I look at the telephone and hope that you will ring
In the morning I wonder where you are
But I find other things to do.
Things are going pretty well for me
I don’t expect anything from you.
Birdsongs sound less sweet now
And the cold rain drives harder against my coat
But I make my way home and
You don’t owe me anything.
The coffee tastes less sweet when I am alone;
And I keep my thoughts mainly to myself---
Still the day goes from morning until evening
And after all you don’t owe me anything.
To sleep is more difficult and the night less quiet;
The world still spins but some of its magic is gone
But I am not unhappy.
And you don’t owe me anything.
You don’t owe me anything
Though there are times I wish
I could call out to you or reach for your hand
There are so many more things I would like to show you,
But I don’t expect anything from you.
There are days when I cannot stop thinking of you;
The hills look so dark, and the road is ragged
But I am making my way alone.
Perhaps life is less vivid
And the music not as easy to bear
My memory too easily fills with you
But I am growing stronger day by day
And you don’t owe me anything.
I truly wonder how things are going for you,
Give me a call if you ever get the time,
I would be happy just to hear your voice.
But you don’t owe me anything.
(After Steven Eicher’s ‘Tu m'as doit Rien’)
Sunday, August 29, 2004
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Monday, July 19, 2004
Time and the Moon
An opaline disc radiates the water’s edge
And mirrors its glare;
Highlighting the dusty scum there;
Persistent gnats batter unheard.
June first of two thousand and four
Seventeen year cicada dance
Rising up from the root floor.
To clatter in sex frenzy---
orange munchkin men!
Screeching their metallic hiss
In unearthly battle choir.
Time for the moon
Bound to earth by a leash
Surveying civilization without cease
Like a priestcraft of police.
Who reckon the hour of man’s demise;
Lunar dust crunched
Beneath boots of astronauts,
Lonely footsteps treading
Into the future desert
The busy highpriests plot.
Weaving, devising, like a spider in waiting,
Undimming in focus,
Serenading the fates.
A merry dance, the wild birds cry,
The opaline disc
Announces midnight
And surrenders its borrowed light.
The village feast cracks open wide
While the earth rests
And mirrors its glare;
Highlighting the dusty scum there;
Persistent gnats batter unheard.
June first of two thousand and four
Seventeen year cicada dance
Rising up from the root floor.
To clatter in sex frenzy---
orange munchkin men!
Screeching their metallic hiss
In unearthly battle choir.
Time for the moon
Bound to earth by a leash
Surveying civilization without cease
Like a priestcraft of police.
Who reckon the hour of man’s demise;
Lunar dust crunched
Beneath boots of astronauts,
Lonely footsteps treading
Into the future desert
The busy highpriests plot.
Weaving, devising, like a spider in waiting,
Undimming in focus,
Serenading the fates.
A merry dance, the wild birds cry,
The opaline disc
Announces midnight
And surrenders its borrowed light.
The village feast cracks open wide
While the earth rests
Moody Blues, Wolf Trap, Virginia, 6/01/04
Milling crowd,
A distant bell
Full moon silhouetting
The world on its shell.
A shell from the silver ocean
Screeching of the white gull,
Black onyx, wet and rolling
At the edge where water stalls.
Water stalling and painting
A foamy line
Billowing blue clouds climb
Up to the infinite sea;
It is as it was, is now, and evermore shall be!
Stair upon stair they climb and descend in equal number
Progress leaps with thinning bubbles
Dancing madly over the drummers.* *[Graeme Edge]
In archaic beats
Plying time into fours and threes.
The fading moon greets the parting clouds
Sudden in retreat.
Pale walls obscure the resounding light
Of Mare Tranquilitas---The Sea of Tranquility.
Thickly shaded deciduous greens shift to sinuous grey glances
As the singer sings:
“Lovely to see you again my friend,
walk awhile with me ‘til the next bend.”
World ever changing
Yet changing ever the same,
Hayward’s guitar resonates over
John Lodge’s thundering bass line
Indicating silence and intermission…
Ever the milling crowd,
The aroma of a dark roasted Starbuck bean.
In a land that freedom once boasted,
Full moon silhouettes the deepening shades of blue
Dangling with hopes for the triumph of the True.
A distant bell
Full moon silhouetting
The world on its shell.
A shell from the silver ocean
Screeching of the white gull,
Black onyx, wet and rolling
At the edge where water stalls.
Water stalling and painting
A foamy line
Billowing blue clouds climb
Up to the infinite sea;
It is as it was, is now, and evermore shall be!
Stair upon stair they climb and descend in equal number
Progress leaps with thinning bubbles
Dancing madly over the drummers.* *[Graeme Edge]
In archaic beats
Plying time into fours and threes.
The fading moon greets the parting clouds
Sudden in retreat.
Pale walls obscure the resounding light
Of Mare Tranquilitas---The Sea of Tranquility.
Thickly shaded deciduous greens shift to sinuous grey glances
As the singer sings:
“Lovely to see you again my friend,
walk awhile with me ‘til the next bend.”
World ever changing
Yet changing ever the same,
Hayward’s guitar resonates over
John Lodge’s thundering bass line
Indicating silence and intermission…
Ever the milling crowd,
The aroma of a dark roasted Starbuck bean.
In a land that freedom once boasted,
Full moon silhouettes the deepening shades of blue
Dangling with hopes for the triumph of the True.
Immergrun, Loretto
On light feet squirrels stow chocolate brown acorns
To and from the black oak’s darkening
In the diaphanous shadows at wood’s edge.
Doubling to the light in the forest
Sullen cicadas rumble
From cool shades of leaf and light
Beyond the expanse of the broad sycamore
Whose fingered grip is luminous
Soaked in yellow.
Solar heat gathers sweet perfume---
Powdered earth late in the day.
Scent of mock orange wafts across the border
The clank of the penitentiary fades
Like blue Summer’s dragonfly retreat.
Purple songbirds dart about at the edge
Where the goldenrod blends
Into blue aster stars and orange waterlillies.
Black crows hang over beige fields
As the sun dips her head into the Alleghenies
Abandoning the day to fireflies and cool evening crickets.
To and from the black oak’s darkening
In the diaphanous shadows at wood’s edge.
Doubling to the light in the forest
Sullen cicadas rumble
From cool shades of leaf and light
Beyond the expanse of the broad sycamore
Whose fingered grip is luminous
Soaked in yellow.
Solar heat gathers sweet perfume---
Powdered earth late in the day.
Scent of mock orange wafts across the border
The clank of the penitentiary fades
Like blue Summer’s dragonfly retreat.
Purple songbirds dart about at the edge
Where the goldenrod blends
Into blue aster stars and orange waterlillies.
Black crows hang over beige fields
As the sun dips her head into the Alleghenies
Abandoning the day to fireflies and cool evening crickets.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
My Love in Lispole
Swirling updraft spin---
Tender, graceful the wing---
His white cotton cap;
black shining eye
tilting
to the cliffsfall sheer.
Suspended before me…
Speaking
above the tumultuous tumbling,
The foaming surf
defines phrases
emerald into deeping blue.
In the rocks roosting
Twin pairs
pecking to the lover’s peck
holding fast to the tuft.
Round and round
solitaries spin.
Oh! To be such an artist of flight!
Should surpass every gift,
Should drop speech or pen,
Should waken
from my gazing perch.
My love wanders on a grassy knoll
Her raven hair painted on the wind.
I am called to regather
And not slow, not swift, the footsfall
To the steady path.
Approaching speech stalls.
Vision and flight lock in memory.
We resume the winding road
To me her loving eyes are as light as smoke rising on the hills above Lispole*.
*Lispole is a seaside town near Dingle, in Southwest Ireland.
Tender, graceful the wing---
His white cotton cap;
black shining eye
tilting
to the cliffsfall sheer.
Suspended before me…
Speaking
above the tumultuous tumbling,
The foaming surf
defines phrases
emerald into deeping blue.
In the rocks roosting
Twin pairs
pecking to the lover’s peck
holding fast to the tuft.
Round and round
solitaries spin.
Oh! To be such an artist of flight!
Should surpass every gift,
Should drop speech or pen,
Should waken
from my gazing perch.
My love wanders on a grassy knoll
Her raven hair painted on the wind.
I am called to regather
And not slow, not swift, the footsfall
To the steady path.
Approaching speech stalls.
Vision and flight lock in memory.
We resume the winding road
To me her loving eyes are as light as smoke rising on the hills above Lispole*.
*Lispole is a seaside town near Dingle, in Southwest Ireland.
Sunday, July 04, 2004
Poet At Forty
Through an oaken door
Down a corridor
I marvel at the children’s play
So animated and cruel.
The poet too observes with his pale, innocent eye.
I come to a noisy hall and open the second door
To a spacious room
Full of Summer light
A pine desk in disarray
With lined pages
And crumpled sheets scratched with choppy verse
And notice the poet dejected and howling from the corner of my eye.
The third door arrives after strange halls and hidden mazes
With guides in vast archive of
Manuscripts of the living and dead,
The poet stands silently filing papers
Like a man who polishes stones
Editing these Collected works
Scarcely noticing my coming or going…
Banquets and dissolution follow
Forgetfulness, lust and bitter dejection;
At last I come to the fourth door
And crack open to find an accomplished poet of some reknown
And swell to hear his voice:
“I stand in wonder before little things---
Breezes in the late evening branches
Bouquets for the memory
From sundrenched vaults of yellow---
Dreams that Summer’s heavy arm plows under.
I toss these scraps of paper to the ditch
With breach of regulation, well considered answer,
With definition, and vow,”
His word trails along the luminous orchard
To filter Autumn’s cider
Into a glass of Wonder.
Wonder before little things---
Ash and burning paper
Dissolving minute traces of Spring
Coiling near the park bench
Pastel ribbons flitter and flow away
On November’s winding, muddy water.
Spilling,
the deep green liquid
Holds fast to the cool frosted soil
The sun paints the blue
With cloudy white brushes.
No longer swayed in storming majesties,
The poet at forty is captive
To ribbons, twigs,
to Triune clover sustaining
Inspiration’s pool echoes tales
Of valiant days into richer speech.
Opening an oaken door,
Passing through an endless corridor
I wander down the little days
Of my sterile infancy
Up through the years of filtered sunlight,
Through the trees,
The globe spinning well on her course,
Past rocks and hills of time
And such stillness
That deep as a crystal lake is mute,
On and on
Into the dense hall of liquid music
I come at last to the banquet
Her diamond eyes and golden dress
The candlelight plays upon
Her human form at last molded into art.
I search receding figures
In a tall mirror.
An elegant table is
Set with crystal and a candelabra.
Evening guests linger
In the eery sumptuous cool.
Summer afternoon slides
Away on a rippling breeze
And a diaphanous curtain.
Carnival absorption
Swirls along the corridor
Spinning, gazing wild-eyed into the mirror
Struggling to stand.
The pulsing ringing in my ear
Drifting deep in murky thoughts
Then blank void---the funnel---
Walking into startled music
Parched and thirsting
Counterwheeling
Throwing up.
I stop to gaze upon my new creation
With wide eyes
Gone are the months of drunkenness and chaos,
Clutterered fields and ruined halls
Months of ignorance cease to murmur in their drunken rabble.
It is silent in the cold vault
Save for the drip-dropping water
Which dull and rhythmically falls.
Years before I searched in such depths for music
Now dead to me.
What Orpheus would wake the sleeping
And give such song to my inner ear?
Darkness lords over
“I left you standing deaf
years ago.
And there---there is the madness you sought---
Go and take it!”
A chained figure stunned me---
“Yes, not all the mad are as lucky---
And this is the wine cellar
Welcome back!”
“Surprised, you are surprised!
Had not thought…
How old?”
“Ah, yes 40.
Naturally, and now
only now
have you found your way back.”
Down a corridor
I marvel at the children’s play
So animated and cruel.
The poet too observes with his pale, innocent eye.
I come to a noisy hall and open the second door
To a spacious room
Full of Summer light
A pine desk in disarray
With lined pages
And crumpled sheets scratched with choppy verse
And notice the poet dejected and howling from the corner of my eye.
The third door arrives after strange halls and hidden mazes
With guides in vast archive of
Manuscripts of the living and dead,
The poet stands silently filing papers
Like a man who polishes stones
Editing these Collected works
Scarcely noticing my coming or going…
Banquets and dissolution follow
Forgetfulness, lust and bitter dejection;
At last I come to the fourth door
And crack open to find an accomplished poet of some reknown
And swell to hear his voice:
“I stand in wonder before little things---
Breezes in the late evening branches
Bouquets for the memory
From sundrenched vaults of yellow---
Dreams that Summer’s heavy arm plows under.
I toss these scraps of paper to the ditch
With breach of regulation, well considered answer,
With definition, and vow,”
His word trails along the luminous orchard
To filter Autumn’s cider
Into a glass of Wonder.
Wonder before little things---
Ash and burning paper
Dissolving minute traces of Spring
Coiling near the park bench
Pastel ribbons flitter and flow away
On November’s winding, muddy water.
Spilling,
the deep green liquid
Holds fast to the cool frosted soil
The sun paints the blue
With cloudy white brushes.
No longer swayed in storming majesties,
The poet at forty is captive
To ribbons, twigs,
to Triune clover sustaining
Inspiration’s pool echoes tales
Of valiant days into richer speech.
Opening an oaken door,
Passing through an endless corridor
I wander down the little days
Of my sterile infancy
Up through the years of filtered sunlight,
Through the trees,
The globe spinning well on her course,
Past rocks and hills of time
And such stillness
That deep as a crystal lake is mute,
On and on
Into the dense hall of liquid music
I come at last to the banquet
Her diamond eyes and golden dress
The candlelight plays upon
Her human form at last molded into art.
I search receding figures
In a tall mirror.
An elegant table is
Set with crystal and a candelabra.
Evening guests linger
In the eery sumptuous cool.
Summer afternoon slides
Away on a rippling breeze
And a diaphanous curtain.
Carnival absorption
Swirls along the corridor
Spinning, gazing wild-eyed into the mirror
Struggling to stand.
The pulsing ringing in my ear
Drifting deep in murky thoughts
Then blank void---the funnel---
Walking into startled music
Parched and thirsting
Counterwheeling
Throwing up.
I stop to gaze upon my new creation
With wide eyes
Gone are the months of drunkenness and chaos,
Clutterered fields and ruined halls
Months of ignorance cease to murmur in their drunken rabble.
It is silent in the cold vault
Save for the drip-dropping water
Which dull and rhythmically falls.
Years before I searched in such depths for music
Now dead to me.
What Orpheus would wake the sleeping
And give such song to my inner ear?
Darkness lords over
“I left you standing deaf
years ago.
And there---there is the madness you sought---
Go and take it!”
A chained figure stunned me---
“Yes, not all the mad are as lucky---
And this is the wine cellar
Welcome back!”
“Surprised, you are surprised!
Had not thought…
How old?”
“Ah, yes 40.
Naturally, and now
only now
have you found your way back.”
Saturday, July 03, 2004
A Hymn to Broken Idols: A Junk Symphony
Prologue
When you were young, shiny and new
Clamoring to be seen
To be picked up
Taken home/thrown into use
Your faces smeared with incandescent light
Your bulging shelves outstretched and eager
In a bargain parade.
Working, coiling, grinding days
To construct the world that surrounds,
To enrich in labor,
To be tossed aside
Depleting novelty…
Discounted, resold, secondhanded, thrifted, gleaned, shopped.
Use emptied you/emptied you into utility.
Silly magic words escape you
While the world through you was enriched
Fading in newness
Fading in use,
Until finally abandoned
Long-enduring permanent legacy to the land
Though temporally ceased.
Junk Replies
You see my tattered shelves and rusting sides---
Would you love me enough to keep me in fit repair?
Could you love me enough to keep me in my youth?
The proudest tools this nation ever built
We charge fresh hills to bring power and energy
To drive the motors West.
I am rusted and resting,
Kiss my scraping lips.
The melting point of silver flame kissed my aluminum arm
At the hands of rebels who philosophize against technology.
Take a look at my feet (see where they pierced me!)---
Rubber scraped black paws
Spun on jagged roads of coal.
See my family tossed loose!
Taking strength in what remains,
When we were shiny and full of new beer
In plastics of blue and green---
Now our exposed bodies in the rainstorm
Senescent…obsolescent.
You left us to decay in a fractured sanctuary
On the altar of broken idols.
The melted can kneels before the cracked saints
Where little wrens dart to and fro
Singing hymns to subjunctive hypotheticals…
Sculpted into flame fading into soil.
Oh, come again!
Come again!
Jealousy for new things
Slippery cemeteries
Forlorn parks
Decades tossed to the wind.
The immobility of bronze toys, heaping games
And fortunes won and lost.
Nature Beseeches Her Artificial Children
Nature speaks in a hush to these half-consumed fragments:
On the day you arrived I offered my best gift to the Holy House.
You came with proud men
Who abandoned you at my gate.
I will reclaim you
For my appetite know no sate!
I possess an endless hunger for slagheaps
And towers long in decaying.
Evermore you return to my hand, to my dust and soil.
Your days in the sun were magnificent in star-studded regalia!
Glimmering and shiny in colorful pageant
Reflecting your hour upon life’s stage.
What have you lost?
What lies forgotten?
Your style is void for it is hammered into every new thing
To dart to the fore
Perchance to recycle,
Or lie snug in my deciduous breast.
Now the slumber begins.
You are my feast!
Then to the other side,
To break through the veil
Some will pierce, others fly,
Some, invalid, will crawl,
Some, consumed in the fire, will wake
Others, mangled corpses with the crows’ pecks,
Will rise and will return to the elemental dissolution and void,
Stripped bare to the invisible.
You are metaphors,
Pale forms,
Geometric orphans
Whose mother dreams fortified dreams
Of your earthly sojourn I intone,
Of thee I sing!
The fallen white torch ash
Uncoils the hour’s passing;
Green leaves in bud
Or in full fisted waving,
Indicate time of year.
Rusting metals measures decades,
Traces of things thrown down
Whose useful hours upon life’s stage
Were bartered in brief joys
And momentary contacts
Then cast into secure oblivion.
The Poet Speaks
My youthful muse raged in first beauty:
Sweet milk on a dirty morning in late May
Ruddy, green spears pierce
Chocolate fields in a crisscross grid.
The glutted stream, snaking, coiling through the pasture,
Multicolored calves nuzzle one another
While their mother gnaws and tears with broad mouth
At the yellow green grass.
Such newness is all that remains of sacred traces
Invisible to man’s eye.
Sea froth and sea drunk,
The tilting flight of a gull,
Autumn leaves,
First loves,
No stable thing won my heart.
Then came inspiration for the letter---
Human enterprise and woe,
Yearning for justice
And God’s steady Law.
Now I turn to your stranded occupation of pride and futility
Your confession of beauty mingled corruption
Comforts me.
To broken things I turn
And structure fragments to my liking
Walk with me and see great glimmers of things that might have been.
I call forth broken idols and solitary sing your praise.
While a busy world fits ready for battle.
Gathering new and shiny things for merchandise
Plastering slick streets with autos
Shimmering in petroleum parade.
You retire to your original home,
Neither resurrected,
Nor damned for torture,
Insensate,
Long enduring
Exempt from place
Defrocked of style without yearning.
Litter and trash cannot endure as you have endured---
Neither garbage, nor junk…
They are soft currency in time’s market
Whose value will neither sculpt into exhibit form,
Nor resurrect.
Whose paradise is uniform landfill,
Monotony of rubbish,
Flitting ephemera
Who flash and fade on beaches,
In parks, and along highways with the mangled, roadkill corpse.
You are idols of a calm religion
Whose history waits to be written
Whose first hymn I intone.
You are a signal and marker
Of time’s indifferent escape;
Abiding strong outside of use!
Mother Time brings forward the world.
Every bright, shiny thing parades
As wondrous and ruddy as newborn flesh!
To meet the sparkle of parental eyes
Greeting these babes with pride
And when time has squarely brought these things to pass,
Swiftly turns with season to abandon these children outdoors
No matter how well designed.
To even newer things!
Ever and anon to newer things!
A toast to new things!!
Left in the wake
Of ever-renewing nature and her blooming seasons
An aging poet sings a sad song.
The works and the hands of man are caught up in the vortex of elemental dissolution.
He constructs wild dreams
And plans for civilization,
Conjures eternal life
In a plastic cup.
Like Mother Time
He abandons these projects
To linger/
In a second nature/
In a fading twilight.
To come to a standstill,
To resign,
And surrender
To dust’s slow certainty.
To have outlasted your creator
Neither moving, nor decaying,
While nature cycles endlessly
You survive the frivolous onslaughts of decades
Your stillbirth is permanent
Though the hands of your maker have withered.
When you were young, shiny and new
Clamoring to be seen
To be picked up
Taken home/thrown into use
Your faces smeared with incandescent light
Your bulging shelves outstretched and eager
In a bargain parade.
Working, coiling, grinding days
To construct the world that surrounds,
To enrich in labor,
To be tossed aside
Depleting novelty…
Discounted, resold, secondhanded, thrifted, gleaned, shopped.
Use emptied you/emptied you into utility.
Silly magic words escape you
While the world through you was enriched
Fading in newness
Fading in use,
Until finally abandoned
Long-enduring permanent legacy to the land
Though temporally ceased.
Junk Replies
You see my tattered shelves and rusting sides---
Would you love me enough to keep me in fit repair?
Could you love me enough to keep me in my youth?
The proudest tools this nation ever built
We charge fresh hills to bring power and energy
To drive the motors West.
I am rusted and resting,
Kiss my scraping lips.
The melting point of silver flame kissed my aluminum arm
At the hands of rebels who philosophize against technology.
Take a look at my feet (see where they pierced me!)---
Rubber scraped black paws
Spun on jagged roads of coal.
See my family tossed loose!
Taking strength in what remains,
When we were shiny and full of new beer
In plastics of blue and green---
Now our exposed bodies in the rainstorm
Senescent…obsolescent.
You left us to decay in a fractured sanctuary
On the altar of broken idols.
The melted can kneels before the cracked saints
Where little wrens dart to and fro
Singing hymns to subjunctive hypotheticals…
Sculpted into flame fading into soil.
Oh, come again!
Come again!
Jealousy for new things
Slippery cemeteries
Forlorn parks
Decades tossed to the wind.
The immobility of bronze toys, heaping games
And fortunes won and lost.
Nature Beseeches Her Artificial Children
Nature speaks in a hush to these half-consumed fragments:
On the day you arrived I offered my best gift to the Holy House.
You came with proud men
Who abandoned you at my gate.
I will reclaim you
For my appetite know no sate!
I possess an endless hunger for slagheaps
And towers long in decaying.
Evermore you return to my hand, to my dust and soil.
Your days in the sun were magnificent in star-studded regalia!
Glimmering and shiny in colorful pageant
Reflecting your hour upon life’s stage.
What have you lost?
What lies forgotten?
Your style is void for it is hammered into every new thing
To dart to the fore
Perchance to recycle,
Or lie snug in my deciduous breast.
Now the slumber begins.
You are my feast!
Then to the other side,
To break through the veil
Some will pierce, others fly,
Some, invalid, will crawl,
Some, consumed in the fire, will wake
Others, mangled corpses with the crows’ pecks,
Will rise and will return to the elemental dissolution and void,
Stripped bare to the invisible.
You are metaphors,
Pale forms,
Geometric orphans
Whose mother dreams fortified dreams
Of your earthly sojourn I intone,
Of thee I sing!
The fallen white torch ash
Uncoils the hour’s passing;
Green leaves in bud
Or in full fisted waving,
Indicate time of year.
Rusting metals measures decades,
Traces of things thrown down
Whose useful hours upon life’s stage
Were bartered in brief joys
And momentary contacts
Then cast into secure oblivion.
The Poet Speaks
My youthful muse raged in first beauty:
Sweet milk on a dirty morning in late May
Ruddy, green spears pierce
Chocolate fields in a crisscross grid.
The glutted stream, snaking, coiling through the pasture,
Multicolored calves nuzzle one another
While their mother gnaws and tears with broad mouth
At the yellow green grass.
Such newness is all that remains of sacred traces
Invisible to man’s eye.
Sea froth and sea drunk,
The tilting flight of a gull,
Autumn leaves,
First loves,
No stable thing won my heart.
Then came inspiration for the letter---
Human enterprise and woe,
Yearning for justice
And God’s steady Law.
Now I turn to your stranded occupation of pride and futility
Your confession of beauty mingled corruption
Comforts me.
To broken things I turn
And structure fragments to my liking
Walk with me and see great glimmers of things that might have been.
I call forth broken idols and solitary sing your praise.
While a busy world fits ready for battle.
Gathering new and shiny things for merchandise
Plastering slick streets with autos
Shimmering in petroleum parade.
You retire to your original home,
Neither resurrected,
Nor damned for torture,
Insensate,
Long enduring
Exempt from place
Defrocked of style without yearning.
Litter and trash cannot endure as you have endured---
Neither garbage, nor junk…
They are soft currency in time’s market
Whose value will neither sculpt into exhibit form,
Nor resurrect.
Whose paradise is uniform landfill,
Monotony of rubbish,
Flitting ephemera
Who flash and fade on beaches,
In parks, and along highways with the mangled, roadkill corpse.
You are idols of a calm religion
Whose history waits to be written
Whose first hymn I intone.
You are a signal and marker
Of time’s indifferent escape;
Abiding strong outside of use!
Mother Time brings forward the world.
Every bright, shiny thing parades
As wondrous and ruddy as newborn flesh!
To meet the sparkle of parental eyes
Greeting these babes with pride
And when time has squarely brought these things to pass,
Swiftly turns with season to abandon these children outdoors
No matter how well designed.
To even newer things!
Ever and anon to newer things!
A toast to new things!!
Left in the wake
Of ever-renewing nature and her blooming seasons
An aging poet sings a sad song.
The works and the hands of man are caught up in the vortex of elemental dissolution.
He constructs wild dreams
And plans for civilization,
Conjures eternal life
In a plastic cup.
Like Mother Time
He abandons these projects
To linger/
In a second nature/
In a fading twilight.
To come to a standstill,
To resign,
And surrender
To dust’s slow certainty.
To have outlasted your creator
Neither moving, nor decaying,
While nature cycles endlessly
You survive the frivolous onslaughts of decades
Your stillbirth is permanent
Though the hands of your maker have withered.
Terrestrial Cows
Man, thy walk, is but a little flight and
Change of scene
You find yourself in the same water again and again.
From surf to surf
Escaping the dusty confines of earth.
None flies so free as the wheeling gull.
Search the flattened horizon,
None can quit its spinning.
Therefore content yourself in pasttimes befitting
little children
And still derive great satisfaction in this play.
Were you to escape this terrestrial pull
Where would you alight?
Nothing on the moon is meat for your imagination.
Sleep, a brief forgetting
Of dusk and dawn
Yet the same day rolls on
While you pretend that all is new.
Blue sky
this thin envelope
gravity cannot defy
in all its width and height---
gives distant dreams
to your waking sight.
To drink the day from a crystal vial;
to forge the way through a forest wild;
to sing with the voice of a little child!
To admire the black cow in the searing sun
When Winterland is white;
Save for the tawny, dry grasses
Which he must cheerfully chew upon---
To reckon the world in his eyes,
To see beauty at the source.
Standing awake you are yet a dreamer
Though your purse is full,
Hammered in delicate coin,
None of your riches can buy back one word
of this terrestrial testament.
Change of scene
You find yourself in the same water again and again.
From surf to surf
Escaping the dusty confines of earth.
None flies so free as the wheeling gull.
Search the flattened horizon,
None can quit its spinning.
Therefore content yourself in pasttimes befitting
little children
And still derive great satisfaction in this play.
Were you to escape this terrestrial pull
Where would you alight?
Nothing on the moon is meat for your imagination.
Sleep, a brief forgetting
Of dusk and dawn
Yet the same day rolls on
While you pretend that all is new.
Blue sky
this thin envelope
gravity cannot defy
in all its width and height---
gives distant dreams
to your waking sight.
To drink the day from a crystal vial;
to forge the way through a forest wild;
to sing with the voice of a little child!
To admire the black cow in the searing sun
When Winterland is white;
Save for the tawny, dry grasses
Which he must cheerfully chew upon---
To reckon the world in his eyes,
To see beauty at the source.
Standing awake you are yet a dreamer
Though your purse is full,
Hammered in delicate coin,
None of your riches can buy back one word
of this terrestrial testament.
Summa Poesia
I.Pagan Fete
Having traversed many miles
Of flowery fields who shout
their yellow songs to the open sky
I came to the foothills of the Black Mountains
And into the village of the chapel of St. Roche
Fires light up the valley
on the feast of St. John
chanting triolas
spinning and dancing around a second sun
pagan revelry---cooperative wine
and the peasants handing out saucisse sandwiches.
Kim, my beloved Poile dur Terrier,
I confess that I love that her more than any creature on earth.
on and on the highest,
hills with wild horses running free
I lay down in the blowing tall sparkling grass
with 7 winds howling in my ear
I chanted praises to all created things:
The blue velvet sky, the pale brown stone, the melody ringing in my heart:
Crystal mountain
endless vista of the pyrenees
creeping purple flowers and bumblebees...
Journey of my soul to the highest hill in
the youth of my youth.
No St. Thomas in those days, but memories
of Heidegger and lyrics of
Led Zeppelin rising in my heart:
“There’s a feeling I get
when I look to the West
And my sprit is crying for leaving…”
I conceived myself in possession of a
rare inevitable mystery- even shamed,
to take to the rivulets and streams
to convene with my inner spring.
Damp hidden things:
wet rocks, mushrooms and shepherd’s huts.
The tricele talisman
Symbol of all powers and interface between these worlds
It was mine and mine alone.
To build my religion around
these sacred mysteries- not reveal my
hidden “priesthood” to anyone else
Not even Chantal, who encouraged me to go to the dolmen beyond
the village
to marry at midnight under the full moon.
Always the idea of dances
The rhythms of threes---triola.
End of ends, all things end in farther fields,
And visions all end in the incommunicable vision.
The end of all actions and human
affections is the love of God, that is
why these is no measure regulating
that love; it is itself the measure
and measures everything else,
and can never be too great.
St Thomas Aquinas, ST., II-II, 27, 6
Corp. and ad.3
And so I traversed many miles, amidst the yellows
songs of flowing fields around Arles came to the foothills of
the dark mountains into the chapel of Saint Roche.
What do Saints Peter and Paul mean by “living stone”?
Teilhard de Chardin has written:
We may say that the dominant concern
of priests in the first centuries
of the Church was to determine the
position of Christ in relation to the Trinity.
In our time the vital question has become the following:
To analyze and specify exactly,
In its relations, the existence of
The influence that holds together Christ
And the Universe. (Christology or Evolution)
But, I say that the concern for the Trinity
Remains of the heart of the Church:
As it was in the Beginning,
Is now and ever shall be. Amen.
The villages from the mountains gathered for the feast of St. Jean. The pagan revelry of the purple blood, wine from the cave cooperatif-peasants on wagons handing out saucisse sandwiches, and Kim, the poile dur terrier
whom I confess to loving more than any other creature on this earth.
Chanting, dancing around our second sun,
Q: Can the fire replace the celestial sun?
No, but in it stands in its place proximally in the dark of night.
This reveals the meaning of idolatry.
Idols are proximal divinities, which
Surrounding upon continued investigation, 1000 faces
Of God, the angelic doctor describes
The use of analogy to describe God.
On the highest hills wild horses run like water, where I lay down in tall grass with the winds howling in my ear and chanting praises to all the creatures: the blue sky, the pale stone, the purple flower and the melody rising in my heart:
Open, crystal wonder
Endless vistas of the Pyrenees
Creeping purple flowers,
Majestic bumblebees….
Q: Is the revealed all there ever is or will be?
Yes. Without a doubt perception is everything.
Or nothing is held back..
Does this entail history?
No, everything all at once everywhere is flashing and standing there. This does not contradict creatio ex nihilo but rather substantiates it. To create from nothing is a mystery--–naming this mystery does not undo its essential mystery.
It is not the source!
It is contrary to our human nature and
Knowledge for something to be born
Before the eternal ages, yet in these matters
We believe God’s testimony about Himself.
St. Hilary of Poitiers, The Trinity P. 520
Concerning man’s relation to God, St. Thomas Aquinas writes:
Man is directed to God, as to an end that surpasses
The grasp of his reason: the eye hath not seen, o God
Besides Thee, what things thou hast prepared for them
That wait for Thee.(Isu IXVI, 4) ST.I, 1
I answer, that from the view point of perception which is all that we can speak of in equivocal languages the world is the totality of all that ever was or will be, at the same time alongside the real things there is a super added sense which cannot be accounted for in any rational sense, or even spoken of, since by definition it is that moment or glimpse is found in eternity.
II. Heresy
Touches of my soul to the highest will in the youth of my youth. Many the day I prayed alone in the cool chapel in La Liviniere, the red candle smoothly flickering before the tabernacle and all else gray stone. Memories of poetry on the high hills, of the forests springs and meadows. But I would not receive eucharist on account of my private, ecstatic religion.
Q: Does being a poet in fact render one outside
Communion with the Church?
Yes, poetry relies upon a direct comprehension
Of reality whereas theology relies upon the mediation
Of the Church. Hence the poet when he accounts for his encounter with truth not relying upon any authority save for experience will stand forth heretic. Further, a poet understands that all is bathed in one time, and will not separate the truth of the oak from the squirrel, hence he or she is Pantheist.
On the contrary, poets are like the disciples on the mount of Transfiguration, who were forbidden to bear witness to their vision until Jesus ascended into heaven.
Reply 1: It is not necessary that a direct encounter with reality render one heretic, reality in either cas understood poetically or theologically, is only grasped thanks to faith and revelation. And the ultimate source of both escape mental grasp.
Reply 2: The squirrel is a squirrel even for the non-poet. But the poet’s unique latent is to find the squirrel the full density of its being, its maximal truth as squirrel. Prof. Jan Van Veken said that the truly miraculous events are the every day; hence, it is the poet who is in a closer encounter with God’s Creatio ex nihilo than the scribe or the priest.
III.Lyricism
No St. Thomas in those days but memories of Heidegger lingering and lyrics from Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven:
“There’s a feeling I get when I look to the west and my spirit is crying for leaving…”
Why do lyrics hold sway to such a great extent over my mind?
A study of certain lyricism indicates an angelic contribution. However, we know that there are good and bad angels. All angels tower intellectually over mere human or human contrived intellect. Hence, angelic contributions expand the lyricist’s intellect. Here the singer points us to the end of the day when the spirit is melancholy and wants to leave the body.
I conceived myself in possession of a hidden treasure-rare, ineffable mystery. Shamed by this inner vision I took to rivulet and streams I loved damp hidden things like mushrooms and shepherds’ huts to convene with my own inner Spring. At a county fair in Carnac, Bretagne I had found a talisman which harnessed all of these powers---it was precious to me, mine and mine alone.
Q: What is the history of this Symbol?
It is an ancient, pagan symbol which is universally found. It is also called a wheel of fire. The Christian fathers adopted it as a symbol of the trinity thus guaranteeing its longevity in wood-carved pews and in stained glass windows.
Cirlot's Dictionary of Symbols: the number three and its significance. Zero is very mysterious since a circle stands for “nothing” yet is one.
"Nothing cannot be conceived."
Parmenides
Hence, all is one. Number one represents the complete totality of all objects.
Plotinus
Or one specific member of a class.
Two is the number of division, and otherness – recognition that all is not the same. The possibility of sex---male, female; night and day.
Three is the first possibility of restoring unity after the break involved in the one into Two. Three can always function to gather opposites into a higher unity, cf. Hegel's dialectic.
Is the trinity merely a dialectic synthesis upon the highest level?
I possessed my celtic talisman, more ancient than the church like a toddler with his shaker, I carried it everywhere, and in none of my sketches was it absent. I would build a religion around it, a private religion, because I could not bear to share these “sacred mysteries” nor reveal my “priesthood” to just any one.
This is the very core of pagan and shaman religious religious practices, they are private…
Even my lover who encouraged me in these ways more than anyone else, was beyond the reach of these mysteries.
On midnight visits to the Dolmen beyond the village I envisioned dances in patterns of three in the full light of the ancient moon. I had sworn all of my academic studies so far away-–-I wanted to burn my class lectures from The Higher Institute of Philosophy.
Is it possible to integrate such soul experiences into everyday life?
Art is a rapture of the unconscious,
and were it not for the effect of sublimation,
would result in psychosis. The breakthrough of
the unconscious is a pure,
elemental force for which society is exclusively
built to resist and repress.
Yes, such experience can be integrated. The artist
can produce a living selling pieces of artwork
which the market deems worthy to buy.
On the other hand, if the market determines what the artist
produces--–or if he produces what can sell, the artist will
sacrifice the totality of his or her sacrifice to art.
I understand that at the time of the eruption of the unconscious
there is no way to integrate such prophetic experience
into any other mold. However, years later as the fires have
cooled it is possible to detect a stable pattern in all of the flux.
Reply: Such art as emerges from radical encounters may
indeed be marketable, but that is not the reason for its production.
Its production is necessary as it is the only possible link or bridge
Of humanity and the Source.
Is artwork done for humanity or for the artist’s sake?
Neither. It is not for the artists sake for the reason stated above.
It is not for humanity’s sake because it is in no way gratuitous-
it is a necessary act. Neither for the artist, nor for humanity,
Art satisfies humanity by satisfying the deepest need in the artist.
I had sworn off my American identity when I flew to France on a one way air ticket. I had saved my money from teaching at a junior college and talked about a trip to France, but failed to return. The dream of realizing my inner artist would cost everything--–house, family, money-–-and was more valuable than any sacrifice I could make.
The total demand…
Jesus’ pierced hand
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
I moved toward “the artist” as the ideal projection of my soul–--it was my proximal divinity.
Is the ego, in fact, an idol?
Yes, said Decartes.
Yet ego is the ideal of Modernism. To worship the ego is Post-Modern.
The achievement of my task, however,called for the destruction of my incarnate, material identity---hence my obsession with fire.
Husserl’s Ideas
Veil after veil, artifact God can be sought for in ways that are only approximative – things and relations can be taken as God-–-this is idolatry.
1. How can we know that we have finally found the bedrock truth?
2. Isn’t every philosophical system idolatrous?
3. The analogy method of describing truth.
Such acts of mind and devotion are idolatrous but do not appear as such to the idolater. There is a nearly complete fusion-–-when art is all consuming,
as we see in Kerouac.
My specific task was to convey my vision of self, nature and God through poetry.
Can poetry succeed at this task?
Is this in any way truth?
God is completely implied or fulfilled in my vision---so any description of God remains abstract. To speak of God would subtract from the truth of the experience, all speech is drunk with ecstasy. It is like taking a glass of water from a spring and carrying it away from the source.
How can God be fulfilled in my vision?
Are all attempts at description necessarily negative?
This was an exalted time. I freely exchange sacred language for my daily journeys onto the high hills: “standing on the threshold all lit up with a sense of everlasting life (Van Morrison)."
IV.Art and truth
Can there be a Christian art today?
Thin gray sky
turns the wheat fields over
reflected light
reaches up
to touch the source again:
wild red flowers sing at the roadside…
Each field and every vision is a temporary dwelling of the Lord of all Creation and what starts as a passing glance is taken up first in twelve thousand veils one after the other reveal yet one more veil and God is grasped for, but never consumed.
Having traversed many miles
Of flowery fields who shout
their yellow songs to the open sky
I came to the foothills of the Black Mountains
And into the village of the chapel of St. Roche
Fires light up the valley
on the feast of St. John
chanting triolas
spinning and dancing around a second sun
pagan revelry---cooperative wine
and the peasants handing out saucisse sandwiches.
Kim, my beloved Poile dur Terrier,
I confess that I love that her more than any creature on earth.
on and on the highest,
hills with wild horses running free
I lay down in the blowing tall sparkling grass
with 7 winds howling in my ear
I chanted praises to all created things:
The blue velvet sky, the pale brown stone, the melody ringing in my heart:
Crystal mountain
endless vista of the pyrenees
creeping purple flowers and bumblebees...
Journey of my soul to the highest hill in
the youth of my youth.
No St. Thomas in those days, but memories
of Heidegger and lyrics of
Led Zeppelin rising in my heart:
“There’s a feeling I get
when I look to the West
And my sprit is crying for leaving…”
I conceived myself in possession of a
rare inevitable mystery- even shamed,
to take to the rivulets and streams
to convene with my inner spring.
Damp hidden things:
wet rocks, mushrooms and shepherd’s huts.
The tricele talisman
Symbol of all powers and interface between these worlds
It was mine and mine alone.
To build my religion around
these sacred mysteries- not reveal my
hidden “priesthood” to anyone else
Not even Chantal, who encouraged me to go to the dolmen beyond
the village
to marry at midnight under the full moon.
Always the idea of dances
The rhythms of threes---triola.
End of ends, all things end in farther fields,
And visions all end in the incommunicable vision.
The end of all actions and human
affections is the love of God, that is
why these is no measure regulating
that love; it is itself the measure
and measures everything else,
and can never be too great.
St Thomas Aquinas, ST., II-II, 27, 6
Corp. and ad.3
And so I traversed many miles, amidst the yellows
songs of flowing fields around Arles came to the foothills of
the dark mountains into the chapel of Saint Roche.
What do Saints Peter and Paul mean by “living stone”?
Teilhard de Chardin has written:
We may say that the dominant concern
of priests in the first centuries
of the Church was to determine the
position of Christ in relation to the Trinity.
In our time the vital question has become the following:
To analyze and specify exactly,
In its relations, the existence of
The influence that holds together Christ
And the Universe. (Christology or Evolution)
But, I say that the concern for the Trinity
Remains of the heart of the Church:
As it was in the Beginning,
Is now and ever shall be. Amen.
The villages from the mountains gathered for the feast of St. Jean. The pagan revelry of the purple blood, wine from the cave cooperatif-peasants on wagons handing out saucisse sandwiches, and Kim, the poile dur terrier
whom I confess to loving more than any other creature on this earth.
Chanting, dancing around our second sun,
Q: Can the fire replace the celestial sun?
No, but in it stands in its place proximally in the dark of night.
This reveals the meaning of idolatry.
Idols are proximal divinities, which
Surrounding upon continued investigation, 1000 faces
Of God, the angelic doctor describes
The use of analogy to describe God.
On the highest hills wild horses run like water, where I lay down in tall grass with the winds howling in my ear and chanting praises to all the creatures: the blue sky, the pale stone, the purple flower and the melody rising in my heart:
Open, crystal wonder
Endless vistas of the Pyrenees
Creeping purple flowers,
Majestic bumblebees….
Q: Is the revealed all there ever is or will be?
Yes. Without a doubt perception is everything.
Or nothing is held back..
Does this entail history?
No, everything all at once everywhere is flashing and standing there. This does not contradict creatio ex nihilo but rather substantiates it. To create from nothing is a mystery--–naming this mystery does not undo its essential mystery.
It is not the source!
It is contrary to our human nature and
Knowledge for something to be born
Before the eternal ages, yet in these matters
We believe God’s testimony about Himself.
St. Hilary of Poitiers, The Trinity P. 520
Concerning man’s relation to God, St. Thomas Aquinas writes:
Man is directed to God, as to an end that surpasses
The grasp of his reason: the eye hath not seen, o God
Besides Thee, what things thou hast prepared for them
That wait for Thee.(Isu IXVI, 4) ST.I, 1
I answer, that from the view point of perception which is all that we can speak of in equivocal languages the world is the totality of all that ever was or will be, at the same time alongside the real things there is a super added sense which cannot be accounted for in any rational sense, or even spoken of, since by definition it is that moment or glimpse is found in eternity.
II. Heresy
Touches of my soul to the highest will in the youth of my youth. Many the day I prayed alone in the cool chapel in La Liviniere, the red candle smoothly flickering before the tabernacle and all else gray stone. Memories of poetry on the high hills, of the forests springs and meadows. But I would not receive eucharist on account of my private, ecstatic religion.
Q: Does being a poet in fact render one outside
Communion with the Church?
Yes, poetry relies upon a direct comprehension
Of reality whereas theology relies upon the mediation
Of the Church. Hence the poet when he accounts for his encounter with truth not relying upon any authority save for experience will stand forth heretic. Further, a poet understands that all is bathed in one time, and will not separate the truth of the oak from the squirrel, hence he or she is Pantheist.
On the contrary, poets are like the disciples on the mount of Transfiguration, who were forbidden to bear witness to their vision until Jesus ascended into heaven.
Reply 1: It is not necessary that a direct encounter with reality render one heretic, reality in either cas understood poetically or theologically, is only grasped thanks to faith and revelation. And the ultimate source of both escape mental grasp.
Reply 2: The squirrel is a squirrel even for the non-poet. But the poet’s unique latent is to find the squirrel the full density of its being, its maximal truth as squirrel. Prof. Jan Van Veken said that the truly miraculous events are the every day; hence, it is the poet who is in a closer encounter with God’s Creatio ex nihilo than the scribe or the priest.
III.Lyricism
No St. Thomas in those days but memories of Heidegger lingering and lyrics from Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven:
“There’s a feeling I get when I look to the west and my spirit is crying for leaving…”
Why do lyrics hold sway to such a great extent over my mind?
A study of certain lyricism indicates an angelic contribution. However, we know that there are good and bad angels. All angels tower intellectually over mere human or human contrived intellect. Hence, angelic contributions expand the lyricist’s intellect. Here the singer points us to the end of the day when the spirit is melancholy and wants to leave the body.
I conceived myself in possession of a hidden treasure-rare, ineffable mystery. Shamed by this inner vision I took to rivulet and streams I loved damp hidden things like mushrooms and shepherds’ huts to convene with my own inner Spring. At a county fair in Carnac, Bretagne I had found a talisman which harnessed all of these powers---it was precious to me, mine and mine alone.
Q: What is the history of this Symbol?
It is an ancient, pagan symbol which is universally found. It is also called a wheel of fire. The Christian fathers adopted it as a symbol of the trinity thus guaranteeing its longevity in wood-carved pews and in stained glass windows.
Cirlot's Dictionary of Symbols: the number three and its significance. Zero is very mysterious since a circle stands for “nothing” yet is one.
"Nothing cannot be conceived."
Parmenides
Hence, all is one. Number one represents the complete totality of all objects.
Plotinus
Or one specific member of a class.
Two is the number of division, and otherness – recognition that all is not the same. The possibility of sex---male, female; night and day.
Three is the first possibility of restoring unity after the break involved in the one into Two. Three can always function to gather opposites into a higher unity, cf. Hegel's dialectic.
Is the trinity merely a dialectic synthesis upon the highest level?
I possessed my celtic talisman, more ancient than the church like a toddler with his shaker, I carried it everywhere, and in none of my sketches was it absent. I would build a religion around it, a private religion, because I could not bear to share these “sacred mysteries” nor reveal my “priesthood” to just any one.
This is the very core of pagan and shaman religious religious practices, they are private…
Even my lover who encouraged me in these ways more than anyone else, was beyond the reach of these mysteries.
On midnight visits to the Dolmen beyond the village I envisioned dances in patterns of three in the full light of the ancient moon. I had sworn all of my academic studies so far away-–-I wanted to burn my class lectures from The Higher Institute of Philosophy.
Is it possible to integrate such soul experiences into everyday life?
Art is a rapture of the unconscious,
and were it not for the effect of sublimation,
would result in psychosis. The breakthrough of
the unconscious is a pure,
elemental force for which society is exclusively
built to resist and repress.
Yes, such experience can be integrated. The artist
can produce a living selling pieces of artwork
which the market deems worthy to buy.
On the other hand, if the market determines what the artist
produces--–or if he produces what can sell, the artist will
sacrifice the totality of his or her sacrifice to art.
I understand that at the time of the eruption of the unconscious
there is no way to integrate such prophetic experience
into any other mold. However, years later as the fires have
cooled it is possible to detect a stable pattern in all of the flux.
Reply: Such art as emerges from radical encounters may
indeed be marketable, but that is not the reason for its production.
Its production is necessary as it is the only possible link or bridge
Of humanity and the Source.
Is artwork done for humanity or for the artist’s sake?
Neither. It is not for the artists sake for the reason stated above.
It is not for humanity’s sake because it is in no way gratuitous-
it is a necessary act. Neither for the artist, nor for humanity,
Art satisfies humanity by satisfying the deepest need in the artist.
I had sworn off my American identity when I flew to France on a one way air ticket. I had saved my money from teaching at a junior college and talked about a trip to France, but failed to return. The dream of realizing my inner artist would cost everything--–house, family, money-–-and was more valuable than any sacrifice I could make.
The total demand…
Jesus’ pierced hand
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
I moved toward “the artist” as the ideal projection of my soul–--it was my proximal divinity.
Is the ego, in fact, an idol?
Yes, said Decartes.
Yet ego is the ideal of Modernism. To worship the ego is Post-Modern.
The achievement of my task, however,called for the destruction of my incarnate, material identity---hence my obsession with fire.
Husserl’s Ideas
Veil after veil, artifact God can be sought for in ways that are only approximative – things and relations can be taken as God-–-this is idolatry.
1. How can we know that we have finally found the bedrock truth?
2. Isn’t every philosophical system idolatrous?
3. The analogy method of describing truth.
Such acts of mind and devotion are idolatrous but do not appear as such to the idolater. There is a nearly complete fusion-–-when art is all consuming,
as we see in Kerouac.
My specific task was to convey my vision of self, nature and God through poetry.
Can poetry succeed at this task?
Is this in any way truth?
God is completely implied or fulfilled in my vision---so any description of God remains abstract. To speak of God would subtract from the truth of the experience, all speech is drunk with ecstasy. It is like taking a glass of water from a spring and carrying it away from the source.
How can God be fulfilled in my vision?
Are all attempts at description necessarily negative?
This was an exalted time. I freely exchange sacred language for my daily journeys onto the high hills: “standing on the threshold all lit up with a sense of everlasting life (Van Morrison)."
IV.Art and truth
Can there be a Christian art today?
Thin gray sky
turns the wheat fields over
reflected light
reaches up
to touch the source again:
wild red flowers sing at the roadside…
Each field and every vision is a temporary dwelling of the Lord of all Creation and what starts as a passing glance is taken up first in twelve thousand veils one after the other reveal yet one more veil and God is grasped for, but never consumed.
My Dwelling by the Sea
I came to live by the sea;
by strange force
(her logic broke me like waves;
constantly).
Days in the misty surf---
bright figures
in a mirage.
Like a deaf man I could hear
no other song
'cept for the roaring hiss and clatter.
Like a newborn to echo simple words she muttered.
I crawled into her circle dance
until I gasped for breath;
and submitted to her for a season.
Over and over she rolled me
in her aquafingers:
clutch and counter-clutch,
the rolling logic
of her ever-crashing surf.
Lure and luring,
my dwelling by the sea;
a fire in the night,
strange beasts prowl in the distance!
She calls me outward
with the voice of 1000 mothers
and leaves me stranded
in the tidal embrace
of the lunar wasteland.
Pale evening.
And rosy questions
about the impending navy-blue gloom.
Ruddy infants
tossed fromt heir mothers’ breasts
to the turtle-scraping retreat
from the hungry, bubbly surf.
The rattle and roll of her logic.
and the ever-crashing seasnap
called me home
to my dwelling by the sea.
Fathers dwell
in the deep forest green beyond
the shower of her salty mist;
their chariots
have all been abandoned
and their shoestraps rusted-over.
Their enterprises are dust
in the childrens’ eyes
like morning crumbs:
fine, useless distractions.
Cities are beyond reach,
highways collapse.
She sends a tremor
down the coastal spine,
the earth quakes,
and she is death.
I came to dwell with her but for a season;
and so I came to live by the sea
by strange force,
She sends my days down the surf
like an echo in a conch
down to this day.
by strange force
(her logic broke me like waves;
constantly).
Days in the misty surf---
bright figures
in a mirage.
Like a deaf man I could hear
no other song
'cept for the roaring hiss and clatter.
Like a newborn to echo simple words she muttered.
I crawled into her circle dance
until I gasped for breath;
and submitted to her for a season.
Over and over she rolled me
in her aquafingers:
clutch and counter-clutch,
the rolling logic
of her ever-crashing surf.
Lure and luring,
my dwelling by the sea;
a fire in the night,
strange beasts prowl in the distance!
She calls me outward
with the voice of 1000 mothers
and leaves me stranded
in the tidal embrace
of the lunar wasteland.
Pale evening.
And rosy questions
about the impending navy-blue gloom.
Ruddy infants
tossed fromt heir mothers’ breasts
to the turtle-scraping retreat
from the hungry, bubbly surf.
The rattle and roll of her logic.
and the ever-crashing seasnap
called me home
to my dwelling by the sea.
Fathers dwell
in the deep forest green beyond
the shower of her salty mist;
their chariots
have all been abandoned
and their shoestraps rusted-over.
Their enterprises are dust
in the childrens’ eyes
like morning crumbs:
fine, useless distractions.
Cities are beyond reach,
highways collapse.
She sends a tremor
down the coastal spine,
the earth quakes,
and she is death.
I came to dwell with her but for a season;
and so I came to live by the sea
by strange force,
She sends my days down the surf
like an echo in a conch
down to this day.
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