1269 Arts and sciences poems

Picture yourself, child, garred in a coign of the newborn city: father and infant brother dead though life, that other half of nothing, spills out the same from the hill into the harbour. You take your spyglass to the sea, late in the afternoon when the big hulls loom against the pier, watch the ladies overdressed on the embankment or the sailors tumbling from steamers into bars. There is a tunnel below where the cargo trains go. Could it be you found on foot without the tram for smoothness west on West towards Victoria where in the salt stupor of the market a veiny hand patted a fat amethyst eyeball in your palm? In the freshly planted suburbs, the smoke of wet dirt in gardens: “Those who do not belong here wear a uniform— consider this when sleep falls on you.” * The man who sleeps in your mother’s bed drinks tea with the British ambassador so the house is kosmos enough. In one room a calliope like an engine plays; in another, a stone horse smooth enough to ride or a carved wooden mask with a nose-hole stinging skin. There’s a monocle and a pipe, a flyer for Ruth St. Denis, there’s a feathery moth’s wing, part of a chewed-up but bright pink Europe. (You tick in sticky names the pages of your enemies— Plato, Ptolemy, Shakespeare, Dickens, Sir Conan Doyle and the schoolboys who scrape you on the ground until your knees go red. You see a girl playing in the street and feel pity.) * “The poet, a fake, lacks conviction: he’s stuck with both absence and substance. These are the laws of things, this is the index finger, pointing.” Camoens who sailed in search of Portugal, Magellan who wrote his name in the sky elliptical— that was the country dreamed by pilgrims whose tears flowed into óur sea— it was ways to make every estranged brook feel special, to hawk deeds of Europe to Asia and vice versa. The cannonade drools and sputters to a stop, the ship pulls away from the cliff and wheels toward a new mass. The vespertine light drains by degrees into the night-time as if through bright perforations of stars. The lamps of the ports dim in economic sequence. on the tip of the land’s triangle where you killed the Khoikhoi for their cattle, the Dutch are bastards and those Brits to whom you owe, those bureaucrats and beautiful engineers, are very polite but rather shy. They slaughter hearts too, scientifically. But song remained at close of day. Song took root in the decaying estate: song in the house of faith, alone in the end, after the machines, after the former masters, after the fields, recaptured by trees, and the pedigreed dogs abandoned. * Helpless, the love of precision for territory. Helpless, your green discoloured bust on an island among commuters, on the corner of Commercial and Soldier’s Way. You are ever a stranger from Tongaat to Isipingo though the beaches have been seized and the cuter cottages turned away from loamy burial ground to face a reopened sea. But we carry Bambatha’s name in our mouths and inherit your teeth; the highway gutter-drawls into stacked flats or tin doors, curling dirt roads, satellite towns on satellite maps, and the moon is still red and the ancestors reach down like willows. You among them know well: smoking your cigarette, to spite the gods, writing, “They must eat my little boy or die,” as another way of saying, “Let every tongue be foreign.”

For 8 months he lay in bed over the difference between “the bell rings” & “he rings the bell.” Did those 2 “rings” SOUND DIFFERENT? The invisible disturbance which is the bell’s vibration beating at the air—a FIELD EFFECT—does it shift with the ringer’s will? This, he thought, was the smallest difference between things which the human mind could hold (or almost hold, the thought-of-it falling away from the thinking, a penny rolling to the horizon & so to sleep . . .). He couldn’t get up. It became clear that he was the murderer. Everyone knows. A man standing at a podium reads from notes. In the audience people nod in immaculate suits, women & men.When I am done someone will transcribe what I say into speech. It will not resemble my notes. He is just THE THING between his notes & his speech. This is only fair, that he be the air. Some of the women wear hats with feathers in them, wild, candescent. In the audience is a boy named B, not the letter, not the note. Another sound, neither letter nor note—

Untitled, 1965, by Alberto Valdés I’m not easily mesmerized. But how can you not be drawn in by swirls, angles and whorls brought together to obey a field of moving colors layered, muted    ... others bright that make you linger there? Just look at those Carpaccio reds. Right then my mind leaps to Cezanne: his dark-blue vest in Self-Portrait(1879–1880); the Seven Bathers(ca. 1900) wallowing in blue; his blue beyond in Château Noir(1904). Consider now the three, or is it four figures in Alberto Valdés’s Untitled(ca. 1965). They are wayward energy, moving right to left (the right one more sensuous than the rest) about to dive into the deep-blue waiting — call it the unknown. I’d like to be there when they meet that blue abyss head on. Will they keep their shape, I wonder, or break up and rearrange themselves into a brighter, more memorable pose ...    into a bigger elemental thing? I’m really asking this: When they run into the landscape of  blue, will these figures lose their logic of  luster? Will they lose their lucid argument of color, their accumulated wealth of geometry? Will they still engage the entire me, hold me, keep me mesmerized?

Bick Benedict, that is, Rock Hudson in the Time-clock of the movie, stands up and moves, Deliberate, toward encounter. He has come out Of the anxious blur of the backdrop, like Coming out of the unreal into the world of What's true, down to earth and distinct; has Stepped up to Sarge, the younger of the two, And would sure appreciate it if he: "Were a Little more polite to these people." Sarge, Who has something to defend, balks; asks (In a long-shot) if: "that there papoose down There, his name Benedict too?," by which he Means one-year old Jordy in the background Booth hidden in the bosom of mother love of Juana, who listens, trying not to listen. Rock Hudson, his hair already the color of slate, Who could not foresee this challenge, arms Akimbo (turning around), contemplates the stable And straight line of years gone by, says: "Yeah, Come to think of it, it is." And so acknowledges, In his heart, his grandson, half-Anglo, half- Brown. Sarge repents from words, but no Part of his real self succumbs: "All right— Forget I asked you. Now you just go back Over there and sit down and we ain't gonna Have no trouble. But this bunch here is Gonna eat somewhere's else." Never shall I Forget, never how quickly his hand threw my Breathing off—how quickly he plopped the Hat heavily askew once more on the old Man's head, seized two fistsful of shirt and Coat and lifted his slight body like nothing, A no-thing, who could have been any of us, Weightless nobodies bronzed by real-time far Off somewhere, not here, but in another Country, yet here, where Rock Hudson's face Deepens; where in one motion, swift as a Miracle, he catches Sarge off guard, grabs His arm somehow, tumbles him back against The counter and draws fire from Sarge to Begin the fight up and down the wide screen Of memory, ablaze in Warner-color light.

[SAROUK] We buy what we cannot control, the rugs, rhythm-makers, containing refrains of the oldest story: a man takes a journey. I have no stories inside me, he says, so travels on, to rest beneath a carpet of blue constellations, star patterns at the edges of disordered border walls. At the center, a meditative medallion makes a moving immortal-flowered ground: to live there is to give oneself over to greenness, redness, occasional blues, holding those spirits of woollen dyes rising from the knots within to breathe against the woven, multi-colored air. [BIDJAR] Now there is a coat of many colors hung around the wanderer's shoulders where he climbs out from that pit, down which he flung himself, or was thrown into. Reaching to soothe his wounds, he finds the dusts of centuries residing there beneath his feet, the hopeful travelers passing, wearing thin, fighting about how best to articulate the names of gods for whom they yearn—accursed by wars' helmet curves, shields, chained stitches of unmediated reds and yellowed husks of blood—broken lines marking a garden in whose precincts his journey began. [KAZAK] Three sunbursts spin, enigmatic energies through golden latchhooks, surrounding cloudbanks; three eagles, darting within their shifting images: they return him to streets of lit porches in summer dark, a boy stuttering over random syllables, a blindfolded man pleading for his life— whose fate is in the hands of some men whose fate is in the hands of other men, whose fate . . . until the whole pattern emerges, and the language becomes clear. On the floor lies his mother, moaning, until he comes out, guilty, before her— amid the mud of his own frozen blood. [SHIRVAN] To live inside such squares as the weaver of this green, becoming golden, labor; to pull back old skins and try to emerge, victorious, from that old prison after so many years, is to find a path back to harmonious designs, surely centered on the search—yet still speaking of a life with knotted figures seen as suffering variations on themes that can be inferred from small vibrations of weft and warp, the ‘snakes' within the threads worn down to the shapes of ribbons, even rhythms writhing in a loom of days: those humming ancient instruments whose music seems [SHIRAZ] raw as colors governed by the earth, pink as brick, or deserts scraped from rock, rough clay slowly grinding, then drifting down the slopes of the central plateaus to fresh respites from thinner regions of dessication fixed at the fringes below. These lands lie under the ache of desire, which calls feet out to play upon sand, to fill each new hollow, and dance about, tongues turning on the knots of umber, ochre, woven into those undulating waves others might summon in flowery manners to escape from bitter orange, still held by recalcitrant fingers, to the purple [KERMAN] empowering all those who try to hold on— as all things will hold to themselves an idea of themselves—to an aspiration towards good fortune, unwavering even unto death. Yet here are dusky passages, canopies of clearness, an everlasting understanding of the earth as cancerous points of coloration, acid starbursts, or dangerous blots—all blurring the way to move past sight: perspectives lost and found again, symmetrical, surrounded by the momentos one saves from travel, old friends, like hues that may betoken, in hopefulness, some changes of heart. [SENNEH] This creates a powerful language about how to levitate a plane—for even as the occasional murmurs of new machines are heard in the land, as old cyclic gardens arrange themselves in the whorls and tendrils throughout tilled fields, snakes hold up this world in variations of light blue skies above temptation. Even when an illiterate weaver mistakes an old date for the design, then dyes and binds strange numbers into a ground, the change of the serif, for instance, in a calligraphy of days marks the date of cartouches as mysterious, unknown. [KASHAN] Yet the signals from the borders suggest a different tale: lozenges are bottles strewn along mauve and terra cotta roads, shaped like a woman found lying along the side of those same roads—the figure of flesh, going nowhere but endlessly back on itself—as a web of years frames a dying kind of certitude, innocence. The birds in these cages signify singing, as the tapestries of perfected threads suggest reticence, chosen intermediaries to the indeterminancy of all creation: and we can buy it yet, articulate or not, with each new freeing of our hearts.

He was too excited to fall asleep. The little dog wouldn’t stop barking. He took out his gun. He took out his handkerchief. He took out his notebook. He drank his coffee and left a dime. He walked into the room. He took her in his arms. She let him in and walked out of the room. He ran down the escalator. He left the motor running. He waited in the rain. He needed something to tell the police. He went down unconscious. The blood drained from his face. His eyes melted into a smile. He dialed and waited, looking around. He took off his hat in the elevator. He rang the doorbell and waited. He poured the cereal and added milk. He opened the refrigerator and looked in. He turned the page and continued reading. He shut the door and switched the light on. He looked up at a plane in the sky. He put three pennies one on top of another. He squeezed onto the elevator. He took out his key. He helped her into her coat. He crossed the room and picked up the phone. He drove on through the heavy rain. He whistled for a cab. He turned the corner and bumped into her. She gradually surrendered to his kiss. He drove past the wrought-iron gates. He lit a cigarette and waited. He lied to the police. He threw the dice and won. He folded the newspaper and crossed his legs. He sat down in the lobby. He tied his shoes and stood up. He put on his hat but didn’t get up. He thought about her until he fell asleep. He said “Goodbye” and hung up. He threw the dice and lost. He dialed and waited for her to answer. He left some money for her. He looked for her door number. The police arrived late. He walked into her building. He let her do the explaining. He gave up hope and begged. He locked his car and walked. She gave him that look of hers. He put a finger to his lips. He wiped his mouth and left. He slapped her across the face hard. He lit a cigarette in the dark. The police wouldn’t understand. Her little dog slept. Her voice had an edge to it. Her hands were wonderful when she touched him. His mind might be playing tricks on him. The low hills reminded him of her. There was no way to cut his losses. He needed a shave and a haircut. The coffee did nothing for him. She was somewhere else when he called. Pain stabbed him as he reached toward the glove compartment. He needed a little time in the desert. He decided to head for the beach and then thought better. He needed about $5,000. He ran out of Luckies and crumpled the pack. He left his hat on in the car. Maybe he was ready to die. He checked his wallet pocket. All of his friends had disappeared. He remembered her naked body. He had almost no savings. He was at least ten pounds overweight. He realized he was in love with her.

Come, let’s go in. The ticket-taker has shyly grinned and it’s almost time, Lovely One. Let’s go in. The wind tonight’s too wild. The sky too deep, too thin. Already it’s time. The lights have dimmed. Come, Loveliest. Let’s go in and know these bodies we do not have to own, passing quietly as dreams, as snow. Already leaves are falling and music begins. Lovely One, it’s time. Let’s go in.

The Lumieres’ first movies were of ordinary life: workers leaving their father’s factory; parents at the table while the baby eats. The brothers found the man’s hands at work building a wall just as beautiful when played backwards, the man leaping into the water and equal delight when he rose again into the air. It’s strange the brothers gave up so quickly on film, but they did. People would grow bored, they said,could see the same thing on the street. A novelty,

Titian’s Young Englishman with a Glove, circa 1530 It happened in Physics, reading a Library art book under the desk, (the lesson was Archimedes in the bath) I turned a page and fell for an older man, and anonymous at that, hardly ideal – he was four hundred and forty-five, I was fourteen. ‘Eureka!’ streaked each thought (I prayed no-one would hear) and Paradise all term was page 179 (I prayed no-one would guess). Of course my fingers, sticky with toffee and bliss, failed to entice him from his century; his cool grey stare fastened me firmly in mine. I got six overdues, suspension of borrowing rights and a D in Physics. But had by heart what Archimedes proves. Ten years later I married: a European with cool grey eyes, a moustache, pigskin gloves.

Rhyme, the rack of finest wits, That expresseth but by fits True conceit, Spoiling senses of their treasure, Cozening judgment with a measure, But false weight; Wresting words from their true calling, Propping verse for fear of falling To the ground; Jointing syllabes, drowning letters, Fast'ning vowels as with fetters They were bound! Soon as lazy thou wert known, All good poetry hence was flown, And art banish'd. For a thousand years together All Parnassus' green did wither, And wit vanish'd. Pegasus did fly away, At the wells no Muse did stay, But bewail'd So to see the fountain dry, And Apollo's music die, All light failed! Starveling rhymes did fill the stage; Not a poet in an age Worth crowning; Not a work deserving bays, Not a line deserving praise, Pallas frowning; Greek was free from rhyme's infection, Happy Greek by this protection Was not spoiled. Whilst the Latin, queen of tongues, Is not yet free from rhyme's wrongs, But rests foiled. Scarce the hill again doth flourish, Scarce the world a wit doth nourish To restore Phoebus to his crown again, And the Muses to their brain, As before. Vulgar languages that want Words and sweetness, and be scant Of true measure, Tyrant rhyme hath so abused, That they long since have refused Other cæsure. He that first invented thee, May his joints tormented be, Cramp'd forever. Still may syllabes jar with time, Still may reason war with rhyme, Resting never. May his sense when it would meet The cold tumor in his feet, Grow unsounder; And his title be long fool, That in rearing such a school Was the founder.