1.

Minds break apart at midnight,
piece together in dreamless sleep.

Robert Lowell poaches pen-and-ink
drawings for Life Studies.
Sylvia Plath dons Ariel’s red dress,
but loses Ariadne’s thread.  

Lowell raises For the Union Dead,
mythic monument to his family’s best.
Pigeons decorate it with their ***** mess.
Plath pins a ******* to her chest —  
shockingly pink —
and stands beside the kitchen sink,

Stirring a *** of poet’s gruel.
Madness and death the golden rule
no artistry can break. Not even the careless
reader can take leave of these senses

Once they’re rendered on the page.
Confession doesn’t age well,
as Lowell knows oh so well,
 
unless it suggests more substantial fare,
say, a flannel bathrobe for him to wear
in a Boston psychiatric ward — if he dares.

There’s something wrong with his head.
Crown him Caligula; his lineage has fled.

“What does that have to do with me, Daddy?” Plath artfully whines.
“Fill the tulip jars with red water, not wine,” he replies.
“The bridegroom cometh. Turn off the oven.”
But it is too late. She has met her fate before it predeceases her.

Like a teacher’s pet, she bets her life on a recitation
of Daddy, a term of endearment,
a term of interment in a stark, loveless miscarriage,
a dark, masculine disparagement of her freedom. O Daddy dearest.

Lowell shoots up to salute the younger poet, guessing
she has given the year’s best reading by a girl in red dresses.

At this stage, what does it matter that his “mind’s not right”?
What can he do but give up his right to pray, as every insight
       slips away?

But no Our Father for Plath. For her, the Kingdom comes too late.
Colossal poetry cannot save; the poet raves and raves and raves
       into that dark night.
Turn off the oven, turn out the lights. Daddy, too, is not right.
 
2.

Blake fired his Proverbs of Hell
in the dull, damning kilns
of England’s Industrial Age.

A poet’s no sage, but Lowell earned
his wings when he doctored Blake’s phrase:
“I myself am hell.”

A stone angel directs his descent:

Fortune favors the bold.

Never discount the power of chance.

Affliction of the senses is a gift.

Invisible seeks invisible.

Darkness obscures our limits.

We carry darkness within us.

Anarchy breeds spirit.

Artistry breeds no merit.

Appropriate beauty, at all costs,
whether, man, beast or angel.

3.

Poetry births an artifact of words; we unearth them, and they adhere.
We bury them, and they fall flat — hollow sounds, futile splats,
       prehistoric grunts ground into the ground.

Bathed in lithium and alcohol, here bobs your calling, Robert:
Everything matters; nothing coheres.
Build a shell of a soul on this maxim, a notebook of negation.  
       Grind your axes.

Sanctuaries may crumble, gates may close. Press on. Press on.
Corkscrew your identity into the iambic line; rouse the reader to find
the misleading promise of Eternity in the sonnet, the sonnet,
       the endless sonnet.

For minds lost in madness, tree limbs dangle like kite tails in the wind. No one flies here anymore. Gather reddened kindling while ye may.

What exiles you from the ancients — Homer, Virgil and Horace —
springs from vision, not technique: You lack the requisite blindness.

Absence absents the soul. Here, now, forever, shimmers only presence,
only the present, only Presence: divine, human, animal, marmoreal.
       Skunks, sails, cars and pails. Sing on, O son of New England!

Day by day, failing all, fill your void with fiery
hieroglyphs of verse. Then call your duty done.
 
4.

Behold: You are not the favorite, after all, but Camus’ stranger,
trapped in the blinding sun, stumbling on the burning sand.

Only what dies in you endures.

“Is getting well ever an art,
or art a way to get well?”

The skunks scurry, scavenge and survive far too long for you to answer.

You lie down beside orange fishnets, facing the shore.
At midnight, you will dream of dreamless sleep.

Beauty affords no comfort
When you lie miles
Away from the nearest castello,
Where the owner serves
50-course dinners
For 50 euros apiece.
He hums Puccini
As he dishes the ravioli,
Recommends strong red wine
From an earthy clay pitcher.
The white tablecloth drapes
My lap. I dare not stain it.
He is missing a button,
Hits a high note, leaves
And returns.
Filled to unconsciousness,
We down the fiery limoncello.
Good for the digestion.
Good for scouring the esophagus.
Beside us a former
Olympic swimmer stabs
Her potatoes.
Her children stare down
With distorted faces, inured
To the feast,
Imagining a beast
To torment.
Their potatoes grow cold.
A Puccini aria plays in my head.
Lucca, his hometown, looms
On the star-spewed horizon.
Even beauty is no match
For la dolce vita.

The dead cannot pray.
They molder in their graves
Awaiting resurrection,
The force that creates
The soul’s yearning for
Transcendence.
We yearn for happiness,
Satisfaction, comfort, rest.
We yearn for meaning,
Purpose, a cosmic path.
We yearn for self-consciousness,
Preciousness, an open heart.
Death cannot extinguish them.
Our days are strung together
Like letters in the sand.
We see the message only
As it disappears.
Night divides the light
Into fractal pieces.
The firmament flattened by
The weight of stars.
We rise and recline like
Mechanical banks.
Shoot a penny into
The lion’s mouth.
Hear the hunter roar.
Death stalks the living,
Sticks its finger in our
Ribs. It is a holdup,
But we carry no cash.
Remember Ozymandias.
Memory sculpts
Memorials that crumble
In the sea.
Waves lap the pieces.
Epitaphs erode.
Death be not proud,
John Donne proclaimed.
But how can the fallen
Take pride in their downfall?
Extinction awaits around
Every corner.
There is no defense.
Death is a theater with
Its curtain half-drawn.
Below it, you track
The actors’ shuffling feet.
Above it, only oblivion
And empty stage lights.

I take my paradise
Where I can find it.
Sacred or secular,
Stationary or ecstatic.
Penitent pilgrims pack
The width of Las Ramblas,
Marching headlong toward
The burgeoning square
Of Cataluyna, scurrying
Forward for fountains and buses
To whisk them away
From themselves.
The burden of identity weighs
Heavily in each backpack and bag.
The sun brilliantly burnishes
The crowd, beaming with
A child’s hunger for toys.
Nothing changes
Except the country beneath
Your feet.
Tourism is purgatory
To the undirected.
No map, no plan, no
Rescue from impulse.
All roads lead home
Whence you came.
Before the closed
Doors of the cathedral,
Catalans circle, lift arms,
Hop, twirl and dance.
Raised hands
Signal liberation, unbrokenness.
Separation sends an inferno
Spiraling downward, singeing factions
Of language and race.
Yet a divided Spain paints
Its face as united,
Coyly cooing behind
A splayed, perfumed fan.
The perfect picture
For the uninitiated cruise
Ship crowds.
We cool our heels at the
Statue of Columbus,
Still ready to sail
Under mistaken,
Prevailing winds.
O America!
How far you drift
From these tapas bars
And tainted streets.
How far from the graffiti-
Filled neighborhoods.
No space uncovered.
The gritty lust for color, figure
And form.
Self-expression turned
Self-indulgence.
Tourists queue to grab
Their fair share.
All is exotic in Mediterranean
Barcelona.
Gaudi erects his towers
In wavering waves of
Nature and faith.
Inside Basilica La Sagrada Familia,
Construction workers
Slowly hammer his corner
Of paradise into place.
Christ hangs naked
On the cross.
A sacred blue light soothes
Our burning feet.

I stripped the gold from Agamemnon’s mask.
I scoured Clytemnestra’s black heart.
I wiped the blood from Orestes’ sword,
and made Mycenae’s throne room my own.

I promised Achilles no mortal man’s life,
then I felled him at Troy by my hand.
We gods turn out fickle; we heedlessly maim
man’s fortunes, his women, his land.

Do not trust us.

I had forgotten the way to the hut that I had traveled to so many times,
so many days. So many moons, I would say. But no one marks moons anymore, except hunters. And I am not one of them. Nor a gatherer.
I listen to old men tell how they felled the stags. I do not believe them.

I am a wayfarer, to use the archaic words I used to love, the words
I had forgotten, the words of time in eternity, the words of orange leaves
on towering pin oaks, the words of circles of shadows settling on Gavarnie, of snowfall in the Pyrénées. Sever Spain from the Continent.

I had lost the language of the *****, spray-painted sheep scampering
over gray-bouldered cirques on mountaintops, boulders turning into mountains in the shadows, in the fog, in drifts of snow. There are no words for this now. Bleating sheep drown them out, and yapping dogs.

There are no words for the radiance of transcendence. “Climb higher,”
I hear them say. Higher into the haze of clouds. Cirque: circle, circus. Acrobatics on hillsides, balancing acts on rockslides, skimming streams in hard-toed boots. I had forgotten the way to the words, far behind me.

I have come to a gate, a steep stile in shadow. No sheep can pass. Nothing looks familiar; nothing looks strange. I saunter in a cloud
of unknowing. I had known the words: worn, smooth as stone unscuffed by hard-toed boots, slick as snowmelt. Slide from France into Spain.

This is the path of Santiago de Compostela, the route of St. James, who said, “Do not be double-minded, brethren.” I cannot remember if I have been double-minded in my travels. I had forgotten the way. If the words do not come, which mind sees the threshold; which mind circles the fog?

What passes, what begins when we travel? I do not look backward.
The way lies ahead, waiting, wandering away from the words. Splotches
of lichen sprout orange and green. “Go no higher for safety.” No higher.
They do not mention exile or ecstasy or the straight path of radiance.

The cirque circles my words in mountain shadows. I must unlearn
the art of travel, adrift in broken fields of stone. I had forgotten the way to the hut. Rocks obscure the path. Light ensures the path leads upward. Nothing is lost. Words hold their weight. Stags dance above me in fog.

My father’s legacy dies within me.
I carry his book of rules like a coffin with no lid.
A long, grey, wooden rectangle
Full of admonition and praise,
Phrases spilling out like stones
Splashed with symbols and ciphers.
Stones stacked to heights below my grasp,
Staging the play of ancient axioms:
Do, don’t, resist.
Ahead, the future, rife with signs:
Go, stop, resist.
Resist the emptiness of death,
The ephemera of memory.
Carry stones like sins.
Pray for mercy, forgiveness.
Carry his legacy like iron
In the soul.
Weight of sorrow and disbelief.
Weight of anguish and grief.
Nothing dies within me.

French revolutionaries guillotined God at Cluny, but He exacted
His tithe all the same: one-tenth of their bad ideas tossed back
at them. The tyranny of terror, cheap dream of heaven, in ruins.

A vast emptiness swamps the nave; stumps of pillars stained black
and gray and black again by age and rain and blood. Only one tower stands intact. I scan the burnished hills behind it; they do not look back.

“The birth throes of liberty,” cried Thomas Jefferson. “Rejoice!”
Despots toppled; authority crippled for a future that never comes.
Terror and waste; waste and terror. The desolation of faith.

On the tiny town square, a high-tech bistro beams. Lights
surge behind the bar, sending out distress signals of the mind:
the throb of synapses firing wildly in the wind. Material infinity.

Old men saunter in to down a beer, and harness their dogs under tables.
Parents and students slurp pricey shots of caffeine. Emancipated energy.
Above the din, they cannot hear the Earth’s foundation crack.

Freedom leaves a sacred void in its wake, watered by the blood
of worldly martyrs. On the menu: égalité, fraternité, fissure and ruin.
Thunder in the hills. Words crash around us like cannonballs.

Liberté lingers outside in the municipal lot. A van propped up
on wooden blocks for the night. No hassles, man. Free parking.
Let’*******another beer to Robespierre. His dog strains at its leash.

The path leads nowhere, but we must follow,
Scrambling over boulders, cut, scuffed and bruised.
We wander through cross-hatch timbers, an old-
Growth forest; its crackling limbs gnarled, abused.
Farther on slopes a narrow, dry hollow,
Whose dusty patina shows little use.
Deer scamper to the water – fawns follow –
For relief. The sun’s beauty a sly ruse
To burn the undergrowth, then wallow
In its victory over life; no quick truce.
Wildlife scrounge for all that they can swallow.
But hunting for listless food proves no use.
We face a harvest moon made of tallow.
We soon learn nature’s rules are not our rules.

Death comes to Everyman sooner or late.
You can’t change the days of the life you’ve led.
Some worry, some pray, gripped by anguish, fate.
Some scurry past problems, all in their head.
Philosophy or Art their yearnings sate.
God of the gaps brings others daily bread.
If nothing’s the end, then nothing is great.
Socrates stayed calm on life after death:
Deep sleep or society would await.
Christ died in torment, his last, living breath.
If we believe or not, our hopes abate
At the gaping grave soon filled with fresh earth.
Nature seems too real; supernature’s late.
Best live your life as if already dead.

Once, in the moment, struck still and silent,
Shadows creep along the hills toward dusk.
Crows blacken the sky; the leader pilots
The followers toward the clouds, fine as dust.
The moon sports a halo of mist, piled up
To sweep across the star-splayed night, which must
Uphold our dream of a world less strident,
A world where truth is beauty, beauty truth.
Prescient as he was, Keats saw violence
As nature’s faulty mechanism: rust.
If not in poems, then in his own demise.
There’s no glory in death, ****** upon us.
But in the moment, scared, still and silent,
A darkened beauty slithers toward dusk.

I saunter through the silent square alone.
The cobblestones gleam from the misty moon.
Midnight, or so I think; the time’s unknown.
A trip to Bruges, where flower boxes bloom,
And canals spout beauty to make you groan
In awe of how the Lowlands can swoon
Under simple charms: an enlightened tone.
In the moonlight, St. Bartholomew’s looms,
A ship for lost souls; its deck made of stone.
Frans Hals, the portrait painter, will sail soon
To the studio where his art was honed.
Haarlem has a legacy, hid at noon;
Only in the dark have its treasures shone.
As dawn nears, the great reversal comes soon.

Time climbs
the sycamores,
seeking a resting place,
      a nesting place
to contemplate its passing.
No words can express
    the sadness.

Wind whips across
              the lawn,
scattering leaves,
slapping trees
             for their insolent
             refusal to fall.

All directions collapse
            into one,
            into none
worth following.

We break under the weight
               of the void.
It insists on absolute
               emptiness.
I am full, a plenum.

This phrase tells no one
             the truth.
Words scatter on the wind.
Words crackle in the leaves.

Poets guard ancient
            initiation rites.
Mystery settles on the Muse.

Silence burrows underground,
           digs for gold.
Only dull ore rises
            to the surface.

Flakes scatter on the wind,
            disjointed,
            clattering
through the sleepy dawn.

Shadows obscure Time
              as it exhales
              the past.

The future photosynthesizes,
               green, green,
               with broken
               promises.

Time weeps for no one.

Broken limbs, tenuous twigs
              snap under
              the weight
              of a plenum.

Time wrestles the void.

Time is full.
             But it’s
                         cracking.

1.
The sky, slate gray, settles
On the horizon.
The Earth, drab brown, buckles
Under the weight.
Trees scrape the clouds
For sustenance, their
Branches like bony fingers
Clawing the thickened air.

                 2.
Sparrows flutter in the lawn.
Heat rises.
This summer ecosystem
Unwittingly
Works together for
The proletariat’s revolution.
Creatures of the world unite!

                 3.
I stare for hours out
My empty front door,
And see
Not a single movement.
The south wind has died
Down. The ideal vanishes.
Grass stands tall in the dimness.
Squirrels perch high on trees,
Scolding.

                 4.
If I could tell Nature
One thing, it would be
Not about its circular seasons.
Not about its intricate play
Of flora and fauna.
Not about its compromised
Beauty decorated in decay.
Not about its exodus of species.
No, I would sing of its
Invisible source, random
And ordered,
Mysterious yet familiar,
The coalescing, pressurized
Source of our water-logged
Globe.

                 5.
I would tell of
The feast of the senses,
Cacophony and all.
The red tooth and claw
Of survival.
The colors of delight
Along a mountain stream.
All in one; that’s the secret.
Harmonious, injurious,
Savage, tame.
Who takes the part must take the whole.

                 6.
The sky, slate gray, settles on the horizon.
The Earth, drab brown, buckles beneath the weight.
I stare for hours out my front door, and see nothing.

1.

A delicate beauty creeps
Along the summer horizon.
Clouds refracting the setting
Sun in a bounty of pinks,
Oranges and purples.
The sky is no longer blue,
Except from a bird’s-eye view.
Birds sing a paean to
The rainbow hues;
Their scattered voices
Blending into one.
Theirs is Apollo’s song
In declension.
Theirs a wavering praise
Of all that is brilliant
And warm.

       2.

Cool colors mark
The horizon now,
And still they sing.
Is it instinct or
Emotional response?
Who has studied
The emotions of birds?
Who the motions of their
Ululating throats?

       3.

All is serene as the sun
Plunges past the horizon,
Indifferent to the Earth.
Who can measure beauty,
Or even say what it is?
The sun shines in spite
Of itself.
Solar flares flicking the
Radiant atmosphere.
Tongues of fire — from
Hell or Pentecost?
Helios can answer;
Apollo remains mute.
Why must the gods be
Invoked at all?
Is this nature or
Supernature at work?

       4.

Colors fade; clouds
Disperse; beauty sleeps,
Blanketed in dark.
Let us be wary:
Heat grows cold.

(After Elytis)

                 1.

The sea lies leagues away.
I look leeward and see
No sandy beach, only this
Sandy soil in which our plants
And flowers struggle to grow.
There is no sign of salty air,
Of seagulls, or dolphins,
Or seashells. No Neptune and
His entourage to capture
My weakening sight
With his flashing trident.

                 2.

How easy the Greeks had it:
The sea,
Wine-dark, vast, the press
Of tides calling the long
Boats toward Troy.
Black mountains rise up
In a morning splayed with
Iridescence.
Thunder and echo sound
In the warmth’s embrace.
Glory gilds the waves.

                 3.

Today, the sea refracts
An aquamarine blue, lapping
Lazily against island shores,
Which cradle the waves,
Then ****** them back,
Vivifying, in their
Rhythms, the words of
Infinity, singing
the endless song of the sun.
The spume
Baptizes island souls
As the source of all life.
That is a lie, of course,
Or shall we say, a myth.
Human life began on
The African savannah,
Leagues away from the sea.

                 4.

Yet we need our myths,
To fortify our dreams,
An irresistible radiance
Clinging to the waves.
A heroic hymn
Of exaltation. Bells
Strike in the distance.
Yes, myths,
Classical, traditional,
Stretching toward the center
Of things.
Crusading sails in
The current, carrying
Our yearnings
For the eternal, rosy-
Fingered dawn.

                 5.

Yes, we need the sea,
And its ******-up cones
Of stone on the horizon.
Freedom blows from all
Directions, uncovering
Great tales of destiny,
Penitence, tragedy,
Self-mastery, lament.
The sailor exults
In his salt-sprayed aims.
We need the sea,
Wine-dark or blue, vast,
Rough or tame.
Without it, civilization,
In all its majesty, infallibly
Collapses.


                 6.

The sea lies leagues away.
I look leeward and see
Only sandy soil.