VIEW FROM ABOVE (BELOW) Flying slowly down to Philadelphia
Human borough enlarge after
So much farmland quilting between
Meanders of rivers. We rule this joint
Or what we see of it. An empire
Of light and steel and binary gears
Threshing the earth's surface
Like teeth. I can't help thinking
Of the black cat we feed, half her
Pelt lost to an allergy to fleas,
Her gold eyes wary of me even
Though she closes them with pleasure
As I stroke her neck. The darkness
Of morning luscious as the sound
Of her mouth tearing at wet food.
I miss her here though she's not far:
The human kingdom spread below
Not match for what she purrs so low.
TRADE SHOW Saratoga Springs, NY
Soon I must shut this book
And start my working day
Two thousand miles from home
In this sill-cold Northern town
In a hotel's trade-show hall
Where editors drift blandly past
Trying not to get hooked on the
Lure I've set with words on bright
Panels velcroed to a grey display.
Please Lord, angle their curtesy
To my pitch; open their minds' mouths
To me, that I may bring home
Good business for job and
family, some lucre in return
For all we've spent to get here.
Lord, put me to good work,
I've mouths to feed and miles to go.
Sprinkle yourself on my dog and pony show.
CAPE HELLApril 5
Here's where our bodies touched
So wild they became a cape
Where love forever blasts,
Wrecking every mortal tug
To err in lingering there.
Paolo and Francesca
Dallied for one hour only,
Reading how Lancelot kissed
Guinevere: And that
Was that, they'd passed beyond
The land of homes and families,
Their hearts unmasted by
The gales of a wild and
Permanent south. Hands on
Breasts forever and
Passion stampeding in
A hurricane of eros' shout
Pouring mouth to mouth.
A MIDDLING DEPTH What is the wild middle silence
Which scours all my words? It's
Not just a temerity of spirit,
The wells all hallowed, dry.
Something else keeps rounding
My lines to a drone. It's as if
The heart just won't do with
Saying its conceits and intents,
As if desire were seeking
A belfry further down the sea
Whose ghostly tones can barely
Be heard in the rigors of dailiness,
In the knowable fascia of love.
A tone darker and lower,
Like a base note cracking a
Skull rising from lower down.
Not heart of the art but still exalt,
Tolling love from realms of blackest salt.
WHAT COMES AFTER The seeds long cast, orchards mature,
Now comes the burdened harvest,
Blades sharpened by the moon and
Thirsty for those stemmed throats,
Cleaving the maker from his yield.
We must leave to markets to adduce
The pleasures of his fruit,
Weighing angels on the tongue,
Discerning augment in the juice.
Not for him whose season's increase
Now slowly turns back to dark
Silvering the sap's receding
In praise of slow reduction's work.
The end of seeds is not the fruit
But in the caster's braying
In cold solitude of nights
Where all sweetness finds a shore
And dives back through a salty door.
SELI April 5
We never met, though our work
Was mated at its heart,
You writing and then freighting
A half-dozen columns for
Our package, always sparkling
With fresh interest, in love
With words in puns and origins.
Alone for years in that
New York City apartment
With your cat Monty
Who you adored: He alone
Was with you when you died
The other day, holding vigil
While we wondered when
You'd file, drumming fingers
On our desks. Ah Seli, though
Your end came too fast for us,
Your smile lingers past the loss.
***
Jesus said to him, “Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom. It is possible for you to reach it, but you will grieve a great deal.”
--
The Gospel of Judas, recently interred (from a safe deposit box), assembled (it was in 1,000 fragments) and translated.
***
According to Eileen Pagels, gnostics were
Christians who had not only what Jesus preached publicly, but also what he taught his disciples when they were talking privately. Many regarded these secret gospels not as radical alternatives to the New Testament gospels, but as advanced-level teaching for those who had already received Jesus’ basic office.
“The Gospel Truth,” Eileen Pagels,
NY Times A-13, 4/8/06
***
SONG OF JUDASApril 10
For what Jesus whispered in my
Ear I have borne the freight of
History, damned for all time
For heeding the Master's call
To death. I am Judas the Jew,
Dump of Europe's shadow.
My trail of silver coins pave
The march through Dachau
All the way to the lowest
Circle in Dante's Hell
Where the devil ate me whole
For all who fear death's
Other side. It was I who
Had both the spirit and
humility to stand from the
table and join him, soul to source,
And like Eurydice repeat
The master's vow to embrace defeat.
THE LATTER KINGDOM We first needed the latter kingdom
With its pews and vaults
But as we grew the former one
Beckoned like a well
Of cold blue water, the wine
Of a later, purer thirst. Son
Of God upon a cross leaned
Against the door like a stone.
You willed this enquiry
Which unbars the sacred door;
Thy salt imperative
Soaks a deeper floor
Than the heart, lucent as
The insides of the dark,
Bidding me go down the
Brainstem toward first things
Beneath the shadow of the fear of death
Into a brilliant star of unnamed depth.
THE NEW ROME It seemd the end of days, the
Roman empire loosening, the
Christians as a whole enflamed
With sightings of the reborn Lord --
Dreams for old men, visions for
Youth, foretellings in the mouth
Of babes. History collapsed
Like walls from the waters
Loosened by those throats,
The Word of the Lord sounding
A first and final call.
All were certain that the
Master would appear in that
Empty tomb-door for good:
And he did. But spirit was not
Enough for what they shouted.
Rome was built anew from empty doors,
All visions buried under the floor.
THE NEWS O bright gleaming day on the
Tarmac at Albany International,
Where I wait for the flight that
Leads to my father. Quiet here,
Empty-ish, Handel on the speakers
Amid the drone of lifting planes.
In the Times, execs get paid
More than God & Russia's not
Playing ball anymore. Tiger at
Augusta whupping everyone's ass
And tornadoes whipping Tennesee.
Duke lacrosse players showing
How savagery is always at the
Gates and how news is never good.
Jesus said to Judas at the table,
"Step away from the others
And I tell you of heaven."
Because I grieve the loaf is leaven.
LIGHT ADAM I shine this light back of all I know,
revealing webbed footprints on the
cave's wet floor where, further back,
the marks brush like fins, dry man
Wet again. The sea is a cathedral
So wide and deep it suggests an older
Womb the breadth of galaxies,
The back of which my Adam stares
Back at me, ignis to fatus lit,
A pumpkin carved with eyes of blue fire
I always suspected were back of yours,
My lord, Manannan, totem sire:
Light Adam, my dream's porpoise
Weaving waves not water but of its
Source, first vowel sighed when
The moon tore free like Orphean song:
Watcher of eternally first skies
Sinking in my pillow as the new day rise.
LOVE SONG Love bid me here and I obeyed,
Travelling far from the lands
Of pleasure to labor in a farm
Where a few good things grow well.
The phallic chorus was sent
Underground, there to rooster up
A dark not wombed by any
Woman's kiss, no real one at
Least. That's sad, perhaps, to
The marble phallus I once
Pushed through starry nights,
A grief even. Yet how wild
And loud the fruit now swings
from love's few well-pruned boughs,
How svelt the pent-up juice
To rim my late-nightly glass.
Love bid me labor in the fields
Where dearth now scythes the greatest yields.
GHOST CRAB You are descendant and
Metaphor of the first animals
To breech the sea, three hundred
Million years ago, eking an
Eternal day exactly where
Sea and shore are one,
Scuttling up the sands to seek,
Scuttling back to soak
Blue gills in brine. Such
ancient endurance speaks of
the fixity I too work
Across and down this shore,
My sorties of fresh words
Always rounding back to
Dive in wild collapse,
Cauling deep in ebbing flow.
Now you read me, then I'm gone:
That's the ghostly margin of my song.
PRAYER fOR GRACE Lord, I pray for healing and peace
For her, though I do not believe
You grant petitions as such, just
The grace for accepting what comes.
You know the reason, if any could exist,
The wrongs in her life are drowning
What heart she still has. Now
Her father's in the hospital half-
Paralyzed from a stroke that hit
As he was getting heart-stunts,
Half his face sloping down as he
Cried and cried for what he knew
He'd lost, his misery a rain
Which fell hard and cold upon
My wife and her sister and mother
As they watched helplessly nearby.
Who'll stop that rain? I pray
You can where I can't believe.
BLUE ANGEL Blue lust, soul's woe, leaning
Like a saxophone against
The door to infinite night:
Whatever you see in me
Floods back through your
Parted knees ... It's misery to
Know you're there and
Never more; Or if the height
Of desire abyssed what I
So passionately beveled there
love, salt, booze, Sophia
In her drab grey cloak of fire.
But you're just blue, aren't you,
The sum of every night
A woman cried Not Yet,
Not Here, Not Ever:
A blue note sinking to the rear
Like an angel shot from heaven's sear.
LETTER FROM PAUL How can I speak of it? Words
Are frail candles to the sun
Which so flooded from that shape
I fell blinded from my mount:
And as one who foolishly
Looks down into his birth
A dark world crowded in
On waters so deep and black
I was drowned of earthly things,
A dry sensible man no more.
And then I saw him, a
Night inside pure radiance
So loving I felt reborn,
My words a womb where words caught
Fire and engulfed yet wilder words
On the wings of God's black doves.
I sing for sick and soured worlds
The hope of sails at last unfurled.
RELOCATION All this talk back then of
Heavens descending - the
Invisible world of angel
Hue a radiant glissading
Shower of blue gold, coins
Scattered from a towering cloud.
Did such wealth invest
So well our vantage
Changed from heights to depths,
The starry heavens now a main,
Vast and salty blue,
Rich with knowledge only
Finned angels would imbue
With so darkly pressed a yield,
Holy where most savage,
Benign in awfullest surge.
Did heaven morph to lower blue
Or is more that someone moved?
LACUNAE The Coptic Gospel of Judas
Had dried and crumbled so
Badly that the text could not
Be wholly retrieved from
Its nook in caverned Heaven:
We must read not only between
The lines but the words themselves,
Praying that lacunae
Lap the shores of magnitude.
Who is equal to such work
Who is not filled with
Blue spirit, a silent tongue
Clappering lost words from
The naked belfry of drowned truth?
Are such soundings possible
Or did high powers die with
Their apostles? A broken text
Ellipses where I must go next.
QUESTIONS OF PURE SPIRIT The questions of pure spirit
Are not the template for the life,
Though they vigor it with light
As late night slowly warms to day.
At home my wife sleeps so weary
With the hurt of her family's
Drift into hard blue,
A mordent which casts her voice
In salt's most embittered
Rue, a timbre not consoled
By the stack of I Love You's
I feed daily into the phone.
The truth of Judas cannot console
What she cannot accept: And
So I tuck this poem away
Between the margins of this worthless
Book, a cave of naked truth
Which trudges home to living sooth.
EDUCATION Without a 101 there is no
202, and so I praise my first
Bible, a Revised Standard
edition with that rubbery
Black cover like an ear.
It had a picture of Palm
Sunday on the second page,
thick with pastels from the '50's,
The Master on a donkey with
A face of pure sweetness,
Serene and wise as my father
Was when as I child I heard him preach.
His words were writ in red
In that long-lost Bible,
Coals which still glow on my
Tongue, even as I troll
My syllables now in utter blue,
The son who fell to 202.
SECRET LIBRARYThe bishop wrote at Easter that
All secret books not blessed by him
Be cast upon the flame. But monks
Packed up a cache of them into
A coffin-sized stone box
And buried it in a desert cave.
The secret library sank for
Centuries through Christendom’s
Ornately jewelled floor, dreaming
What the popes could not, naming
Sophia’s every nakedness which
Swings wide the vaults of God.
For years I dreamed of it
Before I read it had been found,
Turning a hard corner to find
Rows of fading manuscripts,
A precious horde of gospel blues
Which named forbidden depths of you.
(In 367 CE, Athanasius, a zealous bishop
of Alexandria -- and an admirer of
Irenaeus -- issued an Easter letter
in which he demanded that Egyptian
monks destroy all such (secret) writings,
except for those he specifically listed
as “acceptable,” even “canonical” -- a
list that constitutes virtually all our
present “New Testament.” But someone --
perhaps monks at the monestary of
St. Pachomius -- gathered dozens
of the books Athanasius wanted to burn,
removed them from the monestary
library, sealed them in a heavy six-foot
jar, and, intending to hide them, buried
them on a nearby hillside near Nag
Hammadi. There an Egyptian villager
named Muhammad Ali stumbled upon
them sixteen hundred years later.)
- Eileen Pagels,
Beyond Belief: The
Secret Gospel of Thomas***
This poem is attributed to Columcille. I love it because it so expresses gratitude for a full life, for the whole of a life, ecstatic in what is and what becomes through labors great and small. And the setting on the shores of Iona, surrounded by the great flood, the balming light, the cry of gulls, the heart full blue ...
COLUMCILLE FECITTransl. Professor Eugene O’Curry
Delightful would it be to me to in Uchd Ailun
on the pinnacle of a rock,
That I might often see
The face of the ocean;
That I might see its heaving waves
Over the wide ocean,
When they chant music to their Father
Over the world’s course;
That I might see its level sparkling strand,
It would be no cause of sorrow;
That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds,
Source of happiness;
That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves
Upon the rocks;
That I might hear the roar by the side of the church
Of the surrounding sea;
That I might see its noble flocks
Over the water ocean;
That I might see the sea monsters,
The greatest of all wonders;
That I might see its ebb and flood
In their career;
That my mystical name might be, I say,
Cul-ri-Erin;
That contrition might come upon my heart
Upon looking at her;
That I might bewail my evils all,
Though it were difficult to computer them;
That I might bless the Lord
Who conserves all,
Heaven with its countless bright orders,
Land, strand, and flood;
That I might search the books all
That would be good for my soul;
At times kneeling to Blessed Heaven;
At times at psalm-singing;
At times contemplating the King of Heaven,
Holy the Chief;
At times at work without compulsion;
This would be delightful.
At times plucking
duilisc from the rocks;
At times fishing;
At times giving food to the poor;
At times in a
carcair (solitary cell).
The best advice in the presence of God
To me has been vouchsafed.
The king whose servant I am will not let
Anything deceive me.
***
COLUMCILLE FECITApril 12, 2006
Last night we walked in moonlight
Across the field past standing stones
Which had different faces, you said,
In such ancient spoor of light: A grace
The ghostly councils bore with us
Into the chapel. As we leaned against
Stone walls I said what hard work
Had long been mortared in them,
And under. You just sucked your
Pipe and said low and slow how
You’d forgotten those long years,
That all you felt was love. Indeed
The room felt simpler, not
As cold and old as once it seemed
When those energies of brute boulders
Crowded in the room like wind.
“I love the mystery,” you said at last,
As if I and Thou were our future past.
