1269 Arts and sciences poems

“painting has no air . . .” —Gertrude Stein That there should never be air in a picture surprises me. It would seem to be only a picture of a certain kind, a portrait in paper or glue, somewhere a stickiness as opposed to a stick-to-it-ness of another genre. It might be quite new to do without that air, or to find oxygen on the landscape line like a boat which is an object or a shoe which never floats and is stationary. Still there are certain illnesses that require air, lots of it. And there are nervous people who cannot manufacture enough air and must seek for it when they don’t have plants, in pictures. There is the mysterious traveling that one does outside the cube and this takes place in air. It is why one develops an attitude toward roses picked in the morning air, even roses without sun shining on them. The roses of Juan Gris from which we learn the selflessness of roses existing perpetually without air, the lid being down, so to speak, a 1912 fragrance sifting to the left corner where we read “La Merveille” and escape.

. . . mangiavano le rose. Because I do not know what a hendecasyllable is and words is all I have to transubstantiate and give, within me I hunger for a tongue of my own, unpronounceable flavors worth a thousand madeleines (Monsieur P.) as hunting-horns spiral through my belly and I say:

nature’s inside, says Cézanne and frightening I do not like the fleshy echo even so, it is after this close proof vision is made of matter another mirror it’s possible the eye knows even where there should have been a lake this optic an illusion look at the cat, his changing shapes a habit light color composition the subject more than meets the situation, always looking at our own eye

A roundel is wrought as a ring or a starbright sphere, With craft of delight and with cunning of sound unsought, That the heart of the hearer may smile if to pleasure his ear A roundel is wrought. Its jewel of music is carven of all or of aught— Love, laughter, or mourning—remembrance of rapture or fear— That fancy may fashion to hang in the ear of thought. As a bird's quick song runs round, and the hearts in us hear Pause answer to pause, and again the same strain caught, So moves the device whence, round as a pearl or tear, A roundel is wrought.

where the route of a ship bringing tax grain from the provinces is described where perceived hindering—say, birds congregating on a runway where the first request was for fertilizer and seeds where the instruction—harness these to the benefit of your society where the conscription continued where boards of revenue where basically, everyone had a plant job where preventable diseases rampant where the need is window screens and sewer covers where for the good of the very few and the suffering of a great many

You who please      your keenness with poems, read closely here:      can you discover this verse’s framer? finishes. Nobles enjoy it on earth,      but not without end, worldly ones. must fail in our strongholds      once our bodies scatter their loaned treasure,      like trickling through fingers. Then and ear      require skill in night’s narrow cell; drives your craft, a kingly servitude.      Now can you see who shrewd words have      shown to men? Remember my name,      O you who admire the sound of this song;      help succor me and pray for my comfort.      Soon I must pass alone, away      to look for a dwelling, must travel so far      (no telling where!) beyond this world      to a yet-unknown place in the earth.      So must each person, unless he is granted      God-sent grace. Let us call to God      again, more eager, begging his blessing      in this bright creation: may we be welcomed      to his warm halls, his home on high.      There is holiest happiness, there the king of angels      crowns the pure with a perishless prize.      Now his praise endures masterful and marvelous,      and his might extends endless and ageless      over all creation. finit .

Basho said to refuse a prayer until its warmth hunches inside like a bird in its hutch. First the fledgling is born, then the worm, then they meet somewhere in the grass. I choose my paper for its cereal color, fuss over shaving a pencil. The prayer means to cleanse both triumph and lust. O derivative, sunlight reaping the trees, this whole morning cries through a single reed. Pencil, razor blade, spit—I'll try not to hurry.

i make signs everywhere, with sticks, stones and leaves for those in the clouds from below the line to arrive i don’t have a language to speak to you with, my tongues are all fish i know that a one is a circle, and that nothing is round, except every corner i saw by the hearts lined up on the spine i know that the winter will finally be here again, and that the summer will die and be born with its ice i unravel the token you gave me for freedom, i bury the flags in your eyes under each Arabic sign. . . 1,2,3, on and on. . . and before i varnish again all the battle grounds freed          to travel the face of 2 yews i remake every button with children put down by 5 tons of your crosses i am flaking with crust at the dangling ushers        they fall for light signs i make my car shake with my fear, the headlights are showing me songs by the road for the now disappeared, shots crack by the ones that remain i can tell by your lies and your pride that your heart is as small as your pupils opening up for your strokes and getting smaller for light i am the siphon that gravity fills up the blanks in your face with i sing a throat full of gritos, for the safety releases that shots spill for you i salivate for your spiraling warmth, in the morning when i collapse, over and over i have all our love letters taped to the ceiling, my sleep is the end of our flies their warbles keep rolling i double the maps on your roads i put a slab of meat on your cheeks i thaw every word that pours ends through your blood i turn in the hair that your father hung with, erasers ring mountains for more i pick up a chair for the lightning, satellites put out a bead i bleed in the real that you see with a shine, pieces of chicken pile up to count nukes i tear off the rain, and cut its numerical age into passing truck tombs i force your faces to mine, and bother your ebony whirls to circle the holes in the sky i fire electrons to make your promise discard its word, and fall through i tie miseries to drains, and pay off my debt with suns i am more cruel than a counter i pick a safe with your words, until my distance is short i slap at your monthly returns, and tie your animals to 5 dirt seas i ride through your roads in the glass, and steal tiny cracks i blame the small stone       hid       in my colorless mouth, and pin rags to your lips i volunteer for your wars, and lose them all i borrow your daydreams, and purse up their gardens, into our hands i pulse with you standing by rocks i say all you said by the iron door i throw kites in the room where they found me i sell off inseparable fingers i throw windows to walls i whispers hard rings into telephones, and scratch at the bed i fade into water i remember the hands i open holes through barbed houses i blow darts through your tunnels and doors i pile roofs through our wounds i move through your runs and your screens i see the news in the sand i digit up noontimes i peel off my skins with old sounds i walk through the valley of lead i unplug your pages of light i frost over programs and ride            3 roads on 5 deer

Fame’s pillar here at last we set, Out-during marble, brass or jet; Charmed and enchanted so As to withstand the blow O f   o v e r t h r o w ; Nor   shall   the   seas, Or     o u t r a g e s Of   storms,   o’erbear What    we    uprear; Tho’   kingdoms   fall, This   pillar   never   shall Decline   or waste at   all; But   stand   for ever   by   his   own Firm   and    well-fixed    foundation.

☽ A Great Book can be read again and again, inexhaustibly, with great benefit to great minds, wrote Mortimer Adler, co-founder of the Great Books Foundation and the Great Books of the Western World program at the university where my husband will be going up for tenure next fall, and where I sometimes teach as well, albeit in a lesser, “non-ladder” position. Not only must a Great Book still matter today, Adler insisted, it must touch upon at least twenty- five of the one hundred and two Great Ideas that have occupied Great Minds for the last twenty-five centuries. Ranging from Angel to World, a comprehensive list of these concepts can be found in Adler’s two-volume Syntopicon: an Index to the Great Ideas, which was published with Great Fanfare, if not Great Financial Success, by Encyclopedia Britannica in 1952. Although the index includes many Great Ideas, including Art, Beauty, Change, Desire, Eternity, Family, Fate, Happiness, History, Pain, Sin, Slavery, Soul, Space, Time, and Truth, it does not, alas, include an entry on Pillows, which often strike me, as I sink into mine at the end of long day of anything, these days, as at the very least worthy of note. Among the five hundred and eleven Great Books on Adler’s list, updated in 1990 to appease his quibbling critics, moreover, only four, I can’t help counting, were written by women—Virginia, Willa, Jane, and George—none of whom, as far as I can discover, were anyone’s mother. ☽ Missing Scenes In which Eve plucks her moustache. In which Achilles waxes his ass. In which a butterfly triggers The Tempest. In which Moby Dick performs his own stunts. In which Bashō smokes hashish. In which the Buddha buys bonds. In which the Heavenly Banquet is served with a spork. In which Galahad chugs from the grail. In which spring follows summer. In which moss grows on meteors. In which Pelé scores on the Peloponnesian Fields. ☽ Not in stock, says the campus bookstore clerk looking up from his screen with a smile when I inquire, incognito, after my books which are nowhere to be found on the shelves. We used to have two copies of the first one, he says, but no one bought them, so we sent them back last June. We never carried the second one, he adds, but we could order it for you. What’s your name? I glance up, above his head, at a shelf of Staff Picks. Between a history of disgust and a guide for saving the planet, I spot my husband’s last book, gleaming in the day’s dying light. Forget it, I mutter into my muffler, I can get it from Amazon by Friday. I go home and order an ivory satin pillowcase instead, guaranteed to reduce hair loss due to breakage and soften fine lines. ☽ No Use Wet cigarettes. E-cigarettes. A babysitter whose babysitter is sick. Nunchucks at a gunfight. Stiletto heels at the beach. Last year’s flu shot. Next year’s peace talks. ☽ Heian courtesans slept lightly, when they slept at all, fully dressed in perfumed robes on straw mats, behind elabroately painted screens upon which their noble visitors knocked softly at all hours. In their onnade “women’s script,” they kept detailed notes about flowers, festivals, and furtive trysts on delicately tinted pages stashed in narrow drawers inside their pillows. These documents, copied and recopied over the centuries by courtiers, monks, and scholars in a relentlessly modernizing Japan, provide readers today with the richest portrait of any culture of its time on the globe. I now had a vast quantity of paper at my disposal, reports the nonchalant Shōnagon, and I set about filling the notebooks with odd facts, stories from the past, and all sorts of other things, often including the most trivial material. ☽ All day I lie sprawled across my pillow watching a light crust of  snow retract across the lawn into a thin band of shade along the  fence. I watch the sun fail to rise above the Japanese maple and  drop like a coin into a slot in the wall. ☽ Therapies A to Z Art. Biblio. Chemo. Dung. Electroshock. Family. Gestalt. Hippo. Ichthyo. Jenga. Kite. Light. Music. Neurolinguistic. Occupational. Primal scream. Quantum touch. Reiki. Sandplay. Transpersonal. Ultraviolet. Viro. Wilderness. X-ray. Yoga. Zoo.