational.” Not so,

I’m rational--though calculators, too,

Use no faith calculating half two’s one,

Though faithless ragweed grows up toward the Sun,

Though honeybees have faith their wings will do

The job, though bloody tyrants have through time

Lacked faith that there’s a reckoning for crime.

Munchhausen By Proxy

Though bruised, his Reason may define the man

Through healing which requires some injury

First--good must first have bad if good’s to be.

Thus, reaping good from bad, we’ll single man

Out by his inclinations and his mind

That cures diseases and provides relief

In others. Lives of insects are too brief,

The donkey is too dumb, the mole too blind

To measure herbs--although the wolf might lick

Its wounds and other apes might groom and pick

The vermin from their neighbors’ heads before

They bite again, though only we have bled

Bowls full as “medicine” or urged instead

Of healing showers Zyklon B and war.

Witchdoctor

Where man partakes of God’s form as the Good

Book tells us, he must also have a share

Of magic in the imitation. Where

Is God if he can’t render Daphne wood?

We know Apollo does his medicine.

There’s magic there: the mottled man’s remade

One color; black depressions in brains fade

To light. But is such magic essence in

The proper man? Could he be rarefied

And elevated by his dancing to

Snake hisses at the charms upon each shoe

While circling with a painted, symboled hide

Round smoldering fires that cough out colored smoke

To old drum beats with an invariable stroke?

Achilles Heels

Distinguish man from dog? One heels, one heals--

Terms Adam chose reflecting in the sound

Perhaps alliance where in spelling’s found

Distinction nonetheless. Language reveals

Both knot and not where man and canine share

Somehow some ancient commonality

Though one is active, offers remedy,

Though one’s submissive, though one knows to care

For golden things the other cannot. Man

Guards krugerrands no starving mouth may eat

And heels a good boy at his Mammon’s feet

While gold-blind canines curl beside the man

And heal the monger--“mongrel” I’ve inferred

Is thus another clever Adam word.

Straining

Man’s prowess shows in music, too. A lyre

Once served a plucking widower who strained

Beyond the realm of earth itself and gained

His lover back (though briefly). In the fire,

The peace, the plaint, the spectacle of song

Would seem the very manly essence well

Confirmed by all the discs where men excel

(Caruso and the rest). But Horne? The song

In Callas or in Abby’s plaintive whine?

Or what about that melody we heard

In vocal fireworks of a mockingbird

Or last night’s rhythm in a base scrub pine

Some wind shook as a rattle, or a tune

A brook played on some rocks all afternoon?

Aside

What was I thinking? Seeking some reply

On high must implicate some sense of an

Intelligence. I’d not presume a man

Or dog I haven’t felt somehow. Could I

Treat deity with less care and accept

Its higher rank? I might take Otto’s course

And claim a common sentiment of course

Implies such being after all except

With Sherlock, too, I note strange silence of

The dog. Her nose and ear much keener, she

Should trail that higher scent instead of me,

Hear and bark. Abby dogs nothing above--

Unless (in ignorance hope!) her praises be

In hound quite indecipherable to me.

No Son To Bear

No offspring's murder? Could a father kill

A child he never had? Could Abraham

Have chosen as his substitute for lamb

Such issue, stab at air, and do God's will?

That would, it seem, have been a mockery

Of Him and thus the absence of a son

Can't be equivalent with slaying one--

Although there seems some inconsistency

When trees are judged by fruits. The Lord has said

As much. Therefore, the crop would be the same

In either case and bare would bear the blame

Of murderer? Grandchildren, too? Unbred,

One's damned for genocide of thousands who

Can't be because of what one couldn't do?

No Sun To Bear

Wrights reasoned it was wrong to ground man. "Why

Can't man build chariots for pulling, too,

The Sun across the Heavens, have the view

That's wasted on much lesser beasts that fly? "

Writes one biographer. I can't deny

I envied birds their feathers, too--one, two

Times even thinking mere moth wings would do

When I, too, somehow thought men couldn't fly,

Before I passed a carcass on the street

Some hours there. There swarming round to eat

Were blowflies and a murder of some crows

Each taking pieces from the head to toes

In different flight paths. Give me gravity.

I'll fly too soon too many ways for me.

Rowing

Advancing to infer the progress, I

Am thrusting and therefore am man. Instead

Of “anti-man,” I am not used or led

As dominance would have. Wood winged, I fly,

Above blue depths. Wings churning, I create

Aesthetic patterns in a passive field

Of little note before. I see revealed

Some agency. I swirl some “he” to sate

Me till the depths are contemplated, till

One plainly sees such plane waves are no more

Than furrows in wet skin (not innards or

Bones), till one finds the wrinkles proving we

Have grown have dissipated rapidly,

Until one sees how soon the seas are still.

Either Oar

One turns to Kierkegaard when on a boat
As anywhere. The waters also place
One in dilemmas when one has to face
A choice to either row or merely float.

Yet is it such a simple either or?
There is the dock of course. Why sail? One could
Read just as well dockside as not. And should
One row, one might still favor either oar

Or both or neither oar. Complex — and yet
We’d rather move than not and so we slip
Both oars into the waters where we dip

The possibilities and where we make
A journey cross its surface to forget
We’d drown within the belly of the lake.

Fly On

Fly on, Apollo. Burn across the sky

With all your tempting features men aspire

To have before their time upon the pyre.

Fly on, Apollo. With your music fly

Seductively inducing men to come--

Shoot past with darts, herbs, logic. Troublesome

Example, prove old Aristotle wrong

It’s virtue that brings neighbors out. Instead

The tempter scored, the serpent wooed and fled

The garden. Fly on, too, Apollo. Song

And dance time’s over. All seductions leave

Us standing on mere faith alone that we

Exist at all. Men, heaven equally

Are Sunday things. Sum ergo I believe.

PART X: FOUR CANTOS OF SOPHIAS

For my friend George Vamvakas

Canto I

Eva Sophia I

What moral hold’s not grounded in

Divinity? We all

May pen

“Our little codes.” Yet how glean out

The binding from the not

Without

Petitio principii?

The only option’s deity.

Philomela Sophia

What kind of deity? A god

That keeps his distance yet

Makes broad

Demands on those below that he

Aloof avoids himself?

No, we

Know that hypocrisy is sin.

A virtuous god must take

On skin,

Therefore, descend and suffer an

Incarnation like a man.

Eva Sophia II

If something “is” and yet “is not”

We’ve tied our tongue into

A knot.

A circle squared is plainly wrong

(If even doable).

Along

Those lines we plainly err should we

Claim God is man or man is he.

Lettie Sophia I

Sophie, if contradiction (three

Yet one) can lever us

Then we

Should use (why not?) such physics where

We need the lift unless

Aware

Of better instruments or that

More harm than good would flow from that.

Platona Sophia

Such machinations generate

Law & Language

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Either Oar (A Book of Original Verse & Translations)

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