“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?
– 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.
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."
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