8.08.2015

Afterword

We're starting to close up shop on Fisher Street, here in Providence.  Soon will be moving back to my hometown, Minneapolis.  I'm glad I was able to finish this Stubborn memoir before leaving, & walk around some of the old haunts.  I will miss my little vast Ocean State.

Unlike most blogs, this one does not enlarge indefinitely.  It's all of a piece, out there floating in the dig-a-cloud.  But it's a head trip (a Shakespeare's Head trip).  Much to investigate.  So if you enjoy, please let people know.  I'm not connected to any poetry conglomerate, whether departmental or commercial.  So word of mouth helps - that's all, folks!

Thank you, friends - & adios for now -

Henry (& "Henry")

Near Seekonk River (Providence)

Finnegans Good Friday

The final chapter of Stubborn Grew was written on Good Friday, Kerouac-style, in one non-stop flood of composition.  Here the entire poem is recapitulated through a Joycean Finnegans Wake contraption filter.  It is as though the epic stubborn implosion collapses on itself and raves-unravels out of control.  But if read carefully, you'll find a replay, chapter-by-chapter, of what came before.  Henry is closing down & flowing out.  It's Good Friday; his Lenten shriving and confession (which the poem became) is caterwauled in one last blow-out.

Yet Bluejay infiltrates even here.  He cautions patience; encourages Henry to wait.  & finally, near the end, a dove, or the Dove, appears.  A vision of the dove or Holy Spirit on Good Friday is one of the motifs in the old medieval Grail stories.  For Henry it is a sign of possible forgiveness & renewal.

The whole tone of the passage lightens.  Suddenly we are on pilgrimage with "Actemydovie" (Anna Akhmatova) on her way to receive a medal and honorary degree at Oxford.  Henry has recovered a certain peace of mind not felt in the poem since the Ancient Light chapter, on his own train ride to Oxford.   Then suddenly the voice of his father breaks in  (J.D. Gould - whose birthday was coming on April 12th, Easter that year).  Gone are the Joycean hijinks.  The voice is clear & penetrating.  On Good Friday "son & father" are reconciled - father offers son "your crown" - a distinct contrast to Shakespeare's famous scene in Henry IV, when Prince Hal temporarily swipes his father's crown.

I suppose Stubborn's final mild finish laid the psychic groundwork for the possibility of a sequel.  In The Grassblade Light - the massive new poem which overshadowed Henry only after Stubborn was written - his epic search for long-lost Juliet/Eurydice begins again, in a new key.

Just around moodnight (calling all cowhands) an H 
was in the coffinshop still – while winked blurred lights 
bleaped above wooftaps, and springy branches blencht 
their chaotwigs.  Ernesteamer, schooning his hatch,

recaptain, he thought, a green, a very green nightcap; 
tailoring owl the word coming about hard alley, 
refracting his five fave purrfurrances, his grainest whey. 
A tin pine oily tootpick twiddled there in a pool of catnap

on the wordy countintap; H dribbled his digits, plied 
his three fiery seas, lit overplays over blightships amid 
trashbutts, pied his litter and soilables, mitted
his clay, bee, sea, dee ineffadumb GH – his curious

Q-ride, round, about how moony angles arrest on a pun? 
In pushpin land?  Pusscan you tell me?  He'd wandered 
to, and frowned himself overt and under dirtpandered 
nougats of purr charcoal.  Finly and fitly he begun

to begun his edgies, ukelelizing his complexiglass set
of the burptitanic, and accenting a liberal shipdog terrier-
ful of inframmastory inflingratiating hysteroderrier 
taxbooks on oh neverest before everest subject

preserve my speech, yehnuntul, he would crow,
a raven yellin blackbird, and protect the flowers
he inquestered everbody, gam on everwheres; 
meaningwhile to relight his most epicturesco frisco

fresco chessmight with a stare and a why and a no. 
If po Pound can wee anchor at 1600 fleets then
H ken two, he uddereth, milking his dray hen; 
take off that dump steer bullhorner, Jack, and go!

Well it wall began, he huhouuyynmphhed – it began –
are yall rhodey for this exclamornation? – it all
began with our W.  Deep springs the steep, and tall
falls small, so the lil rig-V'd rocket wwwwrrrrhhed. . . ran!

Oh my did the kids collect their stubs an head for there! 
Refugerators, specterspanulators,adopterators, even
some taters!  Canonicus an co. plowed eleven-steven 
buck for shot an fish for fool an a fair fare is square,

but they went under the impressurfdom of beastonian 
stiffrottenness almound furnever, knaves –
it were a yurt caddie that still saves
gulf bowls and weary ware sharded long ago, abodian

freefar SW where Cautantowwit preserve my speech 
rains over the deserveret and the undeserted and 
whippoorwills protect the flowers, understand –
Bluejay was theirs.  But we can steal tray to reach

that wet sound over the pure pile a pinetree scraps 
an violent bows that ever purrcollate an rockabye 
by the rectorious and the unmarzipanious.  Try! 
It'll opinion up hour by hour hysteria, perhaps!

H coffed a lil fleming and belgian some gastronomy now. 
Here's Mars, he lectchurned on.  The wars was unwise 
because why's the reason, fellas?  Shoe-size?
Make the gal squeeze an cries?  Ho-ho, and how!

How?  Rifle through the drayhorse for some key rationale, 
and starve the shlep over the rockets until you fries! 
That's warcome!  Your very warcome, guys!
Quaker node in nudepart walkin through beans – hell,

they fileted Em fur that!  So she up an refuged to list 
another minute clam to that pilasterful of plastered saints! 
That's what the narrow rhody for – imaginary isle it ain't –
see why ol Rog jet to capitalize anglandin – communist?

No, jest a plainpreachin manx talkin to the native tongs,
the ironic ore knot in ever won a gist all odysseus, come again? 
No, jest a covertent – hope his anchor, an his cankersore – H 
read about it an clucked it away for safecheepin, songs.

H ruffied through his fetters and nipt his nuts and reedy
on an onion and spilletted his banes and trapezoided and 
super-avoided and divertissued his connected litter and 
dandruffed his fighters and continuitortured with algospeedy

endrivers to corrote and borate and orbit and smelt 
ornate while he fluctured his studs and gelted his 
girlguides and ethered him herdaches and pelted his 
merderakes and garted the gumpreposterous sweltered

ump of it all. . . whew!  He just kept right on raiding 
dismal ubertoothguardit discaldeliberations in the libel, 
airy as a filed ossifer and smelly as a skunted shell 
from Hairsnook Buch.  And haddock netted yet evening

to the door yet, the newt!  History.  Some clambake! 
Dorr was, Dorr will be, Dorr.  Napping his pole still eons 
from his statutes bronze, the near-hero! Suppons
he'd dadn't done wuddie done?  We'd still be snake

tied to an old wrastle of stewed county baroons, unliable 
to snort, much less vote, less we hone some cheese 
under the Man's shins!  But please,
the Dorr's been open for yours, mine, and the police – able

he was ere he saw crawdaddy an the brothas upon Elbow 
Street an feared his wet canon might nought his own 
royal tiffs!  Don't follow me – I'll fellow you, stan?
And H hasn't even luxuriacted about POE yet!  Wo!

Men!  They are his story!  They get under your skin 
and then they hi!  Tool it?  Until you just about bend 
into a wrecked oar set and send Polly and Billy to mend 
with grammar in the shoals of fart knox – you can win!

But as H was saying. . . back to back to back Dorrstory.
It stinks.  While the irate steamocrats' not-so-meekantics 
scarrifoured the plutonic wretch farmodirts and smurtchics, 
they also burned the ex off the enclave for Roger's hoary

liberty by exclusieving out the black side o' the track–
you say you know about that?  H depurred, prefurred to dot 
you did.  Spot on.  Your.shit now, sureman – the hot's
on hottentot!  All your gimcrackerburly minstrollhack

blacktalk, H–to high heaven . I mean it smells, bro. 
You and Poe on the popo fo yo poetrick poorposes. . .
J knows your gonna regreet it when you burn, sez 
Yoi.  She otter know.  Don't renumber now, do you?

Standish up there pontificating pond for moor 
and meadow for three back sides. . . oh brother! 
How can you kick the can you be, silly seizure 
salad?  Are you going to tell me you're our Homer,

running things from the bookbund infelt?
Police.  I would rather sell fish to a shark nursery 
than listen to any more of your pet pussery 
passay the primo beef cult

baloney, Henry.  And that's fine.  Preserve my speech
That's all.  And protect the flowers.  Hear?
Old men oughta be explovers of the near – not 
dearly bloaded emprodroolers.  So long now, Teach.

Lighting suddenly riddled the seedy effigy H called 
home, his ground coffinsofafroom eggfriedatedeal. 
Preserve my speech.  What he mean – Nahuatl? 
He thumped the side of his knowledge–spilled

a little red bean there in the procession.  Gray light 
hover the harbor, all ready for Don Wan to wander on 
back to his music box and windlespinatop the iron 
spring. . . but his hurt wasn't in his headpatch right.

O dewey redman, trumped all over even before she was! 
How you guerdoned your green captop tiptop, verdant 
with sea lions!  Taptastatictoed all across the quint 
ballroom without the slippery slimperfuming toucans

any molluscular coruscation – her tinder waltz, on fire legs, 
yours, together, one two then!  And the guardreel zoomed 
and buzzed with bumblebooms, blues, greys, nonamed –
tellyon beauts can grow, only beetrush borscht begs

plantatoed any bitter!  H two needed, a deadline
to make his lifelimb growso tall.  H ate, all ten wives, 
before they nude what wasn't happening – knives 
addled Queen Best (as purr) and the wine

soared all over the crude.  A pantalooned pair o'
dicey listobeamings there were in the deeds 
of H–his lyin astern aforefoot skift leads
F to G and swell to Venice, son – see?  Oh-oh.

Loosen your reason?  Hard to, feller–avast 
cheskermate centered your creel, the yaksee 
sweltered in a fireheaded woolfox brutee! 
Around and aground like a termulating ski mast!

Protect the flowers.  But.  H stalled at the pint, 
oar lofted, stumped.  Divortex aflight overheard, 
where davyjonas keeps a coaxial colorcoated 
coata curlicues to hotiron his onesaintly stint

as hub of unicycle – a bed dream come to dot 
their cry.  Lines drawn in the dusty dune 
done did them in, dude – soon
weep, what you so sorely throat to nought!

A fib related brow row row woakenhurt 
in the spiky sky.  Your memo
rises it.  You no.
Merry G – he mort.

But it was noting the benefit undershadowed that 
finely tuned H to his ownerslip of a barren the 
wounds, since the knight is what, and the
flight is de balloonful of airfears, and the money is fat.

The histoire spelt all over the life pressurfer
reservationist needled mention of Cappy Green
who sleeves up his neightbareghosthood, last seen 
undying the fryway zombing girders with olivoil perfor-

prepupation adsimulators on wiles.  Didn't get it, 
moved outwards Manny, she and kids the hole fambles. 
Device is a turbine thing – ramjambles ambles
all over sud susandly, undenilable (don't try to pet it).

And when the plungent cords break over the dam 
misterbeefsteak, he will be sore.  He will pry.
He will what he won't – a black stone, high 
and dry, with chuffing sails – gills like spam.

At the sinner of his scentful spring, his earth. 
The gourd a nerd, the heart hallow-hollow. 
Hard after for her to follow,
such was the valor of its nonworth.

And sooner inwobblevolved around a once 
and no future star, perfect obloid fear 
and crumbling no more becalmed mere 
entropy blockbird caulk in a dunce.

Let me toll the doily a daffrunt way, sought H –
but impedible.  That was the why, the warfare, 
and the wheraboots, Unc – any nightmare 
quagmires?  H got an F for mere rage, try to catch

the drift but no C him.  Illeligible without 
the L wort – you can't horde your way onto it,
sled musketears alloverit, or otherwit 
pretensisensiboil it – it won't sort

with your teleport, maybe. . . try author prudegram? 
Or use six instead of four arms players on yon 
deserted turntable floading, honey?  Snerd, hon. 
Diacryptic manuals for inward psychoblam –

that's how to correct your fluidity somebody wrote 
me about that in a fablecrumb and I beheard it. 
But weird getting away with mead, er some – what? 
The cloy melts in your hounds, and it won't

soul edify – har o har o lee! Crackpates cricketing 
under the heart, a like, able blade o fowls –
the wholewheat househowled fellows his scowls. 
Preserve my speech.  Protect the flowers.  Spwing

up, out of these duds.  Nakidity Davinity spells 
troubladoor on holidie–he sniped us afore, 
won't happy agrin like that again – were 
mighty nauticoffin him!  The wells

rise – H marks the flowline –
slipped–horizontababa –
crown his nick, mama –
follow the stunline,

blick, black, bleak, blick, 
time updown undalater too–
boo-boo who?
Slick

whaleye 
aroundana 
drowna 
no lie.

The splitrock darkhouse too heavysuperior, 
the dense coral anticork sinks too much 
about the unfadable onetime lurch
into the ravine of Dr. Moriory-

won't-let-go so 
flow, so
flow,
so

flowers.
Preserve my speech
Protect my, each 
hour's

child. 
I'd 
I.
*

Musty fell asloop oveer his windpipe – caught 
a draft of a stitchnine in his skirtch, Dock 
Hand.  Lift hymn offa that'millded sock. 
She took stock, and he fought

to forget, and he did. 
Profume slum on board.
Thing became word. 
Hoard and sold, solid

the eye teems with the Klee jug. 
The hart craned and anchored 
her feet in the iron orelocked 
underground clue, or plug.

Bottomland, silent. 
Underground spring. 
Bekneed the thunderding 
of the paramountaint

St. Den, our achscient redeye 
vaulting skeward alooft, 
but not bereft – fixt
with dove to fly –

wait – huddle in stone, wait, 
fly. . .
in the farhigh
dense bluestone height.

The stone that was heavier to have 
anywhere but here – we had it. 
Now – in the eye – hold it
against the knave.

Evermort. His body weights sandstone 
lightwrote chalk or Passover matzo. 
The stretched litter hefted below
the bleakening sundown.

Claywater, breadblood, move, labor, 
the eyes, the eyes above the myrrh-box 
follow, draw you, catch
us the foxes, the eyes draw

vineyard water – purple, darkened green. 
Preserve my speech.  We are moving
in the light of the startling
starling, singing Bluejay's keen

cry.  Protect the flowers.
The flowers spiral backward and 
forward simultaneously, and 
for better and for worse

you remember it all,
the dead seed at the center, 
nailed in your brain. . . enter. 
Through the Magdalen wall.

Low negligible memory, 
stupidity and heartbreak, 
like the echo make 
waves that vary

the beaten brass of time. 
Stronger than bronze or stone, 
strong as the sea – love only 
hones you. Climb

the mountain in reverse; 
the green cape, air 
fresca.  Here,
preserve my speech – it is

token, testimony. 
Equal to its 
bitter fruit. 
Hear, see,

the returning wave.
         *         *
         *         *
         *         *

Protect the flowers
Honor the splinter. 
Remember you 
were sowers.

H fell asleep. 
Dreamed,
eyes.  Seemed
at peace, in the deep.

Shores.
Eyes. 
Hers. 
Oars.

myrrh 
mir
mr 
h

*

*

*

– was the next mourning when H was startled 
awork.  The sun was woven mauvepalepiled 
greenery in the clues.  Hippo horsewhaled? 
through his fagged eyepanes.  Hurtled

out of a dram. . . he seed his donut
had made a line of oiled filigree allhover 
his sleepery napshkin.  Firecat hair? 
But our literal red prooster whiz was not

at home at home.  Some ting was churning 
his butane around – an electric charity
or sin otheremouster (achinbet you diamitty 
remonstraps) keeps him lourning

how to spill "over" over again and over. 
Skyskids thread out the windy – el J
was anchoright, plainting the A-Z sure blue, 
barging arolls in his unfargettable olair

trap A-Z stunts.  The wait was
toller then, a bell in his hearticulture –
he coffed up would, and will, and won't yer? 
and placed with nothing his donut hauls

fright arrows – harmony dates and knights 
stombling threw life. . . mariner venues 
all aviator the muddy terrain was
wit he had to hit though sites

of swinefed swill makes DR vir umble! 
and since H took the fair ferrous fairy ferry 
so puny left ironing out a coppair perrier 
blackbuttoneye Susan I kinda wumble

about the jumble!  on a fowlship
of pet goldy rocks with the treebare blindmen 
who mummimble into their bards – Hen, 
he's our moany!  they quip.

Playin in games with litter, weary 
orthopedestrial dockskiddooers, chortling their 
metamorpheofriesbeens evegetawhichwhere. . . 
Hi Cloonlass!  I'm Leery!

But Jaybird's brokeline hepped him overt the 
stump – those burgeoning genes of her, iris 
the sinflower inno cento pani bliss
me, miss – and soon he felt the clay torte

teacher lawfilling spearspin H's grimmer 
drum gram – it was a wishper true
the pine green felthat soilfull of worm, dear –
the licked benny, too, sounded slimmer

in the pi anno domino steereyall, so
H kep skalding firfths and hope sketching 
try the roary rogers whims, fetching
his F out of a whole-in-one wan gulf woe.

Sigh.  Yello.  Up there. 
Wail in one.
Black un,
my share, my share.

Of the big mudkey.  Bottimberland. 
Leftup out of mixmatchngo hand
in behand bee bootful oshemeditashemed 
sand, it kneeded sea – D miner?  Grand!

I understand Yeti!  Rubber baroon? 
Nein, yo clock!  Uppair yondair!
Seed?  Scentrad noon!  Upineder 
lakeship – irrefractoid tromzomboon!

Thar she blues!  Trompetrieglypherglimmergopht! 
A little redrhodatlas antic bloke of J-
dimentionall ant der V verohiccupularge 
deridable inviter from odor spice – whhuufft. . .

ghost against! Ak ak ak choo choo muh tata
bye the bye vico have sum too fingal V
for viceroy, honey – tizza pettagrabbable humvee! 
Widow verity-varied hue mane-stringfed attacha

tatmostphere – hiked! [O H the nerdrighter almist 
firgoat to munch on the scramboling whit limb 
harping and hoping and warking and waking him 
barkfort updown foxy chickland pintagin almust o'blist

the boat, O, H –]  Sigh, every evening, just. 
Whispering flame.  Ecce echo hoho momo J J J J J. . . 
an hen was hep to swerve as B-Jay's
missingyva joist adjuster.  Moist moss.  Must.

Hen lurked off through the pain of the coffin exchange. 
Jumpst a whishingle wellworn compostitchin?
The discussion flue off the fun for a wheel, Hen.
Into the distink and the shunlight, the lonerange,

where the guys are nut cloddy auld, die.
A smile shuffled enteepeetoe into a warmhail 
barnstern ormus vale, where the shale 
clutters the gravinight until all the jiver's pie

ices a G.  What cleft?  Base.
Turd around what the horizontell hulahooplament –
I dimknow.  It, it. . . 
gun ovehill now, trice

ooo. . .  froth of green, light 
on the trees, there. 
Limlight.  Sore... 
woundit.

The sill oven city wafted awful augustus across 
the lairdlunding croft.  H was no wart to be scene, 
there.  Nor wuzzy ladling a farthingfamilias, mean 
as he shod beanboxes, doughindozeout of lossa

times at the libruptea.  Norinow fuzzy ship anymare –
seam to flout wooll the aeroadianrules, fizzicat imp 
Ossobile – N was goon in two – the foredementiad chimp! 
Goon in deed, wormdundeed – zero!

Sew three b-viper batons, then, off him coatlicurler. Threevieheebeegeebeefreebies, I gas –hansuppine. 
Runing on em ties no Hen?  Realrooded?  Wonder when? 
H lookloodoon at him V-uncular's owncoat, viennearler –

and noted Sue Donnelly, there – izzer nukid?  No –
j-j-just iz widow penieinyore palm.  Lockagain, Hen –
wordsworth mere than thought!  Agen – again?
Yes.  Wonsmore, smiley.  Oncemore, smile, to go.

H piered his gloses, fIxt redeyehaireared finely, tear-
fillie windmore timidlee. True – the flex of a streak 
of felt. . . a dive. . .  – a dove! – a dove, a dove!  Holey boke of 
J – owna – dove!  Cooed, a contenderly, tenderly – to shore!

Sign me up, beamshot!  That's because the oner won! 
Dave have the juice – anna hen was lividly nakkered, 
two!  Dovetailing the too-too!  Mannyjillo Qukred
knew, anna coot flew offwiffa V-high five. . . Iz royal, son!

Now the finally began to tune in the numb bros insisting 
on H until I jay calculated em no pukin arroundisstuvwax 
– why? EZ! He'd like deploy sadsack sax
butt the harmlessmonetary cats peejan nojammers – ohlist!

You node how in sum unkieverses a spearall 
is ractionally a street line, well, up from below 
came sucha bellow H rose oopshiddering – wo! 
Man he was one purrerodeductive eagle – his

spandrift leftall coveralls office behind!  And
you node how the curve is forcemain oftener of 
mannered manymakers – the way the foxglove 
enablehood of manual freed sealaborites was unhand-

erunderhanded out of the why of devilment –
so H producted his prolegrimage inwardly, 
toward the veered bluerose, submarinadely –
the hoodlumpcity, I mean, where they were scent –

the southurn port for lostguise – providense, 
with pebbles yearning verde lil, and shilldoom 
rose – until you hopen your gloomies,
Jim (he's playin lighter tonaught, since

Colette his better halfpaychick popped up 
with viola in her boutontoss).  So H
was there tootoo, witch gootar in, natch –
loosing his wayward, the curfpup.

Ach the prod of his blunderblind!
What loss of foot was that, what forget! 
For there to prod gal was widowed weight 
of himselfishmost nest – find

an udder lack, this dumbull!  Weak after weak 
the lion prude his coursage, lion ivory time.
Is this the spirit?  Nay, Rome
thought not.  Sneak

and ye shawll be fined!  For thus in the mudst 
of his waifstirrings, slappackajacking the pigseye 
planted amurdshits, unplowdunt, his memsigh 
opened–he numbered his fader – J.D., just.

In time it was.  For his bird-day was springing 
toward the last para-trump, and was it time?   In
time it was.  Trump April last – for the twin 
springing was daddy-bird his, for birthdaying!

For twelve is a happy numby, and April
a pleasant isthmus, all gold together nicily 
though in Minersoda ice frizzy sumdaytimely! 
Them twinners were pretty cities, Will –

still are they! Arise then, and gold –
we shall pellmell pilgrummage our wheaty 
way homeward now, and celebeatify
the drum for he is raisin hupahole hold

fulla goldbroth and cisterns!  He is raisin, 
thought the vinelady – gripin abit at the pall – but 
wheelbarrow it an iron it an roost it an itwill all 
comb outa gain in the washingtons.  Jeffersin?

Me?  Not know – right left wrought lift rut loft 
all the siamese twines will process us cheese us 
milk us bore us bier us berry us cream us
dream us as Oswego along the rusty rus trailaloft

the bearing straitened circumnavastints
in the Pete's sacreblueship toward the originatal 
redman – a dimeforhis name? – is omegal
too one zero and we shall meet him in the quint

existenting tonight on the old campground
on our way now to Indian Point.  Himalayatied out 
yet?  Not yet?  Then pint your ompeter toward at 
land–tissue you almond joy yet?  Stormepetrel bound?

(O Petrasbornagains, O svleet Musk-
ovyntights – all Meldamshtombletamed! Hichikehukfinnaginjompluliltrainsetgoald!
Who Akmelvdovatend, who Tsvetavelvattuned, 
whocoowhorldinalbatrysted, frosencaroltruthedusk.)

Nay, the horses are in fInal fedders and wee flying. 
Through the greenmoss ways by the quiet waters, 
by the oxenford, near where Actemydovie totters 
along with to sieve her mettle, warning and warmin

here loving piece all the way to Petroglad, finally;
and well pick Nuckleheadup along the Wye, playing flowt 
and flowering flowcraft, like Jimi Hucktrix and what 
Bea J Hen can seagal us a supthere, friendly

among the gould keelover flowerpunters, 
those steady-eyed treefellers and form farmers 
like granite under the holy rollercoasters,
a sprungfeedle farmcanter.  A witbull H-er's

resting on the Blackstone shoulders, his liberty
a done thing everydeeday, as we canterbury
along, long plowman's wake – and a very gradumerry 
grape it is, ripe to the buddies, from a little tree–

near the edge of the Terrace 
the limbs all black and thorny 
the buds, just barely
the green moss

soft, tender
spring whispers
kindness now, and grief.  Hers, 
yours, ours.  Wonder

gathering me 
toward you 
grew –
see

the end of the journey now 
spirals to this crown, Henry –
yours.  From me.
I go – your

father – where Bluejay goes, 
for I will journey
to my chamber – see, 
Jerusalem! – she flows

from my heart – to the end. 
A straight road steadies every 
spiral, son – I run today 
toward mine.  Mend

your way.  A hard and narrow raceway 
glides the ark toward solid haven.
Nor will I cease my pilgrimage – when 
(hesitant and grieving now) my God will say –

how stubborn grew the rose!  How
stub born grew the rose stub
born grew the rose stub born
grew the rose stub born grew
 the  rose  stub  born grew the
rose.


                                                                                          4.10.98 (Good Friday) 

Bluejay's rose window

Speaker's Corner (Roger Williams National Memorial)

Hope anchor monument (Swan Pt. Cemetery)

Catch us the little foxes

With the final Fox Point disclosures of the previous passage, Stubborn Grew draws near the finish line.  The poem's plot or action is almost complete; what remains is more lyric than narrative, a kind of lament or elegy for what was lost.  The chanting of Shoshone songs & the proverbs of Bluejay (along with a brief elegy by Edwin Honig)  gradually suffuse the whole picture.

3

It was a fragrant flagrant night, yes, 
when they laid him in his tomb. 
So do not, daughters of Jerusalem, 
let love arise, until it please.

Unbeknownst to C I watched her 
bobsail back up Hope Street NNW 
toward 132, our nostradomus –
remembering our young spring flower

so long ago.  Magnolias and dogwoods, 
mountain laurel; drenched air
drenched with scented seeds (where 
Governor met Benevolent, at Aldrich House).

I helped you off with your Italian boots.
The year was 1976.  The freddo roses, 
gone.  A box of myrrh.  She chooses 
me.  Prima, primavera.  Adam roots,

Eve threads, the flowergarden grew 
out of a broken box of myrrh, the bark 
of an Egyptian riverboat.  Q ark
for love, so prodigaL  We never knew

that seedy, burgeoning night was in 
a Botticelli ship, within a Venus shell. 
We never knew enough.  Your smile 
an apple, in my hand, a gold lion.

The ship's a coffin, freighted for Byzantium. 
A well-made benison from Venice –
wooden horse, Greek gift – Odysseus
in rags, returned, memorious.  Come home.

                        *

He swayed the girls into his orbit –
let them swirl him to his grave.
His endless tale – too snarled to save. 
His loveline ends – obit.

In the spring snow on Valentine's Day 
I watched a goldfinch with a black-eyed 
Susan look (like Bluejay) – paralyzed –
circle around the Courthouse (clay

penny in love with copper).  Proper 
Irish islomania.  Unlucky once, unlucky 
twice, in the heart's greenhouse – greedy 
with risen love–too-much – her

fevered night-in-gale.  Ah, those Irish eyes, 
oh, that overflowing sister-love –
nard of Leonardo – graven
in his hermitage.  The goldfinch flies

out of the lapwing of nativity. 
One drop of blood (her ruby glance 
across the silent white expanse 
of Neva-land). Epiphany.

He swayed the girls into his orbit –
let them swirl him to his grave.
His endless tale – too snarled to save. 
His loveline ends – obit.

The scent grows heavier.  The pink magnolias 
bend and fall.  Go to sleep now
in your coffin-cup, Henry – throw 
away your name –- only an H remains,

and a red wheel, circling, circles. 
Only an H, seasick on the Orizaba
aching to join his Juliet, an oily baba 
in the desert night.  Rusted, curls

around a sunken stump.  Corralled. 
An unknown code beneath his course. 
Black hole, infallen purse, 
inspiralled.

Beneath his corse.  Ding-
dong. Shared
gong-shard.
Remorse.

And again in the far distance and again 
the line of evening geese lifts high 
and portages honking on toward Canada. 
A candid pining, fateful sigh, hand

woven – unicurve, across the blue.
You plucked the gold forsythia,
feet softly planted on the moss.  Pythia's
a vision over Venice – Peter's bird, she flew. . .

It was a fragrant flagrant night, yes, 
when they laid him in his tomb. 
So do not, daughters of Jerusalem, 
let love arise, until it please.

                         *

Daman   dave   yuwinangwa   yuwi-gena, 
Daman   dave   yuwinangwa   yuwi-genor. 
Nuwe   nuwe   nuwigenor   nuwigenor, 
nuwe   nuwe   nuwigenor   nuwigena.

Missing H in the Exchange [tired]
whale hail against the wall [repeat 1st part?] 
Moby Crane – heart-shaped anchor [art?] 
mordant means glued H to the wall – fIred

in fresca [fresco?] go back to the beginning here, 
Dr. Preskill the precedent for Kip's thorn? 
Hawking bet his raven radiation 
for one encyclopedia [NY

Times, April 8, 1998 – science section]
dry ice carries mass away
might mean lawlessness in physics – any 
more info on the Death Ray? – good question.

Run the film backward, that's micro-
reversibility.  Splinter particles
become shards cascading [see the articles] 
more littler shards [def.: "micro"]

[why is that waitress glaring at me?
Just because I always order the same thing?] 
Spacetime aberrations in a sing-
ularity [hilarity here? – not funny]

is Q mechanics people versus relativity profs. 
Head to head – big heads! Black hole
folks vs. info preservationists [bowl
shaped multiverse?] – see G. t'Hooft's

theory about that – but is it a theory? 
Where's Bluejay now?  He would know. 
Information loss is highly infectious – so 
they say. . .

Dugu   ba-gaganana   dugu   ba-gaganan, 
Dugu   ba-gaganana   dugu   ba-gaganan.
Dugu   saiyog-anana   dugu   saiyog-anan ena, 
Dugu   saiyog-anana   dugu   saiyog-anan ena.

A black hole has no hair. [bald?] 
Still using PASCAL language here? 
If you dropped v. 29 of Britannica 
into a black hole. . . we are lost at sea.

Because everything is sucked into. . . maybe 
a whole other baby universe? [more on that?] 
But information cannot be destroyed [what 
time is it?  Thank you.]  Is it a BB

gun – the universe, I mean?  Bang, bang, get it? 
Beep beep the baby's up.
There might be – yup –
remnant particles.  Obsolete –

infinite parameters long – just slogging along 
swallowing brits [don't make a habit of it]
these black whales might be strings – 10 to the it 
dimensions!  [Leo Suss says so long!]

Informons, infotons [heavy!], cornucopions [whew!] 
these are what we have to deal with –
all info hologrammed on a surf the width
of only two dimensions!  And that's one too few!

Dugu   ba-gaganana   dugu   ba-gaganan, 
dugu   ba-gaganana   dugu   ba-gaganan.
Dugu   saiyog-anana   dugu   saiyog-anan ena, 
dugu   saiyog-anana   dugu   saiyog-anan ena.

There was darkness in broad day.  Moon 
red. September, October, tremor in Assisi. 
Giotto's grieving angels. . . gentle clay 
came drifting down.  Even

Assisi.  Leveled.
The dome trembled
by the Kedron, humbled 
(the priest–felled).

The night garden swelled 
(your earthworm sleep, 
your time, your deep, 
swelled, filled).

Your voice tolled, 
sighed (your 
clay, your 
mold)

the wind. 
Pines, 
ines.
ind

(sounds' 
womb). 
OM
n.

Bees. 
See. 
Sh. 
E.

Daman   dave   yuwinangwa   yuwi-gena, 
daman   dave   yuwinangwa   yuwi-genor. 
Nuwe   nuwe nuwigenor nuwigenor, 
nuwe   nuwe   nuwigenor nuwigena.

                         *

Catch us the little foxes, Solomon,
that spoil our vineyard.  Lucky,
true love's the cardinal pt (sd Bluejay).
A monde, almond.  All made.  I thirsty, mon.

Henry, beside his cup and flying saucer, 
shrouded, canonical, fed it all back –
a lost supper, chef'd by a black sea-hack. 
His memoir, gyring, filled it to the top ce soir.

A mourning kiss, portrayed by Leonardo,
lion.  King of Bongo Kongo, hero lion of iron. 
In a locked greenhouse, with siren.
Do re mi fa so and so, and so on.  So.

Dip the waif in the drink.  Have a pig roast. 
On Friday, just for kicks – or eat fish
with a dead man.  Swish,
down he goes.  A toast

to the po guy.  Photo
in the honeycomb.
Lisbon, Rome.
Eddy, eddies. . . love, in toto,

Papa–for I am sick of love! 
Honeybees, Aristaeus, Orpheus. 
He remembered her on moss, 
black & white – dove

to the bottom of her heart.  And 
the old man trembles for her, 
unbeknownst, sorrower –
clasps close the cedar locket.

Jewel of your life
Burns blackstone, 
diamond.  One 
cruel grief.

Upon a Roman rood was fixt 
clay lips gone underground.  Still
through the pinedoor, drifted sound. 
Her calling me.  A morning rose.  Finixt.

A thin ray from a whispering star fell 
through a break in the burning hot wailing 
wall.  He was suddenly outside, standing. 
At last he was standing – gazing in the well

of a steadfast star.  In the old wooden frame 
the icon seemed alive, smiling, an island
in his hand.  Her eyes, pale green, beckoned 
him forward again. . . stand here, without shame.

In her hands, the box of myrrh, the door. 
As though the scent of lost time 
retained there, on its golden rim, 
dimensional. . . shore

upon shore, shore upon shore
Scrolled, from impossible spans, 
from impenetrable regions. . . 
one thin melody.  A score

for wheeling voices, mixolydian 
and Mexican, earthbound.
Round wound, wound
once, twice. . . fractured.  Peruvian.

Upon a Roman rood was fixt
clay lips gone underground.  Still 
through the pinedoor, drifted sound. 
Her calling me.  A morning rose.  Finixt.

The cup runs to the verge, the oil 
candescent now, the song flows over, 
flows into the gulf.  Plover,
seagull cry above hollow toil

of the overloaded vessel – Captain Fatso, 
carting home that prancing lord, all bronze. 
His eyes are blank.  No one responds.
The meeker skipper, though – we know

his name – it must be Juan Diego!
Standing naked–sheer–like limestone cliff 
or Queequeg, at the prow of quaking skiff–
head spinning – row, row, row your. . .

Rose.
Climbs
through time's 
zeros.  Ever.  Eros.

Soars.  And wheels there, silver-
heeled, Elohim, healed, soars. 
Afloat through gravity floors 
you – your palaver

palace races now toward 
your own heart
craning art
straining word

lifting opening the chest of flowers 
and the nest flies open doves veering 
wheeling in a V over the cheering 
towering stone calendar's –

Catch us the little foxes, Solomon,
that spoil our vineyard.  Lucky,
true love's the cardinal pt (sd Bluejay).
A mande, almond.  All made.  I thirsty, mon.

                         *

Upon a Roman rood was fixt
clay lips gone underground.  Still 
through the pinedoor,drifted sound. 
Her calling me.  A morning rose.  Finixt.

Catch us the little foxes, Solomon,
that spoil our vineyard.  Lucky,
true love's the cardinal pt (sd Bluejay).
A monde, almond.  All made.  I thirsty, mon.

It was a fragrant flagrant night, yes, 
when they laid him in his tomb. 
So do not, daughters of Jerusalem, 
let love arise, until it please.

He swayed the girls into his orbit –
let them swirl him to his grave.
His endless tale – too snarled to save.
His loveline ends – obit.

Daman dave yuwinangwa yuwi-gena, 
daman dave yuwinangwa yuwi-genor. 
Nuwe nuwe nuwigenor nuwigenor, 
nuwe nuwe nuwigenor nuwigena.

Dugu ba-gaganana dugu ba-gaganan, 
dugu ba-gaganana dugu ba-gaganan. 
Dugu saiyog-anana dugu saiyog-anan ena, 
dugu saiyog-anana dugu saiyog-anan ena.

                                     4.9.98 (Maundy Thursday)

Nostradomus

Take Dove Street to Fox Point

The 2000 Spuyten Duyvil edition of Stubborn Grew was dedicated to Francesca, my ex-wife, and our two children, Alexander and Phoebe.  As we have seen, the poem twists & gyrates around like a snake nailed to a board.  What began (surveyed in early posts here) as the sketch of a grand American epic poem - sending tentacles & vines out from Rhode Island into a vast interior, in search of Juliet & Crane & Berryman & Kees & national redemption & resurrection - instead swerves inward on Providence, becoming more local & personal as it goes along, fracturing on a vortex of infidelity & break-up.  What was an epic becomes a "personal" epic, a confessional poem.

Yet traces of place are imprinted on the story.  Henry & Bluejay & RI Statehood Day, all tangled up in violet.

In this third chapter, remorse for a broken vow becomes explicit.  The poem shims into lament.  As the chapter proceeds, the refrain from a Shoshone dream-song echoes through.  So the epic link with some "larger picture" is not completely snapped.  These things find surprising recurrence in the (unplanned) sequels to Stubborn Grew : two volumes, The Grassblade Light and July.  (As noted, the completed long-poem trilogy is titled Forth of July.)

1

A lion, as purr, sd Henry to himself, while 
spumedust arose and spread from a mess of 
implosives, and blackered coffies spouted fitfully, 
like Old Yellerstone, blurring the windowsill.

If you sloop righthand, upperdownside, nor'sou'weast 
from the Terrace, you wind up eventuality at
our old RW's spring again.  Then, string a PG2 pivot 
peg from the end of his stone kenosis – it can't be beast!

The full-white wait is in espresso, you blackguard
the waitress was saying [to someone else, perhaps?] 
so why don't you just shove that swill – shovel cap
a little further up your crapula, jerkhead.

What's eating her?  Or what am I eating here?
He gazed down at his Roman X ground sandwich, 
dipped in a cuppa sand inner hourglass (fresh). 
His potentage (straight from the scupper) was bear,

and he felt a colossal headache of lil Rhody coming, 
lean-toing over a peasfull sea of sour gas soup; 
his Peter was still very primate [we hope] 
although his portable Masonic temple throbbing

across the road from the State House added 
another thousand jeers worth of Gs of pressure
and on top of not knowing his Ps and Qs there were 
that all the other epics pickled in pewter and padded

to fill out the enormous gyring speech balloon
designed for a non-Euclidean ukelele [not RI Manny's –
the other Gee's – Navigrating Henry's –]
because the pontoon

broke off suddenly.  Against the gathering grain 
of river water.  And the musky scow, inkremlinated 
with red herrings, headed, south, southeasted, 
the pilot washing his hands in a golden pan

while the whole thing was listed aboard steers
in the pitchblack, lowing overloudly, loony.
But the sheep were shipshape.  Sleepily
they waited, in Newport, for the Black Schooners;

the blind bookworm, reading his heavenly massive 
borgesmurder smorgasbord, swaddled on downstream; 
blithely, into the ravine again, the whipcream
rising, dregs dragging, awkward, unlucky cleaver

toward the delta floating.  It was an upwardownwar,
foldunfold hexagonal startling origami game 
played by a fatland stealth boomer – a lit, lame-
duck, shakeyfooldy, doublylooney huffelynx copper

gave Suzie a black Sinai, I'll say! – when it fell apart. 
Because the flipped side of a tricornered egotrip
is in the poignant coign of a family give-up;
a black whole equals a white croissant there, Bert.

Eastward, your Veep decusstulates – a precipitation 
of legionnaire's disease, jetlegged around the globe
on a purely theoretical plane.  A disrobed orb
grows skeptical when you forces kiss the Blarney stone;

why don't you ditch your I.D. with that fib-related 
copper down there with the raven too –
we all know Gepetto's ghetto
train goes nosing along toward Ashlantis,

we don't need your imploded photo-finnish Vishniac 
to tell us which crystalloid lucky stars
were not so lucky, when the Passover is shards
of a bloodsoaked moon quaternion, from way back –

your ship's a cup of bitter tears. 
The star's in the cold well –
harsher now, more truthful, 
salt.  Squared up from Mars,

westward the course of Empire takes its way; 
the beast at last.  And your somystical Sofaship
is an O.P. dictator of leather bound boxed-up 
Public Works – all we do is read about it and cry.

Your papier-maché mock-up puppeteership 
unfolds, and then hexplodes, scattering
miniscule hailstones aloft, hung
over, weightless; the verbs go drip. . . drip. . . drip. . .

until we go ahead and drown, Daddy-o;
if only you would shatter your oppressive puss-
heater just a little more so we could discuss 
the family – the whole thing, all together now,

you stupid sew-and-sew knitwit you.
Because I've waitered and waitered a long long time 
just to tell you how sick of your blank rhyme
we all are – you can ship your Pegasus to the glue

factory down south anywhere nobody will notice 
and we'd all be better off, facing the facts for once. 
Dad, you are a dunce,
and a real bastard to boot – get this

straight, from me.  What the H was it all for
to get you off the hook with some fine-assed finesse? 
You dug your own shit so much, you can eat that mess. 
It's a cruel surprise, but you're not the only squire

under the sun, okay?  And you try to talk us
into your roundhead Okeefenokee crocodile smile-
cage every which weirdo you can – those endless trial 
balloons. . . but we aren't going along with this!

Because Cesca, Phoebe and Alex, dodo, we can jay-
jaw you undergound anytime, you – barkin orf-orf-orf 
with your mouth full of brit and metamorph. . .
it's disgusting!  What more can I say?

Northwards, into the snow, with you, big Daddy.
Go on up now with your Roman V – get cleaned up 
and frozen for another millennium. So long, Pop! 
And don't forget that leprechaun – lucky-ducky, Paddy!

His lowered lip asweat, is she talk in t'me? 
Henry thought.  Here, he wroth, his wake! was
finned again for those grand polar nightcaps! –
his great hand-pickled epic, circling-immensity –

and yet this gal – calling his H? 
Out of nowhere?  What gives? 
What for gives,
brotha.  Outa yo reach.

Faintly, through the smoke-funneled, clouded pane, 
southeastward, out in the bay, he thought he saw
a tanker.  Gracefully maneuvering the narrow
waters; moving forward, slowly, past the last shoreline.

                                                        4.6.98

2

Through the steamed-up and fibrillated porthole 
(Henry's eyes blurring) the ship grew dimmer.
Where once was a bond, is now a liner,
he thought – Lion Line, QE– negative mole.

And without the bond – that lightwit burden –
the line goes blind – blinder and blinder,
up down (signally) through slats in a cellar –
a phony Phoenician Blind King (overdrawn

and circulating) draining down around Puss Eddie's.
 Stubbed at the Point, growing obscurer
and more trivial; a misty drawer
full of resin waters. . .

Through the glass on the tables of his heartstrung 
dimly strum, espied – the vessel's marked now, 
near its prow.  An anchor hole? or
apple, in a hexagon (a yellow sweeting)?

Or is that a reflection, on the bow,
of a whirlpool, starboard, there?
By God – the ship is going down! [Where?] 
Towering (132 ft. tall) into the blue,

the stern of a titanic goner's gondola
wobbling beneath a tall, uncaring campanile –
woven from nothing – frescoed on a wailing wall 
of waves and people, slowly

sinks. . .
                             *

At the foot of the crossroad – Hope's end, 
at wicked Wickenden – where the whisking 
wail of the freeway charcoals the sky 
with exhausted oils and fumes and

where was Daily Bread and the aquarium 
fish shop window and the hair salon and 
"Golden Thief' on all four corners – and
it was the very end of Hope [millennium?]

and crawling like a cat or horizontal pillar 
along the seafloor of the fishbowl
she remembered herself the whole polar
treble, O treering circus in I R –

unbeknownst to H, I was in the Exchange 
watching his I wander, pushing his woolfink
ravine down the peterways while he sinks 
contemplating his toyed-up naval derange-

ment, a clay flit-flot rhodomontade flotilla 
(mere object dart, that would never
float down any neva-neva)
while our marriage went down the river

there.  And strange how he remarks
his victims – lets them wear his troubled 
star, so, so.  Steadily (at the foot of Hope) 
she murmured to herself, and walked

onward.
Phoebe's middle name is Grace,
and Alex is a Falcon Ace – they'll steppe 
round his fog-end potholed stubbword.

Whole fleets of leaps.  He'll never know. 
And love will knot again (one woven-
firmly-warm and wifely woof) one 
warped weirdsmith – in a golden poncho

threading out of Mexico, or high Peru. 
He thinks his tic-toc titanship's 
gone down – gave us all pink slips. . . 
put us on his list. . . (the goo

headed idiot) – wants to take us
with him – his heartfelt paper wings 
and all – pulls all the sentimental strings. 
But he can't make us.

She walked out of the coffin shop 
the long way home, strolling
to India Point.  A scroll
of endless traffic surged (blip

on her horizon).  The sky pale
blue, the sun beamed down, spread 
sheer diagonal arrays, the wind
(in spurts) performed – a spirit-whale,

a dolphin, joyful.  Here we are
she thought.  I'll take stock, take 
the kids, to Rome.  We'll break 
this prison-patterned coo-coo patter.

Because my children need a father, 
and there's no one here.  His clever line's 
gone down, he thinks.  Mine's
iron, though.  It's just the anchor.

Only my canker, worming down.  Splash, 
to the very bottom of the bottomland. 
A secret sea.  Take my hand,
Alex, Phoebe – we'll hash

this out somehow.
Her mind's made up.  Heartbroken, 
undeterred (the word already spoken), she 
returned, a waltzing mourning dove, to 1-3-2.

                                            4.7.98

Site of Roger Williams' spring (Providence)

Dove St. (Fox Point)

Fox Point (view from Providence harbor)

The Coffee Exchange

"132"