1269 Arts and sciences poems

“If you open the brain from whence sprang Solomon and Aristotle and separate the lips in the fissure of Sylvius a triangle of cortex will appear. This is the Island of Reil.” Well put, anatomist. We are all careful, men of earth (a blind man can sense a post). Thus Newton pondered on falling apples and a Mixtec carved a humanist in jaguar bone. “How happy I was,” wrote the scientist after a long illness, “when once again I had something to investigate.”

To the students of anatomy at Indiana University That gaunt old man came first, his hair as white As your scoured tables. Maybe you’ll recollect him By the scars of steelmill burns on the backs of his hands, On the nape of his neck, on his arms and sinewy legs, And her by the enduring innocence Of her face, as open to all of you in death As it would have been in life: she would memorize Your names and ages and pastimes and hometowns If she could, but she can’t now, so remember her. They believed in doctors, listened to their advice, And followed it faithfully. You should treat them One last time as they would have treated you. They had been kind to others all their lives And believed in being useful. Remember somewhere Their son is trying hard to believe you’ll learn As much as possible from them, as he did, And will do your best to learn politely and truly. They gave away the gift of those useful bodies Against his wish. (They had their own ways Of doing everything, always.) If you’re not certain Which ones are theirs, be gentle to everybody.

There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry – This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll – How frugal is the Chariot That bears the Human Soul –

The best-known German goldsmith of the sixteenth century, Wenzel Jamnitzer, is also remembered for his study of the five platonic solids,Perspectives of Regular Bodies, in which he proposed that out of the same five bodies one can go on endlessly making all other bodies. The five solids originate with Pythagoras, but are named after Plato, who paired four of the five solids with each of the four elements and the fifth with heaven to make up the difference: tetrahedron (fire), octahedron (air), cube (earth), icosahedron (water), and dodecahedron (heaven). The idea is that the universe is made up of a handful of shapes and out of these shapes other shapes are made. In a letter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Nobel Prize Committee, Chubby Checker claimed to have invented the dance that begat all other modern dances. Speaking of himself in third person he wrote, “Chubby Checker changed everything. He gave movement to a music that never had this movement before. The styles changed. The nightclub scene is forever changed. Checker gave birth to aerobics.” The song originally called “What a monotonous melody,” written in five minutes on a dare, begat “Limbo Rock” begat “Let’s Limbo Some More” begat “Mary Ann Limbo” begat “Limbo Rock/Do the Limbo Rock,” as “The Twist” begat “Let’s Twist Again” begat “Slow Twistin’” begat “Twist It Up” begat “The Twist (Yo, Twist!).” Checker calls his dance “dancing apart to the beat,” not dancing separate from the beat, but two people dancing separate from one another. “Limbo Rock” ends in a whistle. Limbo, the dance, comes from Trinidad, where it was danced at wakes, but in reverse: the bar began at the lowest height and was raised to symbolize a rising from death into life. Dante’s limbo is the best circle of Hell, all those unbaptized babies and old philosophers to snuggle up with at night. “Mary Ann Limbo” starts with a whistle. All day, all night, Mary Ann Down by the sea side siftin’ sand Even little children love Mary Ann Down by the seaside siftin’ sand Take a shape. Repeat it — translate it, reflect it over a line, rotate it around a point — and you’ve got symmetry. Go, go, go, go: that’s it! That’s gold.

These poems, these poems, these poems, she said, are poems with no love in them. These are the poems of a man who would leave his wife and child because they made noise in his study. These are the poems of a man who would murder his mother to claim the inheritance. These are the poems of a man like Plato, she said, meaning something I did not comprehend but which nevertheless offended me. These are the poems of a man who would rather sleep with himself than with women, she said. These are the poems of a man with eyes like a drawknife, with hands like a pickpocket’s hands, woven of water and logic and hunger, with no strand of love in them. These poems are as heartless as birdsong, as unmeant as elm leaves, which if they love love only the wide blue sky and the air and the idea of elm leaves. Self-love is an ending, she said, and not a beginning. Love means love of the thing sung, not of the song or the singing. These poems, she said.... You are, he said, beautiful. That is not love, she said rightly.

I Should I take this time, while the children are in school, to untrim the tree? Standing in the dish we let go dry, it looks well-preserved, as if Christmas were still in our future; would it spare their feelings if I dismantle piece by piece its grandeur, or will I amplify their sense of loss, to de-jewel it without ritual? Epiphany, we drove by a painted camel on a church lawn — or what, after hard freeze, is lawn’s avatar. No magus, Jefferson Davis brought camel brawn to Texas to aid in the Civil War. Now they’re gone except in these tableaux where Balthazar, with all his diamonds, kneels before the Paragon. We were coming back from a weekend getaway before the holiday’s official end. I took the dog, went out on the beach, but the length of South Padre was swept by a long wind; dunes went astray; thin snakes of sand grains slithered; I couldn’t jog; the Gulf went from glaucous to cauldron gray. As in a Bedouin poem a gown of white sand eternally receded before me; the snakes raced. The profile of the island was changing, and despite the fury in my heart this tempest fanned, the beloved’s encampment can never be retraced: all texts are unwritten by the same hand. Boxes of baubles for yearly display we haul faithfully from house to house no nomad, I realize, could conscion. Your hem’s circumference all you know of enclosure. The open stall. Patterns are starting to emerge to my wondering eyes — on my skin, even. Up close, the epidermal Alhambra of triangles, stars. Back of wrist. Kneecap. Gypsies that named the lines on palms don’t look at soles, like yours, that close the lovelorn gap between the territory and (yes, yes) the map. Our tree is still in its vise. The road we took (don’t turn) is riddled with needles. Dried sap. II The boys are lighting fireworks on the ground. (Recall, this is a country called Illyria; even stars are upside down.) Toby and Andrew name the kinds of deliria: jumping jack, blooming flower, black cat    ... What rose-green shower — or umbrella — is that? The empty lot Toby and Andrew bring us to where crab-like diggers squat inertly in the champagne-cold, is impromptu beach, with all the night sky for sea. Juiced- up Roman candles discharge into it. Loosed, frantic, spinners change color like salamanders: spry Viola jumps back, goosed; but Feste jokes about motley, and ganders at the tracers that shroud us in gunsmoke. (Perhaps it’s just another carnival joke — your hand on the small of my back? Like blooms in the sky?) The New Year spoke by spoke nears, but with a breath of tombs the moment Feste, feeling insolently gay, heckles a rather elderly personage: “Pray you go out on your toes — or comatose.” I hear Malvolio say to Olivia holding her sparkler overly close, “Back off — you’re wearing too much hairspray.” III Speaking of ground flowers: Epiphany. The resorts are dead but for the foreign powers that raise pistils in a yellow head crouching on a Cypriot beach. A rough, hairy pod — surprise! — jumps at my touch and squirts seed at my eyes. Because I hear the wind rush against the palm-palms with which our balcony is flush; sky cloud over with qualms; memories blur. Psyche’s actuaries beg to take the measure of our folded white Januaries with sleep’s ruled erasure. IV Do I have to be mailed in bubbles or toiling over bouillabaisse, frisées, port glaze for Sir Omnivore; protagonist of a page-turner, Haze mére or fille; people-pleaser, cocktease, she-bear, in niqab, in getup, in stays; having taken St. Paul’s advice to seize the gold ring: Who groks the paradox? Though one would sooner burn than freeze    ... I’ve taken to the dark stuff since you left: a stovetop espresso maker with the heft of a campfire kettle to express more strongly my mettle.

The thing written is a sexual thing, may bite, tell a truth some have died for, even the most casual initialing is a touch of love and what love goes for. A sometime thing, it smiles or has an ugly grin, on the page or wall may be holy and a sin. Writing wants, must have, must know, is flesh, blood, and bone, proof we are not made to be alone. Beneath a dove and rainbow some bank their fire, wrap their erogenous zones in barbed wire. Writing may dance in ink flamenco, kneel before the cross, right wrongs, fall in love at first sight, honor the naked languages it holds tight, kidnap, suck or be sucked for hire, may look and look or sneak a look, it has eyes, can read, is remarkable. From the tower of sexual babble, when dreams were the beginning of writing, the angel of dreams descended, stair by stair, the stone watchtower became the first stone book. Writing never speaks word, may ache to talk, and yet each letter of any alphabet is a fragment of desire, like half and quarter notes on a staff, or a hawk, may swoop down, fly higher and higher to catch a word, and then another word. The sexual thing may be all love or malice, eunuchs writing in the Forbidden Palace where poets dressed in rags, or silk and lace. The thing written touches, kisses, cuddles, may be democratic, autocratic, medieval in the 21st century, feudal, imperial, animal, sexually digital, a Serf, a King, a Queen, la chose écrite est une chose sexuelle. I had a woman beautiful as the letter l . There is the passion of letters, each may mean another thing, be defaced, after a while. Writing leans forward, there is a certain optimism in the written word, a sexual sunrise that is not daybreak. Words, words, a carnival of wordplay on St. Nobody’s Day. Reader, look, there is an S, a snake on the cross of the letter T. The letter of love is still the open-legged V. How can I dot the i with humanity?

The late Gracie Allen was a very lucid comedienne, Especially in the way that lucid means shining and bright. What her husband George Burns called her illogical logic Made a halo around our syntax and ourselves as we laughed. George Burns most often was her artful inconspicuous straight man. He could move people about stage, construct skits and scenes, write And gather jokes. They were married as long as ordinary magic Would allow, thirty-eight years, until Gracie Allen's death. In her fifties Gracie Allen developed a heart condition. She would call George Burns when her heart felt funny and fluttered He'd give her a pill and they'd hold each other till the palpitation Stopped—just a few minutes, many times and pills. As magic fills Then fulfilled must leave a space, one day Gracie Allen's heart fluttered And hurt and stopped. George Burns said unbelievingly to the doctor, "But I still have some of the pills."

Not marble nor the gilded monuments Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme, But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory. ’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room Even in the eyes of all posterity That wear this world out to the ending doom. So, till the Judgement that yourself arise, You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

Why is my verse so barren of new pride, So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my name, Showing their birth, and where they did proceed? O know, sweet love, I always write of you, And you and love are still my argument, So all my best is dressing old words new, Spending again what is already spent: For as the sun is daily new and old, So is my love still telling what is told.