MUDLARK No. 6 (1997) ISSN 1081-3500 Copyright (c) MUDLARK 1997 Editor: William Slaughter E-Mail: mudlark@unf.edu URL: http://www.unf.edu/mudlark __________________________________________________ ISLAND ROAD by Henry Gould _Dedication_ ES A SB R T I To-- C X WSM O D --YZ SK N PW EH B FG F ROM A Shak-Spire WS/Henry Church LUV Q ? LIM * *** BE E*S !! KAW _Author's Note_ ISLAND ROAD is an attempt to graft a few idiosyncratic fragments of late 20th-century experience onto what is basically a Renaissance form, the sonnet sequence. I have tried to follow the example of John Berryman and Ted Berrigan on a path which has led to a personal and semi-mythical encounter with the recurrent shadow of Shakespeare. But this is only part of the story, and there are many side-trails and byways along this road, many of them unfortunately obscured by thickets and brambles which only the hardiest readers will penetrate. Here are two simple markers to aid in orientation: 1. "Costaguana" is the name of the fictional Caribbean island nation in Joseph Conrad's epic novel, Nostromo. Among the novel's central characters are "the Goulds"; I have introduced them as means of carrying forward my own story. 2. The "Henry Gould Institute", on the other hand, is a real place (see sonnet #74). Established in Florence, Italy, by an American philanthropist many years ago as a "refuge for young Protestants," the Institute now serves as a hostel for students and other visitors to the city. _Contents_ I. The Road from Costaguana 1-36 II. A Midnight Masque (in Greenwich Time) 37-50 III. Don't Get Ready for Mardi Gras (blush) 51-60 IV. To the Green Constellation 61-89 V. Scattered Bells & Whistles 90-99 __________________________________________________ I. THE ROAD FROM COSTAGUANA * 1 Maple seedlings twirl out of the reddening leaves out of the blue cerulean onto ochre bricks in the clear wonder of one autumn day everything blushes toward the fall to come But the road in my mind ends among some birches somewhere in Siberia white on white their limbs garnered into icebound sheaves woodpiles a pear-shaped lake frozen like a drum White too are the endless nights among huddled words I am a bundle of sticks frozen head down signalling "wrong way" until a forgotten phantom heaves back the door of the inclined pole and spring lurches free bearing my whole body toward her delirious shore 2 Hooded you smoke down a street in Petersburg Neva a mirror curving out of sight is tied in viper ringlets knots of bridges weightless beneath emigrant, phantom blue A second Venice third Rome another dimension of imitation in solitary, Ego slips on that treacherous double ice-floe loves you, loves you not, a-knotted suspension... Ellen, Eleanor, Lenore... the mask slips too easily down to the tickling scarf down to the salt-laden local turf there to garner is the task, gathering in skycolored photos of a frozen face Epiphany... or a mournful trace of silver. 3 The dogwood is ready to let go drop her coral pendants red, red, red. I am ready to disappear given the slip my kiss betrayed. Gone bare the dogwood's breathing out her heart in leafrain muttering they are her children seething nation settling scattered far apart The tree has weathered this before militant stumps cheer her onward drifting over the highway over the sheer poignard goodby goodby 4 Under twirling bivalve helicopters the winking lariat of neon rhododendron I was happy & fickle with lust & to join the other buried men while leaves redden in the growing cold bold as love here there is no lament among persisting branches what is this revolving around a bent pole somewhat ever-fixed and broken again (compost perennial?) Tell me Berrigan Berryman headed down smiling in the river of ashes, tell me (frail wasp-punts in the bloodstream pulse with hunger a pulverized poor bean- scramble) o.k. they say maybe she's your aerial laurel singing in the streambed 5 Homage to Falstaff _Summer so histrionic, marvelous dirty days_ In the cold steel sheepdog winter of lust a strange tact island of ability to penetrate to the marrow maybe tomorrow's rainbow aorta blood the sharp- eyed carpenter lifting out of his mind's orbit a couple a coupla a cupola * * Ireland of squander roar by jovial collider collage kaleidoscope college! & to lie be down near the Cranston line with pennywhistle & brawny whore- heart the sun, he says, and then he says all mine! 6 Wind from the last of Hurricane Lil knocks off the dogwood leaves til there are few, or none. Rain soaks my dreams: bears in the ruined choirs Napoleon, poignant, besieges 40 days & nights the bears in his dreams are wearing tights and heavy armor over the 12 gates, candled fire & the priestess phosphorous glow-worm of the black sun keens a long E in glottal reverse a cyrillic raven squares up the Mayday precinct with a (cough) sacral puff Meanwhile sweet birds, Will sing late untouchable & second-best, always in your last will and testicles and the doomed lambs of heaven are everywhere, on hillside and on streets, if you will: the tenant's stray flocks, unmoved by the remover's joker's fate 7 In me you see the evening. Gold dust a yellow level bled bubbled wavering toward black night. Russian rug on the study floor Mongolian-eyed knighted squared grandmastered On a gray New England October day. Slow gray streets spangled with coral & curled toward Hibernian sleep. My green Sears Constellation all that remains & it was yours. Stars wheel overhead no consolation only an alphabet of levers and pulleys tackle of a speech machine. So much revolves around the idle pinprick of a queen so pale so small her sheepish finger strays & stirs divided memories once left for dead. 8 A small tree (almond, dogwood) flowering in your eyes leafs through my spine, speaks volumes (my needle betrays). Maple leaf like a reef of sharp-eyed coral or hand cut by a blue glass frisbee (your hand shakes: it's constitutional in our society) insinuating states of etats-unis or "marriageable rose some truant lips annul" That sheepdog would play in my summer's unruly realm but then she's furred as well for wolfish winter (one sheepshank: constellational insanity) A stratagem of light nips & barks scotch banter & morning roads are opening in her ample palm & everywhere this Love comes home to me! as every island road leads to the sea. 9 Hand me a red road bouquet for the journey, my little sheepdog I will be true to the dead end. smoky twin little rose iceberg escapade only cold steel can match your flinty circumpolarity. Through the brain fog I see a maze of canals mirrored in the Northern Lights and over there beyond the iron bandshell, an eggshell dome bears icons of a green-eyed Magdalen lifting scales. And I can pledge my shoulder to the bricks with honor but you are only a collage yourself, a puddingstone mosaic hefting interior triple domes and if I want inside your fur you just want to play tricks... And this is how we babble along together alone down Land O'Lakes road (alone, together, it's all one). 10 Bells ring as the days move toward snow, days governed by a different providence, not this quivering burg of whims and nerves, as shanty towns move through experience sleep encircled hope here on the wharves of Costaguana under a brooding mountain's brow. The old sabre over the mantle who would have known cold steel could cauterize each heart's high noon? The word apportions beauty pride of place & vanity while courage opens doors & echoing compassions bless (with mirrored cherubim) your pulsing search (Bells droning onward into the azured arch silvered toward a frosted yeast of snows) 11 O my snows of yesteryear! & as the Tide in the affairs of men enters the rinse cycle, I hear her washing the world & dressing it in clean linen revolving everyone from iris to sunflower, from Want to Give (all in the twinkle of a sigh). O my soul's Giantess! ray terrace rest all 12 We'll go more steeply into the dark, & travel down under the moss & the dead leaves & go under shadows of daylight savings, as November comes on. We'll go toward sleep, my thrush, my sleepyhead & hear the mutter of an undertow across pebbles, & mournful puddingstone; we'll roll, black one, toward your lonely mark. We'll follow the ghost dance through hedgerows, & wear rotten pumpkins for crowns on the last night. We'll light a little spark & watch it fade over lead-gray fields. We'll wait until our hearts are already heavy & full. & then we'll lower the pail, slowly, into your well. 13 Yesterday the trees were passionate an indiscriminate planet piling on sweet plenitudes of leaves in the harvest light, while august the firmament planted a blue & final kiss Yesterday's kings trundled forth from castles bumblebees were drunken sailors in the grass & like honeyed wax bearing his father's seal Hamlet wheeled around toward Elsinore. Today soft rain flattens the brown plane leaves Earthfilled mouths mutter to life once more In the All Souls' light living & dead alas are spun together just above their graves & Hamlet yes comes home, & it is no dream Ophelia is singing in the stream. 14 First the voices twitter from the graves like starlings choirs of worms or harmonizing skulls & then graves open & the dead walk home & everywhere is home & light springs from dust & the dust like a school of swallows suddenly swims over gables of firmament, shaped like a wing This is dusk the beginning of Rome, Byzantium: a host of unkempt, furry voices swirling full throttle (while golden elm leaves scatter against gray sky, expiring sparks against lead-tempered walls, a green-eyed goldfinch tucks away her beak & hides within my weak, my white-haired heavens) * * 15 _for Edwin Honig_ Mysterious day of perpetual evening. Old men are following the pendulum & making out their wills. Unweary children laugh in dusky light set leafboats floating An old Horatian aristocrat paces the dull docks in Costaguana, his voice grown tremulous. A red bandanna drifts in the harbor (relic of the coup d'etat). I hear you, old man measuring your steps your will & testament are mine as well. A phantom with a black silk parasol crossed our two swords cancelled our debts beneath a palm leaf made of whispering that cuts to blood & sutures everything 16 The principle of the sword was benign & frozen an ice-word or presiding ray gone into deep night or frost mantle like wool over our eyes at the inaugural horizontal curved like a mirror a vertigo spiral the principle of the sword cuts clean & swallows its tale of America _A palm leaf divided the sky & lined the donkey road to the contested city._ But I shall always be faithful unto you, dogwood though I was untrue like a bad American shepherd weak & hysterical in a dead decade's light it's just the principle of the sword that tries like a royal finger to blot out all those memoirs made of sighs 17 Silver will never disintegrate or fade because it's dead. Charlie emerges from the mine a washed-out half-life blue eyes blinkered for the hole ahead (no parakeet, no sign of life). It is a metalloid eternity that slides life downward-forward into decay of everything around the cave mouth crumbling a furrowed hillside Charlie's mastery... Under the steel sword over the mantle a leaf of petrified coral smoulders fitfully surrounded by black lakes of glinting coal & what was mirrored there dark eyes could tell no one, no one arose petal by petal leaf by leaf, rose everlastingly 18 Very deep in his mine called "mine" Charlie were consolidating him deposits. Over a bullion pit he a-hoist an icon of Aurora Borealis (his light departed). & out of her eyes of tempera & petroleum she overlooked his temper tantrums tawdry bawled-out longings & repulsive victories. She, she understand when the Quest draw to a close finish, smoothed over, evened out...finally (& incommodiously) lost! Her wish came true when he parlay his last penny to the camp girls, gave his shoulder a bored pat & help him into a cab. & that was that. 19 _i.m. Henry Pussycat_ The gals is angrier, it's all the rage, & boys am angriest, & selfisher, & sans that do-re-mi you won't be bacon on no Sunshine Stage besides hotels. --You done blanch ornerier, Mr. Bones, that is fo sho! & rust was spoken, up the wheels, & baby birds, plebeian mighty low, & golden bowls, be broken too, til Slocum Henry tired of all them spiels. He feed his sheepdog nag a whackeroo, & sets off, awful slow, & heftin his heavy northern pikebone stingray, goes on, his merry all post-humorous way. 20 The true, not the calendar November has arrived. I float beneath gray clouds the color of brain, or imminent rain & scrabble snoozing screed beside the river's stolid girdle. Megaphones explain (across bank troughs & boring crowds) the blaring's sponsored (by somebody or other). Only these vacant, granite spaces bother to remember the cost of all that labor, & it's shrinking Grandma under her arbor hard by Grandpa in the ground _comprende_ better than any still around how Adam plowing in the _fado_ dust taught them to fade, as each we must. 21 Deep in his mine, Charlie lay perched on a scaffold, intent on his labor of love, his masterpiece, the _Magdalen- as-Fallen-Woman-Repentant Almost Gored by A Mastodon- Blessedly-Cuffed-from-Behind by the Silver Shackles of Jesus-Androgynous._ How devoted to his hobby Charlie ferociously was! Many were the nights the gracious Mrs. Gould spent fending for herself with the gimpy misanthropic Doctor, their homogenized houseguest. The surly, withdrawn old medical man adored Mrs. Gould, his hostess; he would say (with that wry, habitual shrug so characteristic of him), he confessed, he knew next to for nothing about art. One day the winter cold snapped the aluminum on that scaffold. Charlie was left hanging by a stalactite! And a stalagmite (one in each hand)! Until he was rescued by a blackened crowd of Costaguanian riffraff, who had been observing him there, regularly, on their lunchbreak. 22 A strange justice prevailed in Costaguana like the 4-way iron needle on the Courthouse clock in Providence pointing forever to high noon because it's broke like the industrious neatness of the piranha or proverbial goodness evinced by the monsoon or divine palm oil (grouse or manna) a strange justice prevailed in Costaguana. He hung there anchored to a beam and shot guy wrong place wrong time wheedling leather merchant scum rot animal, to be blunt Take him down & keep him he's your boob like a toothpick in the lip of a gentle scribe pursed with reddening petals 3, 2, 1... Atone. 23 Sea-Shanty Splash (the clock on the wharf strikes midnight) no other sound but that anchor going down in the lagoon (and the medusa ringlets, the dark petals of water & salt soon vanish) & mirrors vaguely rippled & dispersed the granite on the promontory a hand blessing or gathering at the prow, the poop of some vessel a-tilt in the stiff wind of a fresh curse harpoon Ahab captain follows the snapped iron going down into the hold of the sea which swallows him surrounded by fold on whispered fold of blind fingers (& a reedy sigh) 24 What are you doing today... it's raining here. Election day--it's over finally, the money's paid. Time again to stare angrily-complacently at your favorite program. I get the feeling you don't give a damn while they do whatever they want to (in your name). Whoever's running what are on a spree, a sponsored corporate bipartisan scam. What are you doing today... from water's world looms from below a cupola of faded voices forms each petal of concentric breakers the sceptre of the heart, mirrored centripetal & rose out of dogwood splinters drifting coral bronze veins plow the upturned air & the sea rejoices 25 Waiting to go to London on an airplane, & wondering about the anagram of your name & my hand mirrored in the threads of your palm, O costly Brazilian singer from Lebanon Husbanded by cedars heroin microphones where are you now? running after quarters after a quarter of a century somewhere surrounded by child labor, among sheep you are a shepherd's quandary building Jerusalem O from hope and feeble-hearted stones, ALMA my shady tree-lined soul's in your palm again 26 Evening sky vast, endless, generous. If only sheepish human measure could compare with cloud strokes floating so euphoric there; full stop holding their breath in the abyss of pastel blue. Verily I say unto you. Unable to express. What is this festive dusk, the Preacher saith. To show you, ALMA (crown of darkness aureole & balm) (black hole where hunger swirls beneath your palm) my disintegrated soul, one turbulent ink-blind universe 27 It seems like London here today the air is murk edges are gray as the Professor smuggles a bomb beneath a threadbare macintosh, sky tumbling around like dirty wash. Wherever you are, you aren't here today. Absent as a pendulum this way, that way swings in an empty cage while some folk keep faring forth on arduous pilgrimage-- before the heavy snows bury their sorrow & burden of nightfall settles on the year & the tattered tattooed body here below recedes in white lime a phosphorous glare & the star in the milk turns black yes right here * 28 _near Norwich, by the Thames_ Trees merge with the darkness coral, camouflaged above the river, quiet, smooth and ceaseless. Hidden by nightfall, stars, arranged in the heavens, drift reflected there. You tugged your sweater close around your dress & let me wrap an arm across your shoulder as the last of summer pulled us both downstream, so adamant, so casual, unvarying, and calm. Those fingers lifted to my shivering lips were hidden in the darkness too & now my heartbeat mimics you & stained with all this darkness, steps toward some anonymous London afterlife, incognito (the ache of universal grief). 29 An Icon _woke up this mornin' with my mind set on freedom..._ I wanted to make you happy with another poem, & as the star of a nation droops low in the great NW sky I wanted to flood you with fishbaskets from Rome, Byzantium & as the voice of Marian Anderson ricochets off the Memorial (& over the heads of the D.A.R.) I wanted the star (with its consort of muffled organ) to surface--and plumb the mansions of heaven & these desires of mine hung there pendulous like fireworks, or all the other & Various Works of Man-- waiting, waiting (like sheepdogs--wandering barks) for the miracle of your ink-black inspiration 30 _i.m. Joseph Bernardin & Meridel Le Sueur_ A strange fortitude hovers over the fort this morning spangled pupils aim for the black holes in bunkered irises: with a bark a virtual Putnam keys a command: Foursquare alert! I had a dream last night I was talking to a poisonous spider like a little white ball rolling toward me-- he was the King of Milk in the murk of a cedar cellar & he swirled, ALMA among his lambs & amid a UNION swathed in silver pennies & Chicago cardinals From you, for you, with you shall not perish though the sword rose in sorrow & bitter to the taste-- each coin farmed out to the river turned copper and rusted in your streambed heart 31 Henry's Muse _by the Providence River_ The river drowses like a flickering sword, on past infinite farmyards gone to seed, a lamp in a prairie palm meadows & towns loud wail of a long-gone train (Transcontinental Tramp). Anoint me with the oil of your guttering candle, London, for my mint is pennyroyal, & my royal headache's eased now-- but I'm seeing double-- & blood will flush the curtained chamber of Jerusalem. Shall I place it on my head? I'm cold in this coin of a bowling broken realm. I'd put an arm across your shoulder, gal-- in the sceptred greenhouse-- should I be so bold? It's you, O green-eyed National Velvet at the helm-- Empress my soul now, for my mint is pennyroyal 32 If I were King, I'd put my alms across your soul Let go the superflux! No more hung-up long-drawn & hamleted in quarters very-locked bombed-out Is Kosmos then cut to the waistline of our gluttony? (Yundt walks past the coffeeshop.) Can we afford the theater in Dallas? Or was the UNION all in vain, alas [etc.]? Crowds of trenchcoats going by... the Father of his Country, greenish-faced, on magic carpet in the sky... & the sea like a mother rose in my heart. Small ring in his palm, the courtier boned the envelope with wax of paternity & like ALMA rather than Mammon, chose eternity 11.22.96 33 _Property was thus appall'd, That the self was not the same_ The trees are withered to the bare bones now & in the shallows of regret & out of work I walk the streets & make myself a mark evading by a hair a roving garbage scow The skies are lowering & shall these bones live again? I'll go evangelize the Stones in London & your green-eyed compass rose must crown me not myself like some Napoleon & our Thanksgivings, now shall be provisional with the purity of a circus & the order of a dark street's gypsy camp & in a tattered Creole pilgrim flame we shall be gathered up, snowed-in again, where streams run copper-colored: my small estate, which is the smallest coin of all 34 Shakespeare was Bacon on a sunshine stage, a secret agent, or unperfect actor and if this is a crown it's a fool's crown, or crown of dogwood splinters, wreath'd with your absent part & three parts rage Is it megalomania or is it shame that drove me from the Doctors into wilderness & set me spinning toward your globe of fame? & when those Aprils born of tenderness hail down sweet kelsons of the cosmic frame- up I'll be standing in my shepherd's weeds-- a wildness tamed by what I know comes not from me: adhesive happenstance--O Chair of Anonymity 35 The snow fell, finally on your birthday ripe Thanksgiving earth all a sheep in sheep's clothing but growing cold. Your old lovers walk by, lonely & how did Lazarus inherit everything? Marlow knows. Sternly over the stern he views a murky star beneath the wake wavering goodby all your white hair going down to Sheol, stellular for Marlow's sake. The air was dark above Gravesend. He resembled a pilot. Promotion to the fleet at Ravenna. & only later to apprehend. Benign immensity. Unceasing service. Meet the Dark Lady around Medusa Bend & delicate snow shall be your wedding sheet. 11.27.96 36 _Eternity, oh Eternity! That is our business. --Roger Williams_ With a mouthful of Narragansett conversation & a scroll for London to charter a star With a handful of snow (proverbial heaven's scale of values, like a wheel or buoyant garden of aerial cedar) the friend of Canonicus & Miantonomi set sail at Christmastide aye to gather firewood splinters for the poor & handshake freedom for the colony Aye there was a kingly man whose bare estate was commonweal a breath of air unearthly, sure like a flock of cardinals hovering home high up in the cupola-- (afloat, again) II. A Midnight Masque (in Greenwich Time) ** 37 High up in the cupola, afloat again above my mangy cradle wooden cardinals drift wavering mobile in the mind's eye & stream's reflection Those light motes flicker toward the shortest day Lucia's solstice dying of the year; in evening light these shadowy things appear revolving, wheeling round in peripeteia toward the clay & from black shining clay is born a star November star gathering straw toward home & shepherds' glinting wheat & draws it near like dust the dusty origin of Rome, Byzantium my cardinals share beginning with the dark & wintry tomb 38 Beginning with the dark & wintry tomb of black-holed heaven for a fixed star & only heaven knows I'm going home at last as the year dies we are upheld by hope alone, as the lights fade & the year dies, & the Thames flows on toward the minimum I shall put on my cardboard crown take up my wooden sword Lucia ALMA Black Madonna & there beneath your shadowy umbrella, whirling double M U-turn of murky justice swirling NNW you palm your _nostos_ kosmos to the urn-- this clay-born sunburnt stage put to the test 39 This clay-born sunburnt stage put to the test my broken love, nativity and grave of nothingness: of this you'll make a masque of merry Yule & deathly Mexico earth mother jigsaw jaguar brooding husk ascending darkness from your subway rest you make a somber harmony slow sunken ark: a turtle's phoenix nest This lacerated miracle & long drawn-out debacle-spectacle enacts the buoyant coffin: serious Ishmael's womb-- the dogwood splinter green-eyed mote & drifting flotsam: heaven's cataracts poured out in tears to give the New Year room 40 Poured out in tears to give the New Year room --thus Hamlet leaps into the grave again Laertes in his mirror will resume shaving portentously & lifts his heavy blade of wood-- crisscross the boards they make a brooding pistoll'd sign & pass away into the Danish gloom & over the frostbound earth now floats the rain & sweeps away Ophelia's memory her crown of pennyroyal soaked, unwoven, soiled with her submerged anonymous clay & on the evening of the shortest day but one star gleams faint unproven there in broken-hearted sailors' heaven 41 There in broken-hearted sailors' heaven a green star glimmers out of death & life arose, eros crossroad & sign of strife uplifted toward eternity-- a stolen Beatrice spiral goldfinch eye looks out for me: my strictest mistress: cedar pole, sweet cinch sky-borne: clay heart's arrest & now rich Lazarus before your bench draws out the thorn--cannot resist & flings it toward the deep Atlantic trench-- London awaits the prince will do his best to steer his splinter coracle, & stitch his broken sword into your burning nest 42 His broken sword into your burning nest His ALMA fractured on the heavenly heights his wheel set spinning in the slippery clay his ark off-course & sputtering in circles his star gone down his heaven out of sight his name unknown--her name a roundelay his reputation marked & scandalous his frame disrobed: unwelcome guest begone into the night that gave you birth blend shadow now with shadow palm to palm: all goes to hell & spirals upside down & dances mawkish clown on frozen ground: this frenzy of the stateless pilot calm as death that spice of bitter mirth 43 As death that spice of bitter mirth & treason of the summer's treasury smirks like a poison through the veined cup & tips the sword-point of your misery & gaily tippling fever laps it up into the maelstrom of a cardboard earth Taste thy reward O vengeful minister: the playful sword shall pierce your own heart too & as the streambed carries off your star the scent of pennyroyal, celandine & rue hangs in the air a muted melody, an afterthought. Belated knight your tragedy is over. --Ever born to set it right. 44 Is over--ever born to set it right-- revolves around again, a globe scrolled with mummy maple leaves & sealed now regal, mute this orb & bishopric shall staff your wooden flight O donnish martyr bringing in the sheaves & mistress-master Nobody bereaves: that admiral coming home, one-armed with ink that Lazarus his barn undone his sheepish camouflage out-farmed his one-eyed giant rival (quite a blight) puts out the sun & leaves the field all white * * 45 Puts out the sun leaves the field all white & spun away a milky web, unearthly blind & melted into burning tongs, hammers out the galaxies high-tested fire sword-sharpened marked by mockery & hidden bivalved moth of murky tongues you blaze, Aurora tapestry of night & turning shining constellated Sire your mystery unfolds these rose lips' petals, portals rustle a russet sigh 46 Rustle a russet sigh spread risen pole to pole & whispered black on high stem thorned throned a psalm Out of the shortest day a narrow berth, a vessel pledged to covenant of grief & joy-- & lift your voice with voices leaf on leaf out of the mournful festering of lying earth 47 Out of the mournful festering of lying earth the noisy nonsense all my muttering one lone star came forth, one island rose, and blooming, sang to me: _I am that cardinal goldfinch--apple of your eye_ 48 I am that cardinal goldfinch--apple of your eye the shadowy ALMA of your soul I am that blackened penny--widow's mite that brought down satraps & their soldiery I the hand that lifts your wooden sword & renders peace unto divided night I the mind that ponders sorrow--word gave Dante voice & flowered Mandelstam So she whispered--so I wrote it down. & as her features faded into sky she looked on me & said-- I am _the rood your bloodline bears--your palm's lifeline, I am the Lion left out of your play high up in the cupola afloat again_ 49 (Coda) High up in the cupola, afloat again beginning with the dark & wintry tomb this clay-born sunburnt stage put to the test poured out in tears to give the New Year room there in broken-hearted sailors' heaven his broken sword into your burning nest As death that spice of bitter mirth is over--ever born to set it right puts out the sun & leaves the field all white rustle a russet sigh out of the mournful festering of lying earth _I am that cardinal goldfinch--apple of your eye_ * (I am the Lion left out of your play.) 11.29.96 50 Christmas is coming to the ancient town now is that ruby Goldfinch lamp unsealed that Cardinals proclaim (& also Wren) lights every soul & overcomes the world. Every soul is Kosmos then--a little world that with a breath of nature comes into its own: so these pinetree boughs declare. Be faithful then & leave the wind to work: be patient--bold. Here in the poor & wayfaring East End a reconstructed Globe is almost done-- rotund profundity that proves no man's an island. & here I am in England's green & pleasant land to square that circle--a prophetic one that lights both my beginning & my end. _London 12.3.96_ III. Don't Get Ready for Mardi Gras (blush) *** 51 The struggle of the mind to bring to bear a pattern in the mystery the quiet balance imaged in these wet streams circling the old town everywhere. Here once came the young barbarian, who fell in love with this integrity of land & gently curving waterway; found kingdom come a petrine origin, where dikes domesticate the ocean -- Atlantis, very human now & Dutch. & here within this village radius the labors of a Mondrian circuitous uplifted principle serene would reach a dreamy apogee-- & build a world to match. _Amersfoort 12.7.96_ 52 _In 1996 alone, between one million and three million people died of malaria...someone dies of it about every 15 seconds--mostly children and pregnant women...A more fundamental problem is that many people cannot afford even ordinary mosquito nets, which cost $5 or $10._ --NY Times, 1.8.96 Think of your body growing cold again. Think of what fades and what survives. Think not of the dark wind, rain a-sway over villages apples & leaves Snow lies on the clay. Mosquitoes & silver coinage. Malaria. Mysterious unjust angel of woe, hysteria... head down in the white. And through the fetters of a flimsy lattice or stage-struck curtain-- an extended paw quilled with fabled disappearances--that mole of metaphysical law-- Shakespeare vanished into pseudonyms trimming his nails frozen sheer 53 Henry's Notebook Everyone to be issued a gondola and five dollars. Proust stayed behind in Venice. O sole mio. Bronze bells. Silver mine in the crevices of your self--where Mammon shines. _Non sine sole iris._ Cold eyes, Liza. Ears and mouth snatched up in the velvet folds. _Duende._ Longing for the dark spring wind. Oscillating Milton sword. Of dogwood. ~~wave goodby~~ 54 Wave goodby now to the shadows passing clear across the river in their coppery gondolas. Charlie, Mrs. Gould, the Doctor, good Nostromo, yes the Man _uomo nostro_ salt of bold tormented fortitude will steer through breakers of dusk over the bow, alas Only in Hades may you understand at last this iron-anchored tenderness, a glinting curve in the mud & rust-- her flagrant disguise-- one hand leading the way into a further darkness, weighted with all earth (& loneliest). 55 Surely the earth is a kingly vessel buried at Sutton Hoo treasure--cups, coin, crowns, bells, lamps, swords of high- domed doom, of lambs, of snow, almonds, rivers of golden birds, eyes of roses, apples, silver palms, &; clay dogwood seas & surely all my turbulent & sinuous ways are barrowed there already Seasons revolve rolling warming & chill my body is or was, still now ever, this Brownian seasonal motion, so angular- insular, in muddy moats of dust 56 Measured now dark winding of the spring beneath the cupola. (Fink walks by the coffeeshop.) Amazed on Morris Avenue (the gold-domed temple launched into the blue) you lead me down this island road the ring in my hand yours, O mere breath of air (sigh). As the bent palm leaf leads the king (Blind King, Venetian--Federal Hill) toward a national crown o'thorns--green chastening around the track--a Florentine all-monde roadrace crusade--or lolling MW princess--thinking double you dark S in me-- M what you will (a-wheeling Zee). 57 Henry's Riddles _It is letter by letter, line by line._ It's only the bark of a gypsy sheepdog, set adrift. Fractal ripples in the land o'lakes, anonymous. Present the like time--no time. The wing-ding blows horns--Jericho Mardi Gras. Airfuls of brightness from the Roman front. Streaming by in her late shift. Hello fella--Midnight here--what she want? The ring, what else--ride on your mule. Played me once & for all for a fool. Cross road w/lime--you get rhyme. Do time, again. Jailbird flutters through the dark bullpen. Ready to pitch, Black? If not--bus those two to the back! 58 _What is this festive dusk_ Rosa parks her butt where it belongs at last & we're gonna shake this town with hallelujahs, skinny-dipping the tupperware til kingdom come. Disguise the girl & the boy's a dish panhandler's paradise (I wish)! HOPPING MAD? SKIP AHEAD JUMP 59 2 59 _on Benefit Street_ Unless you turn & put away these chilled dish things--shore is delirious here, boats. WARMING--FATE TUESDAY AHEAD Children's books, yearning by rote & the museum is usually closed on Monday! Let's go for a walk around the block. Hey-- what's up with your--clock? Pointing forever to high noon, just because. She's waiting in the wings for him. They only winged him. A one-armed gamblin' hurricane ALMA got there first-- there here & there around the playground where time stops the wind is re-wound 60 His birthday comes around just once a year, dying and born anew, though, every day--& if he weren't over yonder, he'd be here. Meek baritone of the mighty Milky Way, a tenor of the flock, he's where his words are-- soaring majesty! Mark how blood shudders in the fixed star! Tin harmonica below--(a joe named Luther)-- King of sheepdogs--(dogged sheep)--you are! * Papyrus--pink-palmed scrolls--about to flower, my speckled maple stretches toward the feeble sun... some early spirit of your ancestor tenders black lamb's-wool & a ruddy crown: rose orientation lent serene uplifted fire. 1.9.97 IV. To the Green Constellation **** 61 Henry's Dream In my dream, Everywoman was an icon. We were at a conference on the malaria epidemic. Urban locale--refined, old European (Siberia?). We walked past the coffeeshop at 99 19th Street, around the block, past the museum at 145 10th Avenue, & entered the Birch Tree Grotto (126 Verde Triangle). In the corner, under a pastel postcard of Costaguana, a retired silver bell manufacturer was babbling into his bowl of mead. My colleague pointed out a petite, lynx-eyed Asian woman at the next table. "Funny thing--when we're in the field, she swims without her shirt on. I tried, you know...but she laughed me off--said (in her awkward English) 'You think you pick out for every woman pleasure cave.'" I saw her then, breast-stroking upstream underwater, as graceful as a yellowbacked red-ringed cormorant. Introducing myself in a mature & friendly manner, I asked whether perhaps she hailed from Thailand. "A native of Italy," she replied. Later I was sleeping with someone else (from the bookstore). A young Asian lad had the 2nd-best bed there (on the floor of the cramped hotel room). I put my arm across her shoulder, & she milked me like a generous nurse (before my time had come). _Suddenly there came an uncanny ringing of applause__--& when we got out of bed, I saw she was glistening, slim, fit as a runner. (I thought --she'll get acquainted with the Asian fellow more thoroughly later.) I spent the rest of my dream trying quite unsuccessfully to speak Italian with everybody, including the waiters. 62 _my sweet shadow, quiet sister of dusk._ A January snow. What will the New Year bring? I shiver-- someone walk across my grave-- in cedars London-bound the cardinals sing apocalypso-- Jubilee arrive-- "When Norwich Thames do come to Amersfoort..." this incarnation of a devious rose is watered with my tears-- the bells start ringing _fair, kind, true_ into the night... That flickering sword (so calm, so adamant) would drown the body's spark, the mind's despair; the ring enveloped in your palm, my cormorant shows finer mettle-- saves the camel by a hair-- & only a merciful & midnight sun from knotted multitudes will burnish one. 63 Henry's Siege of Moscow At least 2 weeks have passed without a call, & I'm ready to disappear into my dream, set out on awful pilgrimage, carol through a mannered wilderness (or some such scheme). A soused Paul Bunyan lost at Mardi Gras pursues your motionless & green-eyed mountain-- stomping so Superior in far-gone car while black-ice brows re-hearse Napoleon. My shoulders ache with so much borrowed bliss, & rival horns & slanderous esteem & seething Time would scatter all of this--til beat-up silver swings the pendulum-- your glancing silence penetrates so far, I'm roused from sleep wondering where we are 64 The evening sky's sapphire & tenderness would teach the frail wasp to wait for honey; this weedy waiting as the light grows less is measured now (as every Jack can see). My wooden rhododendronship would sing your miracle of seeing fingers--branch on branch alight (if such a backward thing-- & shy--could sing)-- a verdant avalanche or undertaking of the universe... but I will wait-- & waiting (drop by drop as honey oozes from the broken comb) I'll hear your heartbeat stem the flood of time, as shadows of your chariot wheel stop & stoop low to kiss my weak echo of your course 65 Lust burns, decays-- a glaring half-life Time's false staff leads to oblivion. Time staffs the dining hall with frothing strife (brief-basking dogmatists define, refine) & hurtles doomside-down my send-up heart. Eyes & mouth breasts back & legs-- just so-- three find it delicious-- & a fourth sinks, faithless, in a crate at Sutton Hoo... Still in your palm (wide as the Black Sea) these sheaves of tears ferment, compost to wine-- one shady gulf & odalisque Eternity you enter ruby-scarved, O purple vine-- across tall buildings, seas a single band will intercede for me--your tendriled hand. 66 Pussycat's Daydream The sun turned black, & day was turned to night, a hurricane sank all the gondolas, it rained until it reached skyscraper height & reeking wires crosstown blacked out, alas! Three leopards-- Lust, & Jealousy, & Time-- were stalking down my allegorical streets when suddenly, a windy coracle--lambs, birds--climbed up, as if propelled with sweet mouthfuls of air--& dangled like a tent above spiracular ripples-- (one leaf, two broke off) an island --shimmering, distant-- drifting in that haze... & it was you, Atlantis, rose-- full sail, a-whirl--green Dipper! --clinching New Time! (machinery began to purr)... 67 Titanic dreams remain where sunk--they lie, a dogwood scar for all your jealousies-- Ahab's last glimpse in Moby's blank black eye, Medusa-marriage tombed in frozen seas. Blind mirror queen--you star of my bleak deeds! Atlantis! mangered in lagoons' decay...cracked silver frame, that weights me to the weeds... your jewelled junk checkmates decoded day. That lucid, tyrannous & cold iris drags earth off-course, harpooned to nothingness-- & my short stake in everlasting Venice is a pained & painted wail to Davy Jones--unless those arrows in your palm are not in vain-- plain words come tumbling through your vine again. 68 Henry's Sleep Report I saw a needle of strange fortitude bolt through the vault, like a mosquito farming the blue or unstable sable-yellow feathered hornet's trumpet vine's metamaterial barnstorming-- an M an S whirled--miles over that tangled isle like a bull's-eye of assassinated justice in the court of angels, or long-lost medal of stolen honor, or incarnadine boomerang of unbound bliss-- & this tiny cantilevered carriage pricked the skies across a verdant constellation-- binding the said sad impress, blessing with mourning eyes & pity, spanning, spinning across with ruby thread-- & so your guileless disguise prevailed on high, as you unwound your own 4th of July 69 Grapes, lilacs, olive-shoots-- like arrows in a shower up my spine. What strange bouquet inscribes your presence, phantom Rose! We'll two by two now--travel in a ray. & O how amiable it is-- your swallow's nest; I'll be a doorkeeper by day, O threefold arch-- your bosom's ward--& [skip the rest]-- bail milky cataracts from a footstool scaffold. & at the nadir of midwinter sun we'll stand in uniform beneath the Admiralty: him, myself & thee. We'll form a union, manifold with evening marble from the sea-- three musky tears tri-welded bands of steel-- true counterparts-- & all in all --is real! 70 _and no one knows who killed the King or the two princes by his side..._ Ray fading, dying. With him dies a nation's truth--tongue-tied by law & lawlessness. Must we forfeit the prize those granite spaces, stony swords foresaw? If underlying all--conspiracy! Low somber bells drone on-- a slow _fado_ for dissonant & dusty empires... O mercy upon us all (the moon bleeds into snow). Some sailor's heaven is not vanity. Her Florentine chessboard shall be your bond, Hamlet's plywood sword your surety. In pentagonal & penetrating sound the ring of truth will wring out tyranny-- & plow the plowers back (so these bells prophesy). 1.14.97 71 Henry's Very Little Testament "The morning sky was like a robin's egg, & winter sun was burnished gold & jovial..." --my many-colored kodak zigzags here to abridge this dicey coda (sad confessional). Your eyes that mourn for every buried man, your arguments that peirce authority, with palmseed rays begin what you began in palmy days-- the sceptred lie's decay. O dearest dogwood, sheepish sliver mine, your subway token's trained for Jubilee-- one handmaid's handmade hobo trampoline that [aggregated naughty admirals] will never see. To them--my iced cremains at Sutton Hoo. & all my unremaindered hands--post-humorously--to you. 72 Between the swamp gas of your ghostly Mardi Gras & surly clowns attached to every crossroad bar between a ghoul-dug knight & very bored Aurora under cherubim above the electric chair Above the undertow over the lead-gray sea beneath the slippery clay below the frozen ground between the royal mattress & his flattery his beggared silver sword & her deflected wound Between the old has-been & his all-wet twin bed between the Queen of Beats [a nothing there Will comes]-- & to the blinkered soul a something sweet & red a sky-burnt fire truck or handkerchief of plums & in the savage dark one scandalized blue lamb one jacknife dove unfolds & whispers float-- _I am..._ 73 The wind blows through the tops of the pine trees. Sound of things passing into the invisible. Above their endless dark green constellation the North Star turns eternally, invincible. I was your slave, she said. Where the obscure selves cross into the deep freeze. On salvation road through the valley of slivers. & her voice became silver on the point of a sword. Ding - dong the dark wind & the rain (heart, petalled on a spine of steel, rose once again into the dark green constellation, graven where low broken lives might find your heaven) 74 The star shines in the barrel now outside your court, Earth is harder now, incarnate truth grows saltier, more real. I won't be Hamlet going back to Elsinore, or naked writhe with David by the ark outside Jerusalem-- but in Firenze, on my knees outside the _Instituto Henry Gould_ where you sought refuge once: a lamb when I a wolf had left your island road * & when this rusty orb comes round, they'll find me Henry numbered marble begging for forgiveness there from you & from the flagrant Lord of Florentine pine-scented air 75 _to E.S._ In a dream, we walked hand in hand through Petersburg. You held a black silk parasol to shade the sun a russet scarf around your neck the surge of ocean checked & mated sweetly done by stone & curving banks & tender light, newborn. This dream (frail-woven, swaying pattern) floats through dusk... lighthearted leafboat, whispered through the channel of my costly clay. I woke & saw the shadow of a goldfinch disappearing overhead. & so I send you cardinal this blue-green valentine, launched in a bathtub ship called _Sophie_-- since I know though parted by rose-fingered sea & sinuous time we never step outside the portals of Jerusalem 1.16.97 76 How high we go who travel in a shadow! _Nor will I fear the arrows of the sun by day nor terrors of the night--_ my general best to show (as one who sailed to London once) that inwound RI way. Sometimes I think I'm more than halfway there when swallows tear across the firmament & pollen quivers in the pregnant air & comely palms exude an anchored scent-- I think of one whose 52nd year revolves around again a blooming almond staff & orbic Jubilee-- out of the mournful sere of autumn-lying earth a greenish leaf is born... a festive lion laughs! He's rolling on that floor where all his thorns are chaff! 77 I heard those bells' high sea-rose call-- five senses tingled-- my ten fingers danced & through a sunken constellation--greenish metal-- came & planted in my house your calm expanse. Low celandine is for the eyes & pennyroyal soothes the roiled brow; Ophelia's rue floats upon the tide, & Denmark's rotten apple rules by her side at last in Hades now. The earth instinct with vision steals away our term of life (careless carouse or sensual feast, unwound) yet still that muffled melody, that sea-borne stem of chorded combers, vast rolls back to me (like wind through anonymous cedars, deep in northern woods) a woman's voice. 78 _root pity in thy heart_ I found a ruddy apple at the foot of the well of galaxies like a slow heartbeat in the tomb-- a scarlet ornament in guttered hell or pampered paradise, that droned _I am._ & in disgrace-- disguise of every rude awakening-- I saw that orb go shadowed rolling ripening like some rotund oration (car or ark?) around a node or hedge of angles-- prism ship, or plane icon of human inclination-- very scored with wrinkles, moods & frowns, --& yet miraculously ordinary! --The finder of the gold I've stolen here shall have my book & staff (I'll let you steer). 79 London awaits the latest buried man, unlettered still, to have them all in stitches lionize the iris of spotlight sunshine thrown down ticker tape handkerchiefs & broken watches. & so green stars are shining over every metropole & you entranced with tidal roses & applause play mother's part, & chase your favorite nightingale-- a golden globe, the apple of your eye [Ecclesiastes]. Remember then our intercepted breeze went whispering through the broken silver mine; casket of apple blooms, lilies fettered snowpeas bathed us--O terrestrial, & Caroline-- for Charlie Gould was not yet 29 when he was finished --by his own icon! 80 Bells ring as the days move toward spring now, & bear the canker & the rose in high noon's pentagon of pulsing screed: of comfort & despair O world world world flow on, flow on flow on, flow on into the calendar-- sweet faded arbors & Ophelia's crown have branched a branded, flickering undertow toward Jubilee. O fearful provocation-- sundered veil! Poor pinioned corners bare the harshest knife, & still your balm exfolds --O silvered Silencer! & in the concord of one star, one palm your Kosmos mirrored now engulfed in rest combs, in green isles, your Love's grave crest. 1.17.97 81 His Toy Takes Off 19... all systems hnefatafl go. Square one. Fold up your golden RI game. 2 seconds now. Venice to Sutton Hoo. Way over fatal Henry's phantom fame [no sugar now] the stars concrete & ever-same irrigate a mirror image, balanced on an orange L-shaped gyroscheme. & Leo halo = mass x horizon event [entranced]. Binary, buried men & buoyant coffins make a comeback now on scaffold stage-- barbarians go Dutch in paper gondolas, & somber subway harmonies ring for the page whose queen translates my thorny hide & seek & saved my life just for a new song's sake. 1.19.97 82 Henry's Footnotes _Everything is safe underground._ --James Pritchard, archaeologist NY Times obituary page, 1.19.97 Obit. Essential outlines & whitewash. Summa of your summer's wanton burden, outward walls-- & pines within to ash. _Thy body's end_ by _terms divine_ High noon. Toothpick. Hung there melted like wax _a multitude of the isles were glad thereof_ --buy clerical shares in _my main book_ --a constitutional disguise. Philip Sperling, 85... _Rare Books._ Mary Bancroft... _Spy in World War II._ James Pritchard, _Archaeologist... at 87._ Luba Rostova, _80... a Dancer._ You vault to safety, Luba like spring on tightrope--or a pseudospy (without a string). 83 _Yet seem'd it winter still, and you away, As with your shadow I with these did play._ The universe in teeming unison intones the _silken, skilled_ refigurement of slandered scandal-- harps begotten victory above my bones' corral o.k. she's deep vermilion-fevered now... prescriptions lays sweet smells & figures of delight [& trumpets also] _let the sea make noise floods clap their hands_ O marvelous April! your groined alphabet engraves my clay: Hibernian sheep checkmate the rugged ground, high cupolas pinprick dogwoods, lagoons, your constellate goodwill--flowering almond-- scents the New Year's air: runes, vessels, premonitions. . . & like a cardinal in a cured ribcage my carol springs from winter's branches--age to age. 84 Henry's 13th Forward Violet Recital _...from age to age._ I will be sing-song sowing one thing now's though cunning winds don'ts augur very well for corporate gondolas or rust-fed plows in a waiter's world... & yet one rose from hell climbs up the podium--one pied-palm scrawl centers yourn yon maple syruppity Milky Way: aye there was a kindly man, whose whole wheat handshakes put us in the black today. It's raining Newport stars... a couple--Big Bear & Little Bear-- & one to navigate & circle up stray astral flocks--that yet prepare height's thronging dogwood crown-- inaugurate one sober _nostos_ unison of splintered strife fled sea-grave prisms grant transhuman life. 1.20.97 85 O go your way into his gates My bones yes my bones were in the coral under winter water's scandal sheet-- my herbs were stoned, prescriptions oral--a textbook exhibit A, mispoisoned, & completely. Diz aster. O kingly vassal! Borrowed almonds rootless apples blood-tombed Eric in the clay. A brown emotion. All undertowed. Palm fleeced in shade. A gnarled mold. O feeble-hearted... --April--scent-benign-intensity! Your anagram... --the sun--the sun! Light like... a crooked knife is--blinding me! & who is she? Dark outline--in the gateway--graven shade-- palm-leaf trowel in her hand-- a pilot? Gardener? Who steals--delirious-- me from my plot? 86 His Veteran Hardtack I was headstoned--unnoticed bit o'mortuary. Some summer's bored Morton, gloomed in the den-- unfired. Unlocked the safety--vault--it was scary! Unperfect sage launched by bent bluesmen into a dishrag black abyss. Barely, I say, W. Uneven S. Sideways, sidewinded lolling April cot untimely wild unkelsoned, intecinerated... haze princess! Dark winding of your spring- fed compost revolved a stuffed fella my way--a secret truant, or sting- adhesive band-aid chorister whose A preceded the sea--with insufficiency! My heart to sway--say--quick--link onto the lee! 87 His Pen Pal's Alias Well I was roamin like a soldier through upside town with my poignard compagnard just give her the slip rollin bombed under my part-nobler macintosh right on Professor I dont mean nothin officer (your garbage-ship) Anyways I felt kinda nappy lowering the boom yon gypsy crawlers good enough for a snow drudge I seize her by her cop-colored copycat hair do I see I dont mean no harm you get my drift Marie Grays my loverstrangler no weekend-steamin jailbird time for me To go on puke-mulin please I says to her--what your name? Suspect she was pullin my knife says --Alienavel (whee!) Nostrowoman or somethin-- Yeah! what kinda clam? Claim she serve a years line-up time less one a thief man I tell you mistaken i.d. No! believe me! I just ran! 88-89 Doing Double-Time + 1 As small trees emerge from the darkness so I wanted to anchor your hope with a mother poem & as the voice of one of the daughters of J2 goes steering across a never-never mirror home beneath the memories I wanted that star at last where it belongs in UNION with my shivering heart. I'm cold iced eyes are eyeing us the mast is burning 3 springs back I cannot write no more & yet your calm queen-star-spangled fingers fly, & satisfy my mouth (that is but dust & grass) with eagles' fare, token of your vast pacific sky-- have wrung deep oaths your kingdom come to pass into the hands of children this long gift may come to mean what it was meant to be & from the sceptered greenhouse there might drift a glory glory hallelujah victory go ricochet-- new-minted pennyroyal frisbee -- swift cardinal draft afloat upon flushed chambers now: high ceiling lofted with the midnight sun Lenore on carpet ride & Poe in tow a winged clay fireboat museum-- hurricane-- & Hamlet's maiden voyage waxed for snow will hang there, pensively, & mimic you (turning ample apple pear-shaped seedling choir, & ringing curving out of sight)-- the river far below where, garnering the dust (so evident, so visual) the summer mansions pulled us both upstairs, & fire-trees storked us free at last, & all sheepdog creation woofed my deep-dyed, wide-warped airs. V. Scattered Bells & Whistles ***** 90 _i.m. Henry Darger_ I've wrapped a rubber car-rack strap (like a winebarrel) around the splitting dogwood now, so it might survive. Here in Providence, like many an average middling burg, you sort of, you know, make do with what you have. Midwinter spring is its own season. But we haven't had much snow here anyway this year--& it's not as though that's going to make us all jump for joy. In fact some of us could have just come from the morgue. Why that is--I'll tell you the reason. In this little town we all look vaguely familiar-- but not _so_ familiar that we're gonna hail-fellow-well- met everybody! Which foot forward? We're never quite sure. It's just a local variation on the _principle of the shroud._ We're in disguise. It rains a lot. We're under a constant cloud. _Providence 1.20.97_ 91 My web's afloat now, nude sans string theory & though I can't see where I'm going in this cloud it's pebbled in the quantum foam--down to 10 -40. It might even be visible someday (out loud). These partial masks we wear--abhor--applaud donned quickly for each grandest late finale are portioned from a general evening shroud. Odds are we're gypsies all--beyond the pale. One--a regal Russian poet-son (of Riga leather man). Two--a frank Swede belle from Algiers (alias Luba). (Floats pas-de-deux with Ballets Russes.) (--Can, can!). Three--that flautist Henry (plays the tuba)--he whose ALMA now canoed across (aquamarine) a warm canal lame ticker-time has never been. 92 Henry's Baker (Chet) _stay and we'll make each day a Valentine's Day_ Touring through Holland one more time you fell from a window like an evening angel emptied out into the valley of the blues (this well of the horizon filled with your lost trumpet). Your craggy face was hollowed long before dragged from the harem to the heroin --quarters tossed halfway to 88s-- the score is nothing-not-nothing (future-has-been). My funny Valentine her face has changed, her hair it's still the same melodic thread (your bread & wine) & it is so arranged we never leave-- the river flows ahead into heart's mournful gulf & stays, sustains your veiled demise with victory & peace. 93 _You're handsome, ominous..._ I ken your anonymous osmosis. Muzak crowds rush bingo hall, gun mall. & tardy kitten Cisco says: Hell I dunno what it's all. Red Flag on that Huey over Frisco. &, & dud birds on the aerial. Who's that masked mannikin? What? _Too loud in here!_ Now where did Ken go? Hide seekin? Where? Obituary of an X. Canned. Is Wanda over there by the process--Aisle? Cheese? * Jeez, Louise! 94 In the last island of his Lenten mind in that gray London of his final shroud with snow upon his heart John Donne had glimpsed a razor's lucid edge--of winter sunlight--& feathered down his page: _Hell's bruise & heaven's laws are wise & in the halls rose all in willing praise & hills wells skies walls holes--all ways--always will pause to hear my sighs & tolling bells_ & setting down his pen slowly at last his heart still balanced between strife & rest like Prospero when his dear ding-dong play was done rose from his island bed & praised out loud Love's wonders--once so lost & now at last rewon. 95 His Parable The Chosen One after all that he'd been through was lying still-- & sirens wailed, & silver bowls were melted down & the Garden, the Garden turned blue. The mournful town was filled with sheepdog howls. & when the Magdalen with green-eyed glance rolled back the stone & let a blade of light break in He was confused--dazed by the trance--& wondered who He was--& whether it was right that she advance & touching, lift his arm across her shoulder (there in the dank darkness). But soon her eyes (like ruby lamps) glowed warm & on his lips she burned a mordant morning kiss & said _I am your servant Mary, here to wake you now-- rise up! & be my valiant--volunteer!_ _Prospect Park 1.22.97_ 96 There is no salvation for the dirty deeds of plunder treachery & greed. The land's not ours nor worthy of its smallest seeds are we. The blood is on our hands. Still a fleeting gypsy blessing might redeem innocent children from the general's curse & serve as model toward a better scheme for our rude ways & late benighted manners: I'm thinking of (once more) one hearty pioneer whose bark's capacious sail, so purposeful set free the civitas--shrouded his clear- eyed friend Canonicus in his best-woven shawl-- & closed those regal lamps that spied his own-- escorting him with eagle feathers to his town. 97 My early years are winding down spirals canal O lead me river to that sweet shy lock of your Italian walls, & set me in your gong-sent gondola-casket. I have not seen those verdant smoky domes-- dove-hearted Bogota-- those roseate peaks & sheer-strung crevices inset with palms, & spires uprisen high in playful pinks-- & yet collegial petals can play Roma too-- & loop the loop into... --that gulf of roses, buried in my chest might grant you amorous fortitude! & winestained poses!--as dancers (rising to their constellated task) quick check their mates & soar--right through the mask. 98 Henry's Fake Book (out-takes) _...my one and only love._ Every thought of you the veritable heart shakes Soar, & showers my paired dice high--O hell it's low-- But then I'll take a chance & say goodby's hel-lo... [double-stroke] * Pennies from heaven-- but my love's a Wormsdens-war-da-cross-stickum-bro-ella thing- SKing's Queen's to Jack's son's brothersome, blac- Khole in won-der! [o.k.! now--try it to sing!] * Dawn shadows fall & spread their misty day, a- Carolling sweet red & blue, & gre-en matchsticks, too-- Her you & me--I am in love with you this way way way way way way way... [read down/up 3 bars] * Jaybirds & larks & stars might sing a ding-a Ling ling ling but still my aching heart Tacks o-ver & sails in lo-ve with you-hoo! Fly [G cleft--no H note] [time to play up] * _were you in my arms..._ 99 from H.Q. Re: Final Report Glancing over her sunlit shoulder, Dr. Louise Chan U.N. Littletree (the arch-geologist) virtually blinked a moment in astonishment when she noticed--lying in an anomalous, undistinguished corner of the Soberlost Dig Project potshed--a small sherd of blacquered Arpeggian cupware, datable not earlier than circa 1386 B.C.E. [...] "Whoa!" she shouted, just as Melrose the mule was about to pulverize the precious relic with his iron-shod left back toe. Melrose, fortunately, desisted--and as a result, we have the following inscription (transfigured into angles by Prof. Wedgeworth Crease): _[. . .] gold & yellow-black-leaved book of spinning Jenny Double-essencell-El Chris O'Ferrous Balm shelled giddy hailstorms up & down my waning spine, Doc!-- Out of my hands-- My diving poem, that is! That is! That is! That is! That is! & though this whorl street constellation's programmed darkening green day, one's quantum foam begins to fizz new yolks! & Petrograduate I'll cease my roaming since the aspiring baker-bacon is already hamming-jammimg & to Seedling City (all-wise node) some dumbig polarbunionbrain Nord Easter is coming [...] __________________________________________________ A-NOTE Henry Gould co-edits the literary journal Nedge. He is a founding member of the Poetry Mission, an RI-based arts association. He recently co-edited and published an anthology in honor of poet/translator Edwin Honig entitled A GLASS OF GREEN TEA - WITH HONIG (distributed by Fordham Univ. Press); his poems, essays and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in: ALEA, APEX OF THE M, FREE CUISENART, HAPPY GENIUS, LVNG, NEGATIONS, NEWPORT REVIEW, POETRY NEW YORK, PROVIDENCE JOURNAL, TALISMAN, TAPROOT REVIEWS, and WITZ. Chapbooks of his early poems were published by Hellcoal Press (WHERE THE SKIES ARE NOT CLOUDY ALL DAY, 1972) and Copper Beech Press (STONE, 1979). He lives in Providence, and welcomes questions and comments about Island Road via email: Henry_Gould@brown.edu. __________________________________________________ COPYRIGHT (C) MUDLARK 1997 All rights revert to the author upon publication. 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