Octo-Henry

Ancient Light, continued.  In which Our Hero visits the National Gallery, & sees himself - and history itself - in the mirror of a tyrant.  Memento mori.

       4

       

       London.  Boomdoom.  Budthud.  Sootfoot.

       No more rambling except by troubled sneaker;

       lost Henry says, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. 

       But the maze's thread is a Sargasso root,

       

       grounded, if at all, in some impenetrable 

       drowning darkness.  Old Roger sailed here 

       with a job to do, to ratify the charter

       for his commonwealth – around the table

       

       the John Hancocks feathered like peacocks 

       and history quivered, against all odds. 

       Henry's forehead only gets the nods.

       He's no can-do canoe.  It's on the rocks,

       

       and schools him in Melancholia.

       That puffy wench beneath the magic square 

       and a black sun – Dürer's duration dere,

       so durable, so fort et dur, forever sighing ahhh. . .

       

       I ran across her there, across from The Ambassadors –

       in the Gallery, at Trafalgar Square, in the bull's

       eye.  Etched cube, an extra birthmark – spells

       out your kingly name. . . (for sea-worm funnellers).

       

       Take flight from routine, and you find your heart 

       stays home.  Or part of it.  And cunning Providence 

       with slant-eyed perspective suddenly invents 

       your skull on the canvas, under all the cluttered art

       

       implements, the dazzling tooled measurements 

       displayed full-face between the subtle hands, 

       impassive faces of those mysterious friends 

       – Holbein's Ambassadors. The tremors are intense;

       

       fat, squared, football-padded Paddington Bear 

       Octo-Henry is preparing to stir the continental stew; 

       beneath his burgeoning largesse, the music's raw, 

       the ants is marching even now; the skull is there,

       

       though you won't notice it immediately; 

       Anne's bowling toward her own pinned 

       casket beneath the green-skinned

       grin of the charnel dome, his Principality.

       

       Square Henry fills the frame, but he won't square 

       this with heaven, no matter how many

       royal portraitors request his fanny

       sitting on the stool of a bleeding Empire.

       

       The Ambassadors, those friends, divide

       down the middle; the table, with all those tools, 

       begins to split beneath unfolding rolls

       of tablecloth, the panorama unable to hide

       

       another dimension breaking through the seams; 

       your view must wrench away from view

       to see an ordinary skull stare back at you.

       It's Europe, breaking into splintered beams

       

       of reformation, into seed-spilled filaments

       of Henry's crosshairs split and double-crossed 

       beneath a diplomatic nod-and-shake, embossed 

       around in smooth doubloons in golden doublets.

       

       And wavering Henry stood between them, between 

       all these national frame-ups, between home

       and pools of London whirl; his kingdom

       comes apart of all this, his heart's unfelt, unseen.

       

       A black stone on a white stone.  Vallejo. 

       Anonymous Peruvian.  Or Blackstone

       on a white bull.  What's done

       cannot be undone – only echo, echo, echo. . .

       

       a free fall into Paris thursdays.  Reigning 

       humour.  Hahaha, cried the gravedigger, 

       skuldugger, ghouldogger, Londonbeggar –

       black's eternal fashion's blood sustaining!

      

The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein the Younger (National Gallery)

Planes & trains

Ancient Light continues.  Anxious Henry is on the move.  But there's a moment, on the train to Oxford, which brings peace.  A Shakespearean well of well-being.  A moment which only returns again - in very surprising fashion - in the very last pages of Stubborn Grew.

p.s. Ancient Light opens with this epigraph, from The Tempest :

I think he will carry this island home in his pocket and give it to his son for an apple.

       2

       

       Henry flies to capital – a mini-semi-rotten apple 

       rolls out of Providence on his wife's coattails. 

       The hangar – mangy titanium birdnest – crawls 

       with worms.  He's afraid we might topple

       

       from the sky – imagines sudden shock – panic! 

       – dismemberment – and in the impersonal 

       gray mirror stretching 40,000 feet below, his soul 

       is nowhere to be found.  Eat a breadstick;

       

       drink some more white wine.  You'll feel better soon. 

       The airplane drones along, aluminum

       generic cross above unruly orb.  Buzz of some

       inert gas sentence announces distance to London.

       Across the aisle, untimorous children

       scribble with crayons on their travel sketchpads,

       cheering up their nervous Moms and Dads –

       buoyed by something Henry's lost, or forgotten.

       

       3

       

       The train ride to Oxford was something else. 

       Profound droning weight of iron travel machine, 

       farmland English backyard a pale moss green 

       in the moist December light, your pulse

       

       is calm outside of London, Providence 

       might be a way of life, a common sphere, 

       fair, sensible and just – a Hertfordshire 

       in an ovoid Shakespeare's head, a salience.

        

       Old Roger came here, gathering firewood 

       splinters for the winter poor; and Jeremiah 

       Gould, Newport Quaker, came back to lie 

       under John Gould's Oak, in an apple orchard.

Garden behind Shakespeare's Head, Providence

Ancient Light

The second chapter of the catabatic epic Stubborn Grew is called Ancient Light.  Your esteemed yapper views Ancient Light as a great advance on the tentative projectivities of previous chapter (Shakespeare's Head).   Ancient Light displays a real narrative-organic unity, it tells a story straight on.  Moreover it steps into deep waters of Western Civ - origins of the Reformation, the role of Henry VIII and Tudor regime in ending of Middle Ages... while carrying on with another, more comically-providential "Henry".  It's like a snow-globe or microcosm of the poem in its entirety, and more.

We happen to live on a one-blocker in Providence called Fisher Street - a wonderful little street, with wonderful neighbors we will be sorry to leave behind on our voyage to Minneapolis (see closing line of this section!)...  So here's more of the "pickled pescatore", fishing again on Fisher.

from Ancient Light

       1

       

       The New Year arrived. . . babbling in the drink. 

       No one but no one was ready for the flood,

       the jovial frenzy was times squared –

       even a moving Titanic had no time to sink!

       

       Henry was homebound again in Providence, 

       supine with a backache on his favorite couch; 

       tabled at foot level – a little clay conch,

       a toy fisherman's coracle – his mother's hands

       

       fecit.  Lucky, christened on the bow.

       A contemplative, maybe pickled, pescatore, 

       casting his rod in the unmoulded mare. 

       Lucky – lucky to come up with. . . zero. 

       

                                    *

       

       Bruegel. Adoration of the Kings.  1564.

       In the National Gallery in the heart of London 

       in the hands of black Balthasar in a green 

       conch on a gold nef.   Is that a monkey there?

       

       And the scrawny peasants and the bourgeois tubs 

       staring at all that gold and frankincense, miraculous! 

       O clever, clever, clever calculation – and finesse, too!

       The has-been, burnt-out Wise Men ignore the rubes 

       

       meanwhile – have eyes only for the grinning pug 

       hidden in swaths of shrinking violet or 

       marigold blue (I can't remember). . . for He 

       shall Rule the Nations – snug as a bug in a rug.

       

                                       *

       

       And Henry. . . what about Henry?  Is he ever 

       coming around again?  I wonder.

       Around Epiphany, his mind began to wander, 

       they said.  Still have a Q in his quiver?

       

      On Twelfth Night he remembered his grandfather's 

       birthday.  Granddad, Builder of Grain Elevator, 

       père apparent of his mother – of the

       grainstock of generations, ruler.

       

       Hardy pioneer, flower grower. 

       Opera lover.

       Mother's middle name – Elvira. 

       Clay vine of Ravlin violin – è vero.

       

       The higher you go the more grain implodes. 

       Spontaneous combustion fertilizer 

       mounts to flood tide and none the wiser,

       the straight line of inheritance erodes

       

       and out of a stumped Henry begins to drift 

       an example of poor penmanship.  Bark

       of a splintered retriever out of work

       and out of time into London's night shift.

       

       So many neighborhoods of rotisserie syllables! 

       Nobody needs your babytalk victories, your 

       bosky driftwood, boy.  Work another hour – or 

       metro enthused back homeless to Minneapolis! 

Lucky (MN 7)

John Ravlin, builder of grain elevators

Adoration of the Kings (Pieter Bruegel the Elder; National Gallery, London)

End of a chapter

So here we arrive at the conclusion to the first chapter of Stubborn Grew.  As you might sense, hometown Hamlet is about to head to London (in the next chapter, called Ancient Light).  Farewell, sweet-&-sour Prince!

21

It was only a moment coming round.

Bowled over, on the Terrace.

And then she got mad, got gone –

and he eloped with his pen –

witch! Falcon Ace! –

of which he was deeply fond. 

Some said he drowned. 

Someone – a siren cantatrice –

mare of the night, see –

might rob his rich rhyme 

of all reason. . . sometime. 

What will be, will be.

Repentance is all.

22

The lights went up inside, then outside,

then the stars came out and rewarded everyone 

with a regular astrolabe – 'Swounds!

How elegant, my dear malady! – So rude.

It was the story of a lifetime, I'd say,

said someone.  Anonymous was an Indian?

Another.  Anyone for quoits?  Nines?

I'll pass over the water, thanks. – I'll say!

The crowd left, and you still there, your eyes 

on me – I was too anxious to enjoy.

Life, love, that's what I say,

said Bloom. Flowers and dies and. . .

summer sun on the glinting flow.  Thames

time stems the last of the season;

the words gather in my heart. . . run, run!

So they rose and ran (evening whispering flame).

                                            5.26.97 (Memorial Day)

Gondolas in Providence River

Ladd Observatory

Inching down the hill

So we're closing in now on the conclusion of Stubborn's first chapter (Shakespeare's Head).  Perhaps you'll hear some of the persistent motifs starting to cluster & reverberate.  The epic Hamlet-ham Henry engaging with his local town - but inwardly fractured, looking off into the distance (geographical, temporal, psychological).  There's a nervous affinity between the nostalgic longing for a "drowned" past, and the literary "dive" into its recapitulation.  Something, or somebody, has to give - and they do, eventually.  There are these interventions... part of the plot to come.

from Shakespeare's Head

19

The beautiful day goes inching down the hill,

and the city slowly turns to salt, a cup of pink sediment 

for the archaeologists (– you know what I meant).

Our way of marking time is some kind of alarming fire drill

or lucky lie.  Booked up, full of libraries, 

Orpheus starts, doubling back toward midnight. 

He's not Dr. Faust, nor the last erring knight 

to give it all up for ghost-dance Eurydice –

he's just a January puss, a chilly two-edged blade, 

a marvel of a marred Marlowe on the line

to Hell and back; a ghostwriter on a pinhead 

twisted into the dying-down upside season.

And while the ice-cubed chalice cracks,

and the fortunate bluejays whistle the lowdown,

and Cardinal Eccles is among the asters flown, 

he'll only close his eyes. . . until mourning breaks

them open.  Atlantis sleeps there;

the gondola floats Venice leaning backward 

into the glazed rainbow canoe; Lord,

help him lift her into the air now,

the grief song, the whole harmless moan. . . 

motionless almost, but not like stone,

the meadow grass, the far-off oaks, the drone 

of the cicadas, the breathing animals. . . all one.

                                 *

What then is the measure of the epic summer?

Love is strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave. 

Broken on the back of a lie – like the seventh wave, 

the crushed coracle on the beach. . . (a prairie schooner).

Park on ridge of Seekonk River, Providence

"The Hannah" ship sculpture, Burnside Park

Russian clay semaphore

Sources are elusive, not so pin-pointable.  I do know the Burago/Monas translation of Osip Mandelstam's collected poems, published by SUNY Press in the 1970s, was a model for Stubborn style.  Mandelstam was transmorphed into colloquial American - almost too breezy & familiar.  But I knew in the beginning that if I was going to write an "epic" I had to open up, let fly.  The Monas/Burago version gave me a clue.

Which reminds me of another facet.  You may have noticed the emphasis on "clay" and "earth" in these opening salvos.  This of course has something to do with gravity, Orpheus, & going down in order to come back up... but a deeper signal came from Mandelstam's late Voronezh poems, which are suffused with a very tender, empathetic & telepathic transmission of Russian "black earth".

(Locals may notice a reference to the "Waterfire" summer night festivals, which were starting to rev up in downtown Providence in the late '90s.)

from Shakespeare's Head

9

The little town hovered over the partying rivers, 

dangled fishline and docks, the harbor boats. 

Buildings rose and were gnomon routes

for the hobo sun; goldminers, pearldivers

all sent what they had for the jewelry works

and the rings glistened and glowed at the wedding. 

And if you were Hamlet, you'd perch on the pier – sling 

arrows toward the industrial pinnacle – until sparks

catch fire, all over that flagrant ingle.

All over the river, drums boom midsummer.

Bells tingle, feet slide across clay to the tambor 

shakes. . . Unmourned, you're heading for the jungle.

Boat landing near Point St. Bridge, Providence River

Osip Mandelstam

Rose with hose

Some of you dear dauntless readers may be wondering - whence the curious title Stubborn Grew?  That's an easy one.  We're still in the first chapter of the poem, called "Shakespeare's Head" (- name of Providence building, remember?  It's the "headache of a rational animal" - recall I was reading Aristotle's Poetics at the time, which is an analysis of tragic dramatic poetry.  Thus the poet plays an antic-tragic Hamlet living in a hamlet.)

"Stubborn grew" is part of the last line in the first section below.  "The rose", of course, is love, & poetry, & all... it's also "Little Rhody"...

This was one of the first sections of the poem written.  James Ravlin was my maternal uncle, father of Juliet.  A handsome, rakish raconteur - something Irish in him from both sides of family.  A Navy vet of WW2, served on a battleship in the Pacific.  Worked as lawyer in Louisville, KY for the cigarette companies.  Married, divorced, drank, & later in life lived with Agnes Eisenberger, across the street from Lincoln Center.  Agnes was a musical agent, originally from Vienna, for such figures as flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal, et al.

On Dec. 7, 1971 (Pearl Harbor Day), his daughter Juliet jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.  It was his birthday.

6

                in memoriam James N. Ravlin, 1912-1997

Light quick mosquitoes speed flitter

and slide at latter-day angle easily 

mounting every corniced ingle 

and fuming, spuming, better, better and better.

Mosquitoes there were in Saskatchewan, 

where you were born, between 

Granddad's grain

elevators, Grandma's steel-eyed span.

Those clever, clever lips hovered

in camel smoke

like a Cheshire hookah, smiled. 

And tumbled out an accent stranger

and stranger. What flute

troubled earth to bear him?

The bare tongue-footed ague of him?

The sweet-eyed flourish, the high note

of his Viennese liner?  Where now, 

sailor man, handsome PT-boat boy-o? 

He sleeps in his long canoe.  He is 

scattered. . . a late Minnesota snow.

Unmoored from the height of land, 

drifting from Lawrentian divide, 

blueberry, pine, air-filled

cliff, the taste of iron.

The cherry trees and the dogwood 

bloom now in this sinner-town.

Pale green sprays tender

over the graveyard.

Soon come the clever mosquitoes,

the new swarms.  I inch along.

A snail, with prairie on my tongue. 

Hesitant, grieving, stubborn grew, the rose.

7

The story begins when the rose turns to clay.

Slippery, niggling, the clay wriggled, sly and monotonous.

And the little hamlet followed, semi-conscious,

not saying what to do, either, nor doing what to say.

The rose inched off into the deep, so murmurous, 

and the Prince – well, the Prince did a lie burial 

off the stern end of the prow. . . So mercurial, 

that one! – like a cow-catcher off a caboose.

Quite realistic it was, too.  The waves were majestic 

purple mountains, and he went down and down, 

without a line, without an inkling –

it was a swoon sans the usual royal encaustum (to make it stick).

That quick-fingered ingle of his made such an impression 

he didn't dare exhale–inhaling was out of the question –

so he simply inched his way across that little island,

eyes closed, swimming like a swami, sorely moribund.

And lurking here and there for the entrance underwater. 

The truth was it was sub rosa–so they slay, 

anyway – that's the tragedy;

he was probably pretty prodigal, and definitely fatter,

they all agreed.  Well, it was nice knowing him.

Let's go have a wake-me-up.

These triple plays are all made up,

they seem to me. We inched our way around the scrim

and got out of there before the heavy snow fell.

Good night, dear diary.

Good night. Good night, lady.

Good knight – please save me! I've been playing like hell!

Where did we see that one?  Turn it off.

The couch inched down toward the muddy river, slowly,

slowly.  What sort of shofar blows so melancholy? 

The wind. . . inhale.  The wind plays rough.

8

            in memoriam Juliet Ravlin, 1952-1972

She was light on her feet,

came like somebody's pickpocket, 

a reedy bulb in a clay socket, 

springing complete

from the seasoned forehead.

She was light, she was twenty-two

just-once, and so were you;

and then she was wed,

or dead, or had – and Hamlet 

went mad. . .

He was still an undergrad 

up there on the hill, collegiate,

collecting himself for the big leap 

just as she took to the air;

she wasn't anywhere,

and he became – a creep.

She was his Golden Gate, 

everybody remarked; 

his life was parked 

there, checkmate.

Little they knew it was his birthday. 

Sail on, boy-o, toward Cuba;

these black squares from Yoruba 

yoo-hoo the voodoo.  The king must die.

Or so they said.  Hamlet's a masquerade, 

said Felix.  Drive any street,

you're bound to meet.

You're bound.  To meet.  And.  Fade.

So the woods came to the dunce, the forest 

became the aptest stern mast, and

Hamlet became himself.  Understand?

The end.  The grim wonder was all for the best.