79.

Ridge: "Don't weep for me, Gaugamela."

78. (B)

"Darius turned his chariot and drove

From Gaugamela’s rout, giving the field

To Alexander as he had at coastal Issus.

Philip of Macedon’s child he wouldn’t meet

On equal footing, nor all Persia forfeit –

Regardless of how many times the Greeks

Might trick him with their dubious tactics, he

Would flee into the mountains, the defiles

Of Media. Let the phalanx chase him! Fast!

He left without his wife at Issus, loses

More worldly treasure now as he retreats –

What good to yield and live but not to rule? 

His mother, children, chattel, troops remain

In Alexander's camp; these came to Egypt

With them as trophies; they parade them east.

Twice Alexander’s serried allies broke

The Persian’s careless flank in frightened pieces.

For when he stretched a hole in staggered ranks,

And seized his chance to pierce the Persian line

A second time, a second glorious route, 

The king, not thinking of his wounded thigh,

Thrust toward the tyrant’s chair, striking the teeth

Of Darius’ guard. 
                               The pike took Gaugamela.  

78.

"Darius turned his chariot and drove

From Gaugamela’s route, giving the field

To Alexander as he had at coastal Issus.

Philip of Macedon’s child he wouldn’t meet

On equal footing, nor all Persia forfeit –

Regardless of how many times the Greeks

Might trick him with their dubious tactics, he

Would flee into the mountains, the defiles

Of Media. Let the phalanx chase him! Fast!

He left without his wife at Issus, loses

More worldly treasure now as he retreats –

What good to yield and live but not to rule? 

His mother, children, chattel, troops remain

In Alexander's camp; these came to Egypt

With them as trophies; they parade them east.

And when he stretched a hole in staggered ranks,

And seized his chance to pierce the Persian line -- 

A second time, a second glorious route -- 

The king, not thinking of his wounded thigh,

Thrust toward the tyrant’s chair, striking the teeth

Of Darius’ guard.  

77.

Mrs. Olyphant:

“We can sit here, hmm? lest Esther say she’s cold

In the shadow of the ship. What do you say, Mr. Ridge?”

“ ‘Molest her?’ I hardly know her,” quipped Mr. Ridge.

Esther Pryme returned, “You are very droll, Ridge. But I doubt

You could be a serious poet.”

“Where do you think I should stow it?

C’mon, you be Mrs. Browning.

I’ll be Tennyson.

You are far prettier

And I’m much more fun.”

“You are a married man, Mr. Ridge. Scandalous!

You don’t deserve your wife, I’m sure.”

“Must a man deserve his wife?

I wouldn’t think scarcely one in ten

Women deserve their husbands.”

“It’s precisely that flippancy that would keep your poetry from greatness.”

“My poetry could be great flippancy, I suppose.

It isn’t the Kalevala or even the Lusíads.

It’s more of a sketchbook, clippings,

Blades of poetic herbs, or buds of verse.

Why right here I have some notes:

A conversation with our Barb.”

“She doesn’t like to be called Barb.”    

“But, Esther, it so fits her pointed tongue.

She says that Homer is her poet. All other poets

Owe him a debt or can be found within his books.

I countered that I wasn’t so sure I was in there.

Homer speaks to me but not for me. I like Homer

But I could probably live without him.

Could I really live without Plato.

‘Plato hates poets. A great hater, Plato.

He hated everyone who didn’t think like him.

He certainly hated Homer.’

Hated Homer or hated how Homer was used?

I asked. ‘Plato was likely autistic,’ she said.

So was Einstein, I countered. He didn’t speak

Till he was three. That’s perfect DSM IV material.

And anyway, Socrates was a great lover

And all the early dialogues end in aporia.

We really have to read Plato charitably.

We throw out so much if we call it all fascist trash.

We miss his subtleties and ironies

His inconsistencies.

Homer was the one who buried differences,

Denied sources, bullied muses.

‘Homer had great human compassion.’  

Unless you were a suitor or Thersites or in Troy

Or boring and not royal, or a god.

Women don’t figure.

Women do better in Plato.

‘Though not by much.’

True but he gave us logic and with that we

Could ask why that was the case.

Was it a law of god? Where’d god get his laws?

Can Homer begin to raise that question? No.

Plato was the humanist. Homer the theist. 

76.

A better instrument, a magic sextant

Or some other sailor’s scope. . .

For the seventy-sixth time I could go out

And still be caught up short with Pritchard’s book

When floating through my Gilgamesh I see

How he arose going straight to his mother

That she might untie the meaning of his dream.

Who was his mother? Was she a river queen?

According to a legend Gilly’s mom was married

Near a riverbank. I don’t suppose attended

By young Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn.

Now they’d make a wallop of an epic, boy!

My ship ain’t got such lines. 

75.

Long before this remnant we began our voyage south,
Esther Pryme would wander out so late the hour
Was very early. She hoped to see Orion high and east.
She went with feline steps, not wanting neighbors
To raise their peasant faces, or to follow in their cars,
To aim their beams beyond the yelping dogs.

Along her walk she'd half recite
These liminal verses in the night:

"There's such a tide when moving seems asleep.
           Too full for sound and foam,
When once again what drew from out the boundless deep
            Goes home."

So much for Tennyson.
This melancholy dream is never done.


Esther never saw her constellation rise
So high above her neighborhood again. 
The rains had slapped the streets and left.
The clouds were low and roiled like smoke. 
Leaving an opossum to skitter across the pavement 
Below the house that reeks of marijuana 
She bent back home alone 
Apprehensive of her coming winter cruise,
Fearful from the crunch of leaves,
Or sound of solitary drop
A distant scratch of music from the gas station 
Something in the brush, a skunk perhaps, 
The sound of a solitary drop. 
Aboard a ship 
I'll roam now that I'm old 
And insomniac. I'll sleepwalk up the gangplank
And roam in circles till 
What drew from out the boundless deep goes home.  

74.

Mr. Cole:

"Nigh over there's a man I hate.

He'd have us reconcile with coiled up snakes. 

He's had it easy and calls all fine. 

I'd make a noose of this here line

Save that would never teach him right. 

I'll preserve me like a pickle. 

So's to be close when winds turn fickle. 

And then I'll hit him with the beam of light

So all can see him scuttle in the night. 

For all his truths are lies. 

I'll eat him when he dies." 

72.
Someone: "Anarchy is the only rational politics."

Mr. Ridge: "Anarchy? On this bark? Think about who's aboard:

Mungo Park and that old lady who can't see in the dark.

Aren't we in it together? Want some Cutty Sark?"

"The haze of winter harmattan gives way to Arab spring.

What part we played in that is still unclear,

Whether Libyan intervention's fair or foul

Or if ethics sometimes trumps longterm diplomatic schemes

I can hardly say."

"Do we bicker now? Do we squander now so great a lead?

What good will come of mutiny, Mr Christian?

Wouldn't you risk a town tomorrow to save a child today?

Or is everything accounting and astrology?

We can't know what disaster a decade brings 

But the dangers of today are pretty plain." 

"Saddam had to go we all agreed. 

The doing was poorly done. 

Islamists have gained not lost resolve.

Iran has grown in stature by compare.

But would there be any talk of spring

Without the picture of debacle in green Baghdad?" 

"Yet when the towers fell we should have then resolved

phoenix-like to build again on burning embers. 

Sometimes victory is not blinking. 

What we did was strike out in blind fear. 

Unseeing justice should have been our guide on rocky ground. 

But vengeance was our highest vision.

The deaths in London and Spain

Were no inconsiderable thing though they 

Were no cause to seal out every breath of half-formed threat."

"I suppose I've go on too long. 

I was just reading this article. Ten Years After 9/11

In Foreign Affairs. I wish we had had a chief

Who could talk about confronting barbarity 

Without ourselves becoming brutal thugs, 

Say how the fighter's fist becomes a healing hand,

How strength need not restort to cruelty and rage. 

Proud people, proud land. Humbly you must stand

Or desperately you will slump and fall." 

70.

A Song by T Willy and the Heavy Tweed:

Dahlia Lithwick

That's the moniker

and you really can conjure with it. 

Maybe not with the first second 

third or fourth 

but by the fifth kick 

of ratiocination

you're gonna get it

from the street 

to the highest court in the nation.

Does your decision smell too oily thick?

Your wordy rescission 

she'll cut down to the quick.

And if you even try to fudge 

your latest judgment 

Well, let's just say you'll wish you'd had the brains to call in sick. 

So don't you, Justice Thomas, 

Fuss and cuss and hope to metaphorically bomb us. 

Don't reach for guns or brickbats: 

Sit back and have a cola soda. 

Here comes the coda: 

Dahlia Dahlia Lithwick 

Sarah thinks it rhymes with lipstick. 

73.

God has no favorites, plays no games with lives,

Healing our friends and hearing all our prayers,

Striking down all our enemies; nothing thrives

Contrary to the plans of God? -- who cares

For all her children, every one the same,

For every atom never mere compiled 

But celebrated, given its own name.

Something eternal, worthy in a child --

You've felt it too, like atmosphere perfume

Your home, intoxicate and drown your head.

I wonder what new forms we shall assume

When I fall drunk on love for all my dead.

She lets the cosmos stand, and binds her hands.

Our pain, our love, not whims that she commands.   

16.

Mr. Sartor Ridge speaks:

“When I was not quite seven I had a nightmare

As I so often did. And whenever that happened

I’d crawl out of my bunk and stumble across

The hardwood floor, stagger across the hall

And head for [Mommy’s] bed. She would let me snuggle

Beside her. One time still haunts me. I knew

I had to carefully distinguish her from Dad.

He’d send me packing. No babies in his bed.

He didn’t care if there were monsters in my closet.

He didn’t care if corpses lurked in my bedroom corners.

He would curse me back to my own berth

To ride out the squall in silent trembling.

This one night vividly I remember.

I couldn’t tell one face from the other.

Back and forth around the bed I walked.

Due to the dark, or due to tears, I couldn’t tell

My parents’ faces apart. Pick wrong and be

Sent back alone to hellish visions. Choose right

And salvage all the rest.”

17.

18.

The meantime, the while between a sleep and waking,

And Eve’s first morning: ’twas our source, our dawn * * *

Milton’s Eve speaks. No ewe for sacrifice

Silently led to slaughter * * *

And yet she

Displays an insecure and fleeting self.

Identity will shimmer, no? The heart

Is lambent, fickle, quick * * *

As she recalls

A flagstone path and daffodils ringed

Around the pond, itself fed by a brook

Gurgling from a cave nearby. ’Twas there

She first from unremembered sleep awaked

In wondering bewilderment that such

fine stuff could be. Crawling toward the clear

And placid pool, the mirror of cerulean,

She thought to touch a single cloud. A hand,

An arm stretched reaching out to meet its twin.

Leaning to look still closer down, a shape

Just opposite, below the liquid gleam,

Appeared bending upward. Eve started back.

It started back. The palpable surprise,

Her first frisson, she felt despite the warmth

Of sunlight. Although like the gentle breeze

Soughing through treetops, this thrill presaged all

Intelligible confusion to come

And in no way displeased her. Shape, return!

She hoped. The pleasing shape returned. With me

It comes. With me it goes. With me it stays.    

19.

If I ever get off this Floating Dutch Chick

Der fliegende Holländer

I’m going home and proving to my sons

Just how much I love them.

I’ll be their bosom bosun mate

From the tying of their shoes upward

Into the rigging and cordage.

I’ll teach them the marlinspike’s uses

Like a nautical Nelly. Everything

I loom, I loom it all for you.

20.

The old shellback salt said to me,

“We’re all of us like the sea turtles.

Half of earth and half the other element.

We float somewhere betwixt extremes,

Betwixt hope and horror, around the globe,

Between the poles. There is no believer,

No infidel but two oppositions: in flight,

At rest, at peace and fighting. So if you sing,

Sing of unresolved or incomplete syncretism,

The dynamic of yin and yang eternal,

An umbilical linkage of corpse and God.

Sit back and watch the struggle.

Don’t interfere in life.” 

 21.

Poor Pip, little black blip

Against an infinite sea.

He had trouble from a slip,

Or Lady Luck

Which reminds me of this guy who drowned

In heroin because he couldn’t take

The daily grind or the size of galaxies

And black empty space between the stars

The fact of death. He couldn’t handle it.

Decided sleep was best. To sleep forever.

 28.

Is this your brave idea, Mr. Ridge?

To what lengths or limits will you go?

To build your idol? What terror will you erect

In desperation? What murder will you work

To prove compassion, to ease what human misery?

What babbling tower to Moloch will you raise

In pity’s name? What is temporary evil

Before eternal safety? I’ve seen the hells

The saviors build with cowards who kill

To save their filthy skins.

  

29.

I don’t care for job-holders, those good family folks

Safeguarding private lives, so said the female

Jew running to America. Hannah Arendt saved

By just some Tiffany heiress’ son and Varian Fry,

A Harvard chap. Yet Arendt imagines, I don’t know,

The humble clerks, Uriah Heeps, serving Nazis,

And helping make the Jewish heaps. The rattling

Over cobblestones of tumbrels. Jackboots

Hammer in the hall! And the stiletto’s chilling length –

They’re nothing to the secretary’s scratching pencil

In proscription’s double-entry ledgers. The routine days

Of punching time cards. The vita contemplativa

She would almost impugn, sitting there at Yale

Or Berkeley, Chicago, Princeton or New Haven,

And never blind to Eichmann’s blindness,

Forever feeling the inner fire of mind.   

31.

 – Caliban can always ouster Ariel.

Is that some brand new proof of hell?

– We don’t need any proof for that, Ridge.

Absence needs no evidence.

– No? Then what are we progressing toward, Warwick?

– No one knows where she stops. The sun’s death.

In entropy for sure. But all of your maneuvering, all this bivouacking

Of the soul and bushwhacking of the intellect comes down to one thing:

Greed. You fear death and so invent a deity.

– Deum invenio . . . I’m not sure I do.

– You do, Ridge. You do.

– Did I invent math, space, infinity?

– No. Unfortunately, none of them can come to your rescue.   

And neither, I’m afraid, will your greed. But they may

Make earth a hell for just about everyone else before you’re done.

– I’m sure you believe that, Warwick.

Survival is the best you can imagine. A mitigation.

A little anodyne. An appeasement.

But greed? What’s that? What’s anything? Greed? Greed?

Why take the pain of one more day?

Why steal the air and breathe again?

What do you fear? Let me help you hold your breath in reason! ~

Ridge takes hold of Warwick and begins to choke him. Sailors quickly move to part them.  

32.

The ship is sailing toward a vast upheaval

So strange it seems another universe,

Beyond what may be known of good and evil,

A place of change but not of rot or curse.

The carriage is there, but not the crepe-trimmed hearse.

Each birth without the threat of failing doom –

Profounder than the first. Then its reverse

Is born far richer, we can but presume,

And intermittently another world will bloom.

“My talent’s little craft will sail in kindlier waters.” --Dante
“Go, litel bok, go litel myn tragedye” --Chauce 
“I know nothing that can give a better notion of infinity 
And eternity than the being upon the sea 
In a little vessel without anything in sight 
But yourself with the whole hemisphere.” --Pepys
“Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, 
Or not having been at sea.” --Dr. Johnson


1. Years back a poem tumbled from my grasp.
I knew it touched on things I couldn’t say.
That’s why I tried discarding the first name –
If not the first in time, the first in place –
From this encumbered poem’s lexicon.
Throw “[Mama]” out and call her Matrix.
Thus Was she demoted, the one I’d come to laud,
By a college word from dictionaries culled.

I’ll let you puzzle that and start the thing
And only add preamble-like that now I’m nearer
The age she was when I first began it.
So why “My matrix”?
Because coal-soot, scythe-cold, black weight . . .
And I’d somnambulate
Up to her barge in blankets.
The longest river in the world:
The waters of a childhood fantasy.
This family drama starts in [mother’s] bedroom.
(A poem is dreaming of a dream)
A seven-year-old sleepwalker slogs
From nursery bunk bed to marriage bed.
He’s swamped in his phantasmagoria. 
Queen Cleopatra sleeps, slips down the Nile,
Usurper at her side.

You’d think it was some Winterreise,
Some humdinger of a twenty-year winter’s journey
To get little me from my bed, across the hall to [Mama].
I can explain, can rush the fo’c’sle, reach the bowsprit,
Head into the wind, sea froth spitting in my face,
Sailing to that himmelbett, four-poster haven.
And there they lie in darkness like Antony and Cleopatra.
My parents’ coupling didn’t fail, did it?
Crocodile tears taste just like the sea.
I benefitted from the partnership
In parasitic ways. Octavian was no more
Opportunistic. My siblings – I left them to the raft of crocs.
The Nile flowed softly on. I bobbed for time among the reeds.
Egypt too knows what winter’s like.

 2. This talk will lead to trouble.
My tangled lines in the bottom of whaling skiff
About to take a Nantucket sleigh ride.
Can I hurl this verse-harpoon and hit the devil,
The doubtful whale, leviathan of the deeps
That roils downward, Poseidon in his abyss?
That beast like us was mothered in the seas.

3. She has the wheelhouse, the skipper of a brig hermaphrodite.
The Lady of the Waters will take me on a January voyage
Across the hall to [mother’s] bedroom.
The dolphins keep to a calmer clime
When buoy bells begin to chime.
Hesiod advised against a winter journey,
Said, forsake the shore,
Mend the sail and dry the oar
When winter gales do fury.

4. Aboard The Lady of the Waters the son of Ahab speaks,
Twenty years of fits and starts and false attempts,
Twenty years of trying, the lines were burdened
With bearing against the weather. What could I do?
The whale had won my father’s life.
And what did I know of Egypt save my distaff side
Declined from thither? My life was Bible verse
Overburdened with the truth and fate.
There were things a man on dry land can’t say.
How could I say my parent’s marriage failed?
My sister was half-raped – ? Can that be said?
The burnished quarterdeck, the overburdened bark,
How could it do else but founder?
Overwhelmed in metaphor
And drowned in history.

5. An exile from myself
Almost
For twenty years.
A metaphor demands a lie
Or half of one.
I wasn’t Captain Bligh.
I wasn’t Ovid. I wasn’t Solzhenitsyn.
Or Mary Magdalene set adrift
Or Paul.
Yet twenty years a sailor
And have coursed some adverse seas.

6. “You Sinbad?”
 “Nope. I sin about regular. You?”

 7. Ja, da vinter voyage. She’s a hard vun.

 8. I asked the son of Ahab, “What happened to your sister?”
“If only I could say.”

 9. Ineffable, unmentionable, unsayable deeps.

10. Crystal sluices down her cheeks.
Her eyes: two portable compendious seas.
What crime? What violence brought this?

11. Are there not fathomless depths we cannot sound?
And yet the mermaid never drowns.
I don’t believe the story of the sirens.
I’ve heard the sea-nymphs singing
Along reboant coasts, the combers count and fall
The lifetimes between sea waves,
The years between trough and foam.
The watery nurses minister to our arrival
With wet lily fingers and palms soft
From moist balmy oil, lubricious with vernix caseosa,
The cheesy varnish of that most diurnal miracle: birth.
Ah, mammalian parturition! The chorus of hyacinth-haired
Girls, jonquil-songed forms sing in the surf.
The breaker’s crash says, Yes! And Yes! Again.
The surge, the pulse, vibrations, tide. The shoreline is homely. 
The sandpipers skitter. The crabs crawl.
Nursery and mortuary both are here.

12. [Mother] passed me like a stone.

13. We begin by dying. Birth is rupture.
Birth is death that inches along.
Death is quick after waiting all our lives for it.
There’s your permanence. There’s eternity.
Put daffodils on that.
In my [mother’s] womb I was conceived in death.
In my father’s testicle was I made dead.
I’m done in within. Without it’s very fine weather. 
You can call me Joe. My dad did.
But when he died [Mom] changed my name to Jonah.
She said, Look in the mirror. You have your father’s face.
So stay off the sea. But what are warnings to the young?
I was full of venividivici. I wanted to waggle my weenie.
Don’t we all? I was born on Ash Wednesday. The six-sided crystals
Became the six-petalled flowers. The ashes forgotten.
The devil can’t keep you from the water. You launch out like a demigod.
Drowning you will master. Hurricanes, tsunamis you will strangle.
When I am God I’ll kill old death and send him packing.
I own my own debt only. Solipsism hasn’t shown itself. I’ve never met it. I’m invincible.
(Do you have triskaidekaphobia yet?)
But we are conquered from the start.
We’ve killed are parents with our birth.
We hate them for their weakness and their wrinkles.
Let loose the flood.
For we are fish and cannot drown.

14. Aboard The Lady of the Waters there is a sailor
Named Mr. Cole. He’s been up for bosun mate
But never makes the rating. He frowns
And lets his spirits cower on the orlop deck.
He hates his father for sending him to sea.
S’ i’ fosse morte is the only song he sings.
If he were Death he’d pay his dad a visit.
His thoughts are like the black abyss.
The boys all joke, call him the Dark Brunette.
But Bruno Cole will only laugh at other’s pain.
I asked him, “Are you the son of Captain Ahab?”
“Me? No. I’m your brother. I’m your twin.”
“I’m Ridge. You don’t know me.”
“I know ya, Ridge. Like I know meself.”
Cole is worst just before sleep. He has a brindled cat
He calls the Armadillo. She nestles in a coil right at his neck
And purrs him off to sleep. She sleeps with no one else,
Only darkly smoldering Cole. Falling to sleep is too like drowning
Without the cat. The fear is worst on sleep’s periphery
On dreams’ frontiers. That’s when he calls to his Hodgepodge,
Calls the kitty to his hammock. A seaman sings in jest,

Come, sweet armadillo,
Come divest the day's accoutrements.
Come, sweet little armadillo. Patrol is done.
The lion’s gone to sleep.
You’ve crouched too long.
Coil up in my bosom.
I’ve learned from you, armadillo.
You’ve taught that gentle art so well,
To rest without the least little yearning.
Come, sweet proud armadillo;
I’ll scoop you up in my arms.

Ridge is reminded of his parent’s fights,
Of how his [mother] would scamper
To a hole and cower, the cougar
Having rampaged. Ridge is reminded
Of his own childish fears at bedtime,
Of scampering under the covers,
Of [Mother] there beside him,
Caressing his coiled self,
Soothing with her stories, songs and prayers.
The bough will break. The lady is old.
He will scoop her up. She’s shrunken,
Fearful as a child.
He sings, You are my matrix,
Matrix mine
You are.

“Ridge,” she says. “That sounds like a corny movie line
From when I was a girl.
Not the words, the way you say it.”

You are a girl. The lion’s gone.
The sharks are in the bottom of the sea.
Daffodils are fresh in the vase on the nightstand.
There is nothing but a story of the nightingale
For you and me.
There is nothing now but a story
For you and me.

15. We are embarked.
There is a hierarchy on a ship with ranks.
The captain is high priest and dictatorial.
Unequal with each other but equals
Before the devil’s deeps.
Many a king sleeps with Davy Jones.
Already we are boldly launched upon the blue.
Christmas.

16.

Mr. Sartor Ridge speaks:

“When I was not quite seven I had a nightmare

As I so often did. And whenever that happened

I’d crawl out of my bunk and stumble across

The hardwood floor, stagger across the hall

And head for [Mommy’s] bed. She would let me snuggle

Beside her. One time still haunts me. I knew

I had to carefully distinguish her from Dad.

He’d send me packing. No babies in his bed.

He didn’t care if there were monsters in my closet.

He didn’t care if corpses lurked in my bedroom corners.

He would curse me back to my own berth

To ride out the squall in silent trembling.

This one night vividly I remember.

I couldn’t tell one face from the other.

Back and forth around the bed I walked.

Due to the dark, or due to tears, I couldn’t tell

My parents’ faces apart. Pick wrong and be

Sent back alone to hellish visions. Choose right

And salvage all the rest.”

17.

18.

The meantime, the while between a sleep and waking,

And Eve’s first morning: ’twas our source, our dawn * * *

Milton’s Eve speaks. No ewe for sacrifice

Silently led to slaughter * * *

And yet she

Displays an insecure and fleeting self.

Identity will shimmer, no? The heart

Is lambent, fickle, quick * * *

As she recalls

A flagstone path and daffodils ringed

Around the pond, itself fed by a brook

Gurgling from a cave nearby. ’Twas there

She first from unremembered sleep awaked

In wondering bewilderment that such

fine stuff could be. Crawling toward the clear

And placid pool, the mirror of cerulean,

She thought to touch a single cloud. A hand,

An arm stretched reaching out to meet its twin.

Leaning to look still closer down, a shape

Just opposite, below the liquid gleam,

Appeared bending upward. Eve started back.

It started back. The palpable surprise,

Her first frisson, she felt despite the warmth

Of sunlight. Although like the gentle breeze

Soughing through treetops, this thrill presaged all

Intelligible confusion to come

And in no way displeased her. Shape, return!

She hoped. The pleasing shape returned. With me

It comes. With me it goes. With me it stays.    

19.

If I ever get off this Floating Dutch Chick

Der fliegende Holländer

I’m going home and proving to my sons

Just how much I love them.

I’ll be their bosom bosun mate

From the tying of their shoes upward

Into the rigging and cordage.

I’ll teach them the marlinspike’s uses

Like a nautical Nelly. Everything

I loom, I loom it all for you.

20.

The old shellback salt said to me,

“We’re all of us like the sea turtles.

Half of earth and half the other element.

We float somewhere betwixt extremes,

Betwixt hope and horror, around the globe,

Between the poles. There is no believer,

No infidel but two oppositions: in flight,

At rest, at peace and fighting. So if you sing,

Sing of unresolved or incomplete syncretism,

The dynamic of yin and yang eternal,

An umbilical linkage of corpse and God.

Sit back and watch the struggle.

Don’t interfere in life.” 

 21.

Poor Pip, little black blip

Against an infinite sea.

He had trouble from a slip,

Or Lady Luck

Which reminds me of this guy who drowned

In heroin because he couldn’t take

The daily grind or the size of galaxies

And black empty space between the stars

The fact of death. He couldn’t handle it.

Decided sleep was best. To sleep forever.

  

28. 

Is this your brave idea, Mr. Ridge?

To what lengths or limits will you go?

To build your idol? What terror will you erect

In desperation? What murder will you work

To prove compassion, to ease what human misery?

What babbling tower to Moloch will you raise

In pity’s name? What is temporary evil

Before eternal safety? I’ve seen the hells

The saviors build with cowards who kill

To save their filthy skins.

  

29.

I don’t care for job-holders, those good family folks

Safeguarding private lives, so said the female

Jew running to America. Hannah Arendt saved

By just some Tiffany heiress’ son and Varian Fry,

A Harvard chap. Yet Arendt imagines, I don’t know,

The humble clerks, Uriah Heeps, serving Nazis,

And helping make the Jewish heaps. The rattling

Over cobblestones of tumbrels. Jackboots

Hammer in the hall! And the stiletto’s chilling length –

They’re nothing to the secretary’s scratching pencil

In proscription’s double-entry ledgers. The routine days

Of punching time cards. The vita contemplativa

She would almost impugn, sitting there at Yale

Or Berkeley, Chicago, Princeton or New Haven,

And never blind to Eichmann’s blindness,

Forever feeling the inner fire of mind.   

31.

 – Caliban can always arrange the ouster of Ariel.

Is that some brand new proof of hell?

– We don’t need any proof for that, Ridge.

Absence needs no evidence.

– No? Then what are we progressing toward, Warwick?

– No one knows where she stops. The sun’s death.

In entropy for sure. But all of your maneuvering, all this bivouacking

Of the soul and bushwhacking of the intellect comes down to one thing:

Greed. You fear death and so invent a deity.

– Deum invenio . . . I’m not sure I do.

– You do, Ridge. You do.

– Did I invent math, space, infinity?

– No. Unfortunately, none of them can come to your rescue.   

And neither, I’m afraid, will your greed. But they may

Make earth a hell for just about everyone else before you’re done.

– I’m sure you believe that, Warwick.

Survival is the best you can imagine. A mitigation.

A little anodyne. An appeasement.

But greed? What’s that? What’s anything? Greed? Greed?

Why take the pain of one more day?

Why steal the air and breathe again?

What do you fear? Let me help you hold your breath in reason! ~

Ridge takes hold of Warwick and begins to choke him. Sailors quickly move to part them.  

32.

The ship is sailing toward a vast upheaval

So strange it seems another universe,

Beyond what may be known of good and evil,

A place of change but not of rot or curse.

The carriage is there, but not the crepe-trimmed hearse.

Each birth without the threat of failing doom –

Profounder than the first. Then its reverse

Is born far richer, we can but presume,

And intermittently another world will bloom.

37.

How are we today, Mrs. Olyphant?

– Lovely. Wheel me into the sun. I come on these winter cruises

For my arthritis. That, and to listen to the young people.

“ The Captain said warily, ‘Then you think the presence

Of the students at all hours does not upset her nerves?’

‘For some mysterious reason,’ said the Doctor, ‘they amuse her. They

Are rowdy, noisy, disrespectful, ignorant –’

‘I have heard them mention Nietzsche, Goethe, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer,’

Said the Captain, ‘in those loud discussions at table.’

‘Oh yes,’ said the Doctor, ‘they have all been to the university.’ ”

Katherine Anne Porter was no rube, eh?

– I suppose not, Mrs. Olyphant.

– Now, Mr. Dinwiddie, what do you think will come of this business

With the two men in the brig? How far can this be taken?

– I’m not the one to ask. I mean, we’re on a boat.

The Captain’s discretion seems to take up a lot.

– But in modern times. How far can it go?

They won’t make them walk the plank. That was always a myth anyway.

– They should string ’em up, says I.  

– Oh, Mr. Cole. I didn’t see you there. You are very droll, Mr. Cole.

– I never been called so afore.

– But they have hardly committed a capital offense, Mr. Cole. It’s really

Shocking for you to make such a suggestion. I can only guess

You mean to be taken as some kind of enfant terrible.

An execution aboard The Lady of Atlantis!

– Ominous christening, that. Besides, what good is it to go shipboard

If you can’t ask which of your shipmates you’d toss to the sharks and gulls?

– Isn’t it true, sir, that you had a bit of a falling out with Mr. Ridge

Over a game of chess.

– I’d move yarely if I were ye, Master Dinwiddie.

37.

The Lady of Atlantis is cutting through the tropics,

Shellback, with two men in the brig for quarreling and insubordination. ~

Timoshenko, would you care to forebode?

– What is your saying? Red skies at morning:

Sailor take warning? I did not see Yeltsin coming.

How can I see this? All I can say, this is no

Pleasure touring. We cruise into hurricane.

– What makes you say so? We left Disney World a day ago.

– Disney World never existed. This is struggle for very human souls.

– And that’s what’s going on with the men held below.

– Da. There are rumors.

– There are always rumors.

– True. But not always rumors of plots and murders.

– Besides, Smyth, there were loomings before we set sail (said the rabbi).

– Loomings, rabbi?

– Yes. Warwick met with some people in Washington.

Not the kind of people you would approve of, I’m sure.

The kind of people who would like nothing better than

To rid the earth of all human waste. To them civilization

Is a swear word. The extinction of our species is something

The look forward to.

– I think that would have to be an exaggeration.

– I would like it to be but it isn’t.  We have to stop acting like barbarism

Is a thing of the past. It isn’t. It’s in the tree from the very seed.

You would also be shocked when you hear the opinions

Of these people when they get talking on the Middle East.

– But Warwick can’t be connected with any of that.  

– He is connected. His organization is connected with it.

Washington knows about it. My sources have seen him

On several occasions meeting with members of the Temple.

– That Gaia outfit?

– It is much more than that. First they oppose oil. They

Oppose those who keep oil flowing cheaply and quietly.

– But what would they have against Ridge. He’s nobody.

– Ulysses was nobody. Ridge is someone with a big mouth.

He stumbled into the wrong conversation. He applied

A bit of logic and now they want him dead.

– That’s insane. It’s like the cheapest spy thriller I’ve ever heard.

How can you have leave a comment on a website one day,

And the next have him the target of international assassins.

– Didn’t you ever read Foucault’s Pendulum? Who said reality

Had to be sane? It’s all chemistry and chimeras and made scientists

And the thugs who work for them.

– I just can’t believe that Ridge would be in the middle of something like this.

– Here. Look at this. Something he left on a napkin.

– I can’t read it. It’s Spanish or something.

– It’s Latin, an ancient and dead tongue. “A tergo grandius urguet opus!”

– And what does it mean?

– Literally it means a greater work is pushing forth from the back.

– From the back? From the back of what? And what kind of grand work? A painting?

A book? Ridge is a writer. Is he writing something? A novel? A screenplay?

– We don’t think it’s his work that this is referring to. 

– Whose would it be?

– That you would have to ask Mr. Ridge.

– Rabbi, may I speak with you?

– Ah, gentlemen, you know Rebekah Timshel. She is with the World Watch Society.

– In private, rabbi?  

– Feel free to speak before Mr. Smyth and Mr. Timoshenko. 

– I think you should come down to the holding cell.
– Ms. Timshel, do you think there is anything to these rumors about Warwick?

– All I know is that there are risks we can’t afford to take. I know Stalin threw a switch

And sent his country down a vortex of horror. What is to stop it from happening again?

The listing ship was tossed before the swells,

42.

Warrick and Rydge were clapped in irons below.

The mast had snapped and fallen in rising seas

When Cape Horn hurricanes began to blow

And drowning sailors fell upon their knees.

Then were the prisoners changed to wood like trees,

That separate together grew, and raise

The flagging canvas. Louder than pleas

The sailors’ joy to see the sailing maze

Of pine. They hoist their voices up in gales of praise!

Ovid nor Dante ever showed such wonders,

Neither could Lucan’s Libyan sands transform,

(Despite how much his burning line still thunders)

As I in Spenser’s awkward rhymes perform,

A change on feuding men amid a storm.

An Yggdrasil of needed hope! Of life!

Both atheist and theist must conform,

And spurn unnecessary deadly strife,

And learn to be as wing and wind, as man and wife.

43.

Inadequate to the task I can’t refuse –

The poet follows promptings, only fears

Ignoring orders from daughters of Zeus,

And moves whenever a muse’s voice s/he hears, 

That like a lightning flash but once appears,

Is gone or fitfully far-off. And low

My laurel hangs, my talent in arrears,

I sing the source of all our earthly woe,

And greedy, grasp more knowledge than I rightly know.  

44.

Survival of the race doubtless depends

On more than burnished verse or any song.

As it begins so, we suppose, it ends.

About some things we can’t, it seems, be wrong.

But can our faith in reason be too strong?

Too sure, too cold, too blind? Can we endure

Without ideas? With facts that can prolong

But not fulfill? Can we to death inure?

Extinction by our mere existence we ensure.

46.

These steps of ours, though not divinely led,

They are eternal steps, and lead toward light,

The Gita says. Cast off from what you’ve read,

All lies of slavish truth, all day from night

Distinctions in their simple wrong from right!

A coward’s wisdom claims with all its ease

Defeat meets death, and scarcely do we fight

To see what every sanguine sage will seize

When better far they stopped and knelt on humble knees.

I spoke to Palinurus about Krestinsky

Before the wand of Mercury drooped his head

And made him swim with fishes.

My helmsman Palinurus at the tiller fell asleep

And slipped beneath the waves near Wilmington.

Jeanie struck the Teutonic term from off his poem

That I restored. Leo Palinurus, you have your Winterreise.

I give you back your word. Echt Deutsch, dear friend,

Though dead and drowned like Lycidas, like Shelley.

The combers crash and fall near Wilmington.

The lion couldn't swim.  The breakers came crashing in.

He stepped just wrong and then was gone.

Not like Hart Crane or Woolf

But there was a dangerous lack of focus

And then the sea foam mingled with your beard.

The black and gray wires of a pirate’s beard.

Never again would your baritone voice be heard

Like Charlie Parker on his sax.

Like Coltrane two octaves lower.

Antinous drowned. And Tiphys died of some

Violent disease, Valerius Flaccus says,

Appollonius agrees.

Some claim that Palinurus

Didn’t die in seaweed. But none can sleep beneath the waves.

Tiphys grew drowsy on the Argo from gazing at the Northern Bear.

I think he must have fallen below the brine as well

Like Lycidas. Have any drowned in fountains?

The hoofs of Pegasus kicked up the Hippocrene

On Mt. Helicon, the wingèd horse tame near

The Corinthian fountain called Pirene.

And so I give you back your word,

Although you took from me the gremlin,

Despite its “verbal energy,” you thought it out of place

In Moscow purges. My wreath has nodded.

The gremlin snuck back in.  

And so we sail in wintry seas near Wilmington.

I find no mermaids, no sea lions.

48.

Enza, the ship makes through the fog, confusions

And rocky shoals. The froth and foam she plows

From off her bow, missing the vast profusions

Of pain, and navigates as God allows;

The knowledge is minute. The bold it cows,

Gives monumental pause. The sacred line

Divides the live and dead. And no one knows

Nor sees nor hears how this shall end in fine,

Neither does any shaman read the slightest sign. 

49.

My skiff is tossed on an unholy mess.

(There are no marks above to guide us by)

A fatal voyage is our best success.

Reaching under a glowering granite sky,

Breakers and gulls won’t hear our petty cry.

The scholars scold and warn us from the sea.

The priests claim oceans are a liquid lie,

Deny the waves, say that they cannot be.  

But we damned sailors sail, nor from the deeps are free.   

50.

So Chiang Kai-shek retreated: he pulled back

And hid in China’s bosom, high, remote;

The Yangtze makes a winding limestone track,

And for the rocky spur it forms a moat. 

Walled Chungking seems herself in fog to float,

The fort of Szechuan hovers in a haze,

The tattered barbican wears a misty coat.  

Chiang hopes it won’t be bared to Nippon’s gaze:

The shacks and shambles Tojo’s bombs will set ablaze.

The dog of heaven comes to eat the moon.

To chase the creature off their gongs they beat.

Soaring high they will find them soon;

The bombers to the people seem a feat

Of magic, as they stand in filthy street

Or sewage-cluttered lane in deepening night;

The eclipse protects against no fire-bomb’s heat.

When pennons rise and reach their greatest height,

The world appears to be illumed with horrid light.  

      Sinus-infection green? Not in the least. Maybe in some locales.

Catching sight of the sea could possibly solidify your sack

Or erect the nipples, I guess. It brings out the wanderlust.

It draws you on, the horizon.

 The engineroom rumbles thunderously

And you can almost feel the knifing soot

Cutting through the night.

You in my wheelhouse now.

47.

These steps of ours, though not divinely led,

They are eternal steps, and lead toward light,

The Gita says. Cast off from what you’ve read,

All lies of slavish truth, all day from night

Distinctions in their simple wrong from right!

A coward’s wisdom claims with all its ease

Defeat meets death, and scarcely do we fight

To see what every sanguine sage will seize

When better far they stopped and knelt on humble knees.

48.

Enza, the ship makes through the fog, confusions

And rocky shoals. The froth and foam she plows

From off her bow, missing the vast profusions

Of pain, and navigates as God allows;

The knowledge is minute. The bold it cows,

Gives monumental pause. The sacred line

Divides the live and dead. And no one knows

Nor sees nor hears how this shall end in fine,

Neither does any shaman read the slightest sign. 

49.

My skiff is tossed on an unholy mess.

(There are no marks above we're guided by)

A fatal voyage is our best success.

Reaching under a glowering granite sky,

Breakers and gulls won’t hear our petty cry.

The scholars scold and warn us from the sea.

The priests claim oceans are a liquid lie,

Deny the waves, say that they cannot be. 

But we damned sailors sail, nor from the deeps are free.  

50.

So Chiang Kai-shek retreated: he pulled back

And hid in China’s bosom, high, remote;

The Yangtze makes a winding limestone track,

And for the rocky spur it forms a moat. 

Walled Chungking seems herself in fog to float,

The fort of Szechuan hovers in a haze,

The tattered barbican wears a misty coat. 

Chiang hopes it won’t be bared to Nippon’s gaze:

The shacks and shambles Tojo’s bombs will set ablaze.

The dog of heaven comes to eat the moon.

To chase the creature off their gongs they beat.

Soaring high they will find them soon;

The bombers to the people seem a feat

Of magic, as they stand in filthy street

Or sewage-cluttered lane in deepening night;

The eclipse protects against no fire-bomb’s heat.

The pennons rise and shake and reach great height,

The world appears to be illumed with horrid light. 

The dog of heaven comes to eat the moon.

To chase the creature off their gongs they beat.

Soaring high they will find them soon;

The bombers to the people seem a feat

Of magic, as they stand in filthy street

Or sewage-cluttered lane in deepening night;

The eclipse protects against no fire-bomb’s heat.

When pennons rise and reach their greatest height,

The world appears to be illumed with horrid light. 

46.B

"Leon" truly drowned at fifty-two.

His editor did in fact cut the word "Winterreise"

From his published poem.

Dixi pro commemoracione praeterritorum.

46.c

We get lucky or we get crushed.

There ain't any wisdom more than that.

46.4

There is a brittle king

Fallen on knees

There is the brokensword reforged

There is the brokens' word that's forged again.

The coffers are broken

Bankrupted by the swollen river

An overflowing toxic sluice.

The druid's chariot is bogged

Like the Tollund Man

It's axletree is stuck

Like sapphires and garlic in the sphagnum.

But Caesar's longboats came with steel

And pierced the ductile bronze.

There are flames around the quagmire.

Around the swampland there is fire.

46.5

You are involved

In cycles and circles.

Detroit, the slightly twisted straits,

Between two bodies.

Along the River

Motown was laid out as a wagonwheel

By Mr. August Brevoort Woodward's plan

After the fire of 1805

And the building started over. 

46.6

Where am I? Who are you?

-- You don't recognize me?

-- He doesn't seem to recognize anyone yet,

Captain.

-- It's me. Captain Utnapishtim. Can you tell me where you were born?

-- Battle Creek.

-- When?

-- It was between two wars.

-- Who are your parents? Where were they born?

-- What happened to me?

-- A nasty blow to the head.

-- You fainted like Dante and hit the sink on the way down.

-- Where was your father born? In this country?

-- No. He lived in York but was born in Bremerhaven.

A merchant by trade. Mother's people came from Lubeck.

Beside the River Trave.

-- Do you know where you are now?

-- On a cruise. On a ship. The Winterreise. 

-- Very good. He's come back around.

46.7

Captain Faraway, what's our weather look like tomorrow?

-- Clear. I can promise you that we will have sun

When we come to port.

This won't be a voyage like

One of Olaf Peacock's but

There won't be rain.

46.8

So you were born beside the creek?

-- Born again in grand rapids

Bursting down the Tigris

Out of Ashurbanipal's library.

Born yet again in Hippocrene's limpid water

On Helicon's slopes

Where nearby stands the Muses' sacred grove.

The winged horse's hoof kicked that spring

Into existence. Poetry's birth.

And yet again I came to life beside the Shiawassee.

Each day is birth and spring. 

46.8.1

On this unending winter journey

This nighttime sea

I'll wrap me in a mantle of my making

A poetic fabric three thousand years have made

Not caring what scope

What fellowships, awards

What accolades or prizes, brilliancies,

What Chairs of honor others win.

I'll crown myself with ancient verse

And fill my head with deathless song.

And keep the tiller well in hand.

46.9

The hopless cases are not without hope, you say?

-- We need to remind them of that, I believe, Captain Fairway, yes.

-- Intriguing. And what about you, Mr. Cole? You've been quite all night.

-- What do I think? I think we're in a factory of pain. All the notes are

Distant screams.

-- Do you really? I admit there is suffering but there is also joy, pleasure,

Wouldn't you agree Mr. Ridge? Wouldn't you tend toward

Our friend Mr. Schmidt's opinion?

-- I think we sing the music of the damned.

But it is music, nonetheless. And beautiful.

-- Is there no reason for hope in your scheme?

-- In my scheme, captain, hope doesn't need a reason.

But I'm not one to turn off the tap as soon as the water turns good and cold. 

46.9.1

Why do we sing the music of the damned?

-- Because the men with the strength

Sneak like a snake into the garden

With promises to make us all safe

And prosperous if we accept

The garrison and guard-guarding guards.

-- And that's damnation?

-- Would you call it paradise?

-- Well, no.

-- Then you see why we're damned.

We have a garrison and not a garden.

-- But maybe the garden was never meant to be ours.

-- All the more you damn us.

46.9.2

Fuliginous heart drums below deck

The merchantman shoulders forward

We hum the music of the damned

In air that tastes like tears and soot.

46.9.3

My soul desires survival after death

And mourns the voyages unmade

The temples yet unbuilt

But should I be some time finally

Just half in love with my own death

Or steal from younger organs

The nerves of life?

Is it too great a wish

To want eternal June?

Could the wish blast everything

And bury us in ice and winter's rot?

Will I and all my queries be so soon forgot?

46.9.4

So all is floral?

All June and in fullest bloom?

What is this corpse

Lying in the bed of amaranth?

This exoskelatal husk

This rusted corporation

Broken factories at dusk?

Artificial gloaming

Lurid nuclear glamor

A glorious soldier

With no memory

In a cemetery

of distant dreams.

Where's Rumi now?

46.9.5

If all is life

Then all is death

All circles squares

And here

Is nowhere

I will never die

If I have never lived.

"I was born with a caul."

And therefore safe from drowning my whole life.

Besides, Daddy was a lifeguard.

My soap was a Safeguard.

Now Bec the Exile

Was Airist's son.

And he the Irish Elders claim

Was King of the Romans.

And came to conquer Ireland

But stood on the beach

And fell beneath a mighty wave and drowned

Like Leon Basler, poet.

And Bec died there

Below the Red Ridge

Where Patrick stood and preached,

Made fishers of men.

For all drownings are one drowning

Since no island is a man.

All buoyancies boys and seas,

Castles of sand,

The beaches of Normandy,

All saints are St. Patrick

The salmon of heaven,

The pillar of salt,

The cause of whisky,

A sermon out of our herring. 

46.9.7

Came thus Poseidon his brain salient as dolphins

Leaping like porpoises and tuna

His prow cutting through the swells of corpses

The great welter of humanity

The oceans of the dead

Ancient Vainamoinen

And the Sampo

Crossed the waters

Crossed the cold and lonely waters

Death's own waters were not colder

Death herself was not more bitter.

And through the night

The stars would guide them.  




74.

Mr. Cole:

"Nigh over there's a man I hate.

He'd have us reconcile with coiled up snakes. 

He's had it easy and calls all fine. 

I'd make a noose of this here line

Save that would never teach him right. 

I'll preserve me like a pickle. 

So's to be close when winds turn fickle. 

And then I'll hit him with the beam of light

So all can see him scuttle in the night. 

For all his truths are lies. 

I'll eat him when he dies."