1269 Arts and sciences poems

If I told him would he like it. Would he like it if I told him.             Would he like it would Napoleon would Napoleon would would he like it. If Napoleon if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him would he like it would he like it if I told him. Now. Not now. And now. Now. Exactly as as kings. Feeling full for it. Exactitude as kings. So to beseech you as full as for it. Exactly or as kings. Shutters shut and open so do queens. Shutters shut and shutters and so shutters shut and shutters and so and so shutters and so shutters shut and so shutters shut and shutters and so. And so shutters shut and so and also. And also and so and so and also. Exact resemblance to exact resemblance the exact resemblance as exact resemblance, exactly as resembling, exactly resembling, exactly in resemblance exactly and resemblance. For this is so. Because. Now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all. Have hold and hear, actively repeat at all. I judge judge. As a resemblance to him. Who comes first. Napoleon the first. Who comes too coming coming too, who goes there, as they go they share, who shares all, all is as all as as yet or as yet. Now to date now to date. Now and now and date and the date. Who came first Napoleon at first. Who came first Napoleon the first. Who came first, Napoleon first. Presently. Exactly do they do. First exactly. Exactly do they do. First exactly. And first exactly. Exactly do they do. And first exactly and exactly. And do they do. At first exactly and first exactly and do they do. The first exactly. And do they do. The first exactly. At first exactly. First as exactly. As first as exactly. Presently As presently. As as presently. He he he he and he and he and and he and he and he and and as and as he and as he and he. He is and as he is, and as he is and he is, he is and as he and he and as he is and he and he and and he and he. Can curls rob can curls quote, quotable. As presently. As exactitude. As trains. Has trains. Has trains. As trains. As trains. Presently. Proportions. Presently. As proportions as presently. Farther and whether. Was there was there was there what was there was there what was there was there there was there. Whether and in there. As even say so. One. I land. Two. I land. Three. The land. Three The land. Three. The land. Two I land. Two I land. One I land. Two I land. As a so. The cannot. A note. They cannot A float. They cannot. They dote. They cannot. They as denote. Miracles play. Play fairly. Play fairly well. A well. As well. As or as presently. Let me recite what history teaches. History teaches.

Hence vain deluding Joys, The brood of Folly without father bred, How little you bested, Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys; Dwell in some idle brain, And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the sunbeams, Or likest hovering dreams, The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train. But hail thou goddess, sage and holy, Hail divinest Melancholy, Whose saintly visage is too bright To hit the sense of human sight; And therefore to our weaker view, O'er-laid with black, staid Wisdom's hue; Black, but such as in esteem, Prince Memnon's sister might beseem, Or that starr'd Ethiop queen that strove To set her beauty's praise above The sea nymphs, and their powers offended. Yet thou art higher far descended, Thee bright-hair'd Vesta long of yore, To solitary Saturn bore; His daughter she (in Saturn's reign, Such mixture was not held a stain) Oft in glimmering bow'rs and glades He met her, and in secret shades Of woody Ida's inmost grove, While yet there was no fear of Jove. Come pensive nun, devout and pure, Sober, stedfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest grain, Flowing with majestic train, And sable stole of cypress lawn, Over thy decent shoulders drawn. Come, but keep thy wonted state, With ev'n step, and musing gait, And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes: There held in holy passion still, Forget thyself to marble, till With a sad leaden downward cast, Thou fix them on the earth as fast. And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet, Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet, And hears the Muses in a ring, Aye round about Jove's altar sing. And add to these retired Leisure, That in trim gardens takes his pleasure; But first, and chiefest, with thee bring Him that yon soars on golden wing, Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne, The cherub Contemplation; And the mute Silence hist along, 'Less Philomel will deign a song, In her sweetest, saddest plight, Smoothing the rugged brow of night, While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke, Gently o'er th' accustom'd oak. Sweet bird that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among, I woo to hear thy even-song; And missing thee, I walk unseen On the dry smooth-shaven green, To behold the wand'ring Moon, Riding near her highest noon, Like one that had been led astray Through the heav'ns wide pathless way; And oft, as if her head she bow'd, Stooping through a fleecy cloud. Oft on a plat of rising ground, I hear the far-off curfew sound, Over some wide-water'd shore, Swinging slow with sullen roar; Or if the air will not permit, Some still removed place will fit, Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, Far from all resort of mirth, Save the cricket on the hearth, Or the bellman's drowsy charm, To bless the doors from nightly harm. Or let my lamp at midnight hour, Be seen in some high lonely tow'r, Where I may oft out-watch the Bear, With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere The spirit of Plato, to unfold What worlds, or what vast regions hold The immortal mind that hath forsook Her mansion in this fleshly nook: And of those dæmons that are found In fire, air, flood, or under ground, Whose power hath a true consent With planet, or with element. Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy In sceptr'd pall come sweeping by, Presenting Thebes', or Pelop's line, Or the tale of Troy divine, Or what (though rare) of later age, Ennobled hath the buskin'd stage. But, O sad Virgin, that thy power Might raise Musæus from his bower, Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing Such notes as, warbled to the string, Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, And made Hell grant what love did seek. Or call up him that left half told The story of Cambuscan bold, Of Camball, and of Algarsife, And who had Canace to wife, That own'd the virtuous ring and glass, And of the wond'rous horse of brass, On which the Tartar king did ride; And if aught else, great bards beside, In sage and solemn tunes have sung, Of tourneys and of trophies hung, Of forests, and enchantments drear, Where more is meant than meets the ear. Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career, Till civil-suited Morn appear, Not trick'd and frounc'd as she was wont, With the Attic boy to hunt, But kerchief'd in a comely cloud, While rocking winds are piping loud, Or usher'd with a shower still, When the gust hath blown his fill, Ending on the rustling leaves, With minute-drops from off the eaves. And when the Sun begins to fling His flaring beams, me, goddess, bring To arched walks of twilight groves, And shadows brown that Sylvan loves, Of pine, or monumental oak, Where the rude axe with heaved stroke, Was never heard the nymphs to daunt, Or fright them from their hallow'd haunt. There in close covert by some brook, Where no profaner eye may look, Hide me from Day's garish eye, While the bee with honied thigh, That at her flow'ry work doth sing, And the waters murmuring With such consort as they keep, Entice the dewy-feather'd sleep; And let some strange mysterious dream, Wave at his wings, in airy stream Of lively portraiture display'd, Softly on my eye-lids laid. And as I wake, sweet music breathe Above, about, or underneath, Sent by some spirit to mortals good, Or th' unseen Genius of the wood. But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloister's pale, And love the high embowed roof, With antique pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light. There let the pealing organ blow, To the full-voic'd quire below, In service high, and anthems clear, As may with sweetness, through mine ear, Dissolve me into ecstasies, And bring all Heav'n before mine eyes. And may at last my weary age Find out the peaceful hermitage, The hairy gown and mossy cell, Where I may sit and rightly spell Of every star that Heav'n doth shew, And every herb that sips the dew; Till old experience do attain To something like prophetic strain. These pleasures, Melancholy, give, And I with thee will choose to live.

A gold box of Latin words rests in a dazzling, fanciful field someone raised to life, lavishing flowers with untraceable roots, histories too distant to discern, upon skin-pale, palm-sized vellum. Imagine the one who did this, lost in dwindling light, a trembling flame and painstakingly lovely colors: blood red, violet, heavy yellow and fierce, unnatural green. Framed like a window to the artist's heart, the mother and child, uncomprehending men offering what they can: the infant touches a tiny, gold-leaf casket. All around him the dark, heraldic blue of angel winds, night sky, her veil. And below him, you can see the word God printed over infinitely careful erasures.

Image tensed, I eye the instant, Anticipation welling— And I expect no one; In the lit shadows I watch as the doorbell Sheds its inaudible Pollen of sound— And I expect no one; Within four walls Astounded more by space Than any desert place, I expect no one; But come he will, He must, if I hold on To bloom unseen; He’ll suddenly appear When I am least aware: Coming as if to forgive All he gives to death, Coming to assure me Of his reward and mine, Coming as anodyne For my pain, for his— Perhaps his whisper is Already on its way.

The mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed is not big and is not small. Big and small are comparative categories, and to what could the mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed be compared? Consciousness observes and is appeased. The soul scrambles across the screes. The soul, like the square root of minus 1 , is an impossibility that has its uses.

No he is not an urn singer nor does he carry on rapport with negative forces within extinction he is the brush fire singer who projects from his heart the sound of insidious subduction of blank anomaly as posture of opaque density as ash he distanced from prone ventriloqual stammer from flesh & habit & drought the performer part poltergeist & Orisha part broken in-cellular dove part glance from floating Mongol bastions where the spires are butane where their photographic fractals are implanted with hypnosis because he allegedly embodies a green necrotic umber more like a vertical flash or a farad posing like a tempest in a human chromium palace therefore his sound a dazed simoom in a gauntlet a blizzard of birds burned at the touch of old maelstroms because he gives off the odour of storms this universal Orisha like a sun that falls from a compost of dimness out of de-productive hydrogen sums out of lightless fissures which boil outside the planet yes he sings at a certain pitch which has evolved beyond the potter’s field beyond a tragic hummingbird’s cirrhosis surmounting primeval flaw surmounting fire which forms in irreplaceable disjunction under certain formations of the zodiac he is listless he intones without impact his synodic revelations no longer of the law of measured palpable destinations because he sings in such a silence that even the Rishis can’t ignore as though the hollow power which re-arises from nothingness perpetually convinces like a vacuum which splits within the spinning arc of an intangible solar candle such power can never be confusedly re-traced because it adumbrates & blazes like a glossary of suns so that each viral drill each forge casts a feeling which in-saturates a pressure bringing to distance a hidden & elided polarity like a subjective skill corroded & advanced he sings beyond the grip of a paralytic nexus where blood shifts beyond the magnet of volume where the nerves no longer resonate inside an octagonal maze stung at its source by piranhas

Piraeus Archeological Museum On the journey to the mundane afterlife, You travel equipped to carry on your trade: A bronze, small-toothed saw to make repairs, The stylus and the ink pot and the scraper, Wax tablets bound into a little book. Here is the tortoise shell for the cithara, Bored through with holes for strings, natural sound box. Here is the harp's wood triangle, all empty— The sheep-gut having long since decomposed Into a pure Pythagorean music. The beeswax, frangible with centuries, Has puzzled all your lyrics into silence. I think you were a poet of perfection Who fled still weighing one word with another, Since wax forgives and warms beneath revision.

To Robert Hass and in Memory of Elliot Gilbert Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn, Bashō and his friends go out to view the moon; In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter, The secret courtesy that courses like ichor Through the old form of the rude, full-scale joke, Impossible to tell in writing. “Bashō” He named himself, “Banana Tree”: banana After the plant some grateful students gave him, Maybe in appreciation of his guidance Threading a long night through the rules and channels Of their collaborative linking-poem Scored in their teacher’s heart: live, rigid, fluid Like passages etched in a microscopic circuit. Elliot had in his memory so many jokes They seemed to breed like microbes in a culture Inside his brain, one so much making another It was impossible to tell them all: In the court-culture of jokes, a top banana. Imagine a court of one: the queen a young mother, Unhappy, alone all day with her firstborn child And her new baby in a squalid apartment Of too few rooms, a different race from her neighbors. She tells the child she’s going to kill herself. She broods, she rages. Hoping to distract her, The child cuts capers, he sings, he does imitations Of different people in the building, he jokes, He feels if he keeps her alive until the father Gets home from work, they’ll be okay till morning. It’s laughter versus the bedroom and the pills. What is he in his efforts but a courtier? Impossible to tell his whole delusion. In the first months when I had moved back East From California and had to leave a message On Bob’s machine, I used to make a habit Of telling the tape a joke; and part-way through, I would pretend that I forgot the punchline, Or make believe that I was interrupted— As though he’d be so eager to hear the end He‘d have to call me back. The joke was Elliot’s, More often than not. The doctors made the blunder That killed him some time later that same year. One day when I got home I found a message On my machine from Bob. He had a story About two rabbis, one of them tall, one short, One day while walking along the street together They see the corpse of a Chinese man before them, And Bob said, sorry, he forgot the rest. Of course he thought that his joke was a dummy, Impossible to tell—a dead-end challenge. But here it is, as Elliot told it to me: The dead man’s widow came to the rabbis weeping, Begging them, if they could, to resurrect him. Shocked, the tall rabbi said absolutely not. But the short rabbi told her to bring the body Into the study house, and ordered the shutters Closed so the room was night-dark. Then he prayed Over the body, chanting a secret blessing Out of Kabala. “Arise and breathe,” he shouted; But nothing happened. The body lay still. So then The little rabbi called for hundreds of candles And danced around the body, chanting and praying In Hebrew, then Yiddish, then Aramaic. He prayed In Turkish and Egyptian and Old Galician For nearly three hours, leaping about the coffin In the candlelight so that his tiny black shoes Seemed not to touch the floor. With one last prayer Sobbed in the Spanish of before the Inquisition He stopped, exhausted, and looked in the dead man’s face. Panting, he raised both arms in a mystic gesture And said, “Arise and breathe!” And still the body Lay as before. Impossible to tell In words how Elliot’s eyebrows flailed and snorted Like shaggy mammoths as—the Chinese widow Granting permission—the little rabbi sang The blessing for performing a circumcision And removed the dead man’s foreskin, chanting blessings In Finnish and Swahili, and bathed the corpse From head to foot, and with a final prayer In Babylonian, gasping with exhaustion, He seized the dead man’s head and kissed the lips And dropped it again and leaping back commanded, “Arise and breathe!” The corpse lay still as ever. At this, as when Bashō’s disciples wind Along the curving spine that links the renga Across the different voices, each one adding A transformation according to the rules Of stasis and repetition, all in order And yet impossible to tell beforehand, Elliot changes for the punchline: the wee Rabbi, still panting, like a startled boxer, Looks at the dead one, then up at all those watching, A kind of Mel Brooks gesture: “Hoo boy!” he says, “Now that’s what I call really dead.” O mortal Powers and princes of earth, and you immortal Lords of the underground and afterlife, Jehovah, Raa, Bol-Morah, Hecate, Pluto, What has a brilliant, living soul to do with Your harps and fires and boats, your bric-a-brac And troughs of smoking blood? Provincial stinkers, Our languages don’t touch you, you’re like that mother Whose small child entertained her to beg her life. Possibly he grew up to be the tall rabbi, The one who washed his hands of all those capers Right at the outset. Or maybe he became The author of these lines, a one-man renga The one for whom it seems to be impossible To tell a story straight. It was a routine Procedure. When it was finished the physicians Told Sandra and the kids it had succeeded, But Elliot wouldn’t wake up for maybe an hour, They should go eat. The two of them loved to bicker In a way that on his side went back to Yiddish, On Sandra’s to some Sicilian dialect. He used to scold her endlessly for smoking. When she got back from dinner with their children The doctors had to tell them about the mistake. Oh swirling petals, falling leaves! The movement Of linking renga coursing from moment to moment Is meaning, Bob says in his Haiku book. Oh swirling petals, all living things are contingent, Falling leaves, and transient, and they suffer. But the Universal is the goal of jokes, Especially certain ethnic jokes, which taper Down through the swirling funnel of tongues and gestures Toward their preposterous Ithaca. There’s one A journalist told me. He heard it while a hero Of the South African freedom movement was speaking To elderly Jews. The speaker’s own right arm Had been blown off by right-wing letter-bombers. He told his listeners they had to cast their ballots For the ANC—a group the old Jews feared As “in with the Arabs.” But they started weeping As the old one-armed fighter told them their country Needed them to vote for what was right, their vote Could make a country their children could return to From London and Chicago. The moved old people Applauded wildly, and the speaker’s friend Whispered to the journalist, “It’s the Belgian Army Joke come to life.” I wish that I could tell it To Elliot. In the Belgian Army, the feud Between the Flemings and Walloons grew vicious, So out of hand the army could barely function. Finally one commander assembled his men In one great room, to deal with things directly. They stood before him at attention. “All Flemings,” He ordered, “to the left wall.” Half the men Clustered to the left. “Now all Walloons,” he ordered, “Move to the right.” An equal number crowded Against the right wall. Only one man remained At attention in the middle: “What are you, soldier?” Saluting, the man said, “Sir, I am a Belgian.” “Why, that’s astonishing, Corporal—what’s your name?” Saluting again, “Rabinowitz,” he answered: A joke that seems at first to be a story About the Jews. But as the renga describes Religious meaning by moving in drifting petals And brittle leaves that touch and die and suffer The changing winds that riffle the gutter swirl, So in the joke, just under the raucous music Of Fleming, Jew, Walloon, a courtly allegiance Moves to the dulcimer, gavotte and bow, Over the banana tree the moon in autumn— Allegiance to a state impossible to tell.

I love them all. I love that a handful, a mouthful, gets you by, a satchelful can land you a job, a well-chosen clutch of them could get you laid, and that a solitary word can initiate a stampede, and therefore can be formally outlawed—even by a liberal court bent on defending a constitution guaranteeing unimpeded utterance. I love that the Argentine gaucho has over two hundred words for the coloration of horses and the Sami language of Scandinavia has over a thousand words for reindeer based on age, sex, appearance—e.g., a busat has big balls or only one big ball. More than the pristine, I love the filthy ones for their descriptive talent as well as transgressive nature. I love the dirty ones more than the minced, in that I respect extravagant expression more than reserved. I admire reserve, especially when taken to an ascetic nth. I love the particular lexicons of particular occupations. The substrate of those activities. The nomenclatures within nomenclatures. I am of the unaccredited school that believes animals did not exist until Adam assigned them names. My relationship to the word is anything but scientific; it is a matter of faith on my part, that the word endows material substance, by setting the thing named apart from all else.Horse, then, unhorses what is not horse.

One face looks out from all his canvases, One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans: We found her hidden just behind those screens, That mirror gave back all her loveliness. A queen in opal or in ruby dress, A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens, A saint, an angel — every canvas means The same one meaning, neither more or less. He feeds upon her face by day and night, And she with true kind eyes looks back on him, Fair as the moon and joyful as the light: Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim; Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright; Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.