(Aug. 25, 2006)

When Venetia Burney first whispered that name

into her grandfather’s ear, you ceased to be

a faint albedo on photographic plates

on the furthest shoulder of our galaxy.

You were thenceforth Star of the King of the Dead,

Lord of Tartarus and its portentous rivers,

the ninth planet– destined to be neglected

by Gustav Holst and silver-winged voyagers.

More cryptic than Ganymede or Callisto,

you beguiled us with your scale and your distance,

master of the Eighth House and of Scorpio

(till The Epsom Comet cleared Venetia’s fence

and left your name swirling in her morning tea,

dissolved by earthly gavel and committee).

 

 

“Thus you shall go to the stars.”

 –Virgil

Of gamelans and pictograms I sing,

of satellites with gossamer fins

arrayed with Apollo’s flaxen rings!

With ancient hearts and minds, contained herein:

may you accept this interstellar ark

which cut the vacuum with its ivory nose

and bore its noble calyx to the dark,

a billion nights of spinning in repose

until it fell upon your alien shore.

Of the Brandenburg and glorious Fifth

I sing, Queen of the Night and Morning Star!

Like dew, you must shake the stardust from our lips–

O Melancholy Blues, O Devil Bird!

We’re resurrected with each passing word.

We move about Mylapore, the enjambment of streets—
where old buildings list, their shadows diminished—
and look for an edge where the pattern repeats.

Blue incense curls from the avatar’s feet,
its ribbons ascend to his hand like a wish;
we move about Mylapore, the enjambment of streets,

by the balustrade trunks where the elephants sleep;
their bodies remember what a temple forgets,
and dream at the end where the pattern repeats.

Colored shoes semaphore maṇḍapa’s heat,
as temple bags glimmer beneath garland nets;
we move about Mylapore, the enjambment of streets,

where worshippers shuffle their penitent feet,
never colliding, never amiss;
they walk toward the ledge where the pattern repeats.

Inside the shrine, novitiates sing,
and pandits obscure their order of bliss;
we move about Mylapore, the enjambment of streets,
and wait for the breath where the pattern repeats.

 

While a butterfly in Guatemala

stirs up the beginnings of El Niño,

a young man takes a comb from his wallet,

smoothes his black hair in a cockpit window,

and anticipates virgins in heaven.

Like Prometheus discovering fire

or Moses coming down from the mountain,

he radiates a prophetic desire

which inures him to fear of injury.

He could walk barefoot for days in the sand,

or survive weeks without ever eating,

or could simply resolve to understand

the controls in the flight simulator,

which stand between him and his creator.

 

 

 

collapses and the corporeal flames

flicker long into the evening,

when wind collects bits of ash and makes

the tips of the blackened fields glow. She

will arrive soon, intemperate and

invisible, to inter her breath

within the broken houses of men.

She has been present since words and myths

were realized, and gods were conceived

to enforce them, holding the courses

of temple and water, steadying

the trees as they gripped the shifting earth

with their knotted hands. She was at rest

in the white sails of man’s first conquest.

 

The wheat glistens in the September sun,

as bright as the fine hairs along the cheek

of a girl who points at the horizon,

where the sky and her index finger meet,

tracing the long line of her origin.

She anticipates the expanding flames

from the earth, her incandescent prison,

that vast, infinitely shimmering plain

of light undulating in the north wind,

which spills into the corners of the room

when she opens the long yellow curtains.

Combing her hair by the window, she moves

as deliberately as a composer,

her blonde rows now burning in the warm air.

 

 

 

 

(Or: “Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?”)

I waded in the sea when the great fire raged

and gazed at the purple belt of Orion,

too far to hear the cries of the first brigade

and the deeds of Ofonius and his men.

My wife had whispered in my ear too late: flames

like wild horses circling the poet’s hill

scattered across the gardens of Mæcenas,

idling only when the winds grew still.

Yet I rode swiftly past the burning tower,

far above the embers on the Palatine–

I sang to my children in their woeful hour,

moved by Lucan’s tongue and Seneca’s mien

to comfort every orphan in the Field of Mars

and avenge their naked grief beneath the stars.

When I awoke, I beheld a symbol:

the night before, You channeled a whisper

from antiquity: some Roman trickster

slowly warmed his gladius over fire

then pointed north to Lucifer, his muse,

reversed the ancient order of the stars

turning his heel toward Saturn. Yet the stars

like sand had scattered beneath the symbol

before its perfect imprint formed the muse:

and there, in its symmetry, Your whisper

poured freely through a vestibule of fire.

And when I awoke, I knew the trickster

planted the images here; the trickster

caressed his gladius under the stars

and pressed his buckler inward to the fire.

Now I fully apprehend the symbol:

the burning mouth, its half-repeated whisper,

the sandal planted in the earth, a muse

scorching the hairs on our necks; the muse

singing antiquity with the trickster

reduced to broken embers, a whisper

now imbued with the blue ashes of stars.

I know it was You who loosed the symbol,

broke the axis as kindling to a fire

crushed Lucifer and therefore bore the fire

then cupped the light within Your palms– a muse

unto Yourself– who wrung the symbol

from the vestal heart, and turned the trickster

from his proving grounds. Now the twilight stars

align, Venus at the fore, a whisper

born of a sleeping Roman: a whisper

which rose behind the dancing veil of fire,

his crucible the song of evening stars.

You pointed north to Lucifer, our muse,

limned the constellations of the trickster

and charted the path of every symbol:

His cold sword: the symbol of a whisper;

The trickster’s hearth: vicissitudes of fire;

Our muse, his burning heel above the stars

Queen Pasiphaë is redeemed by the sword

when she hears her child’s echo in the cave—

not unlike her shrieks in the wooden beast

as she once lurched under the white bull’s shadow.

Now, justly induced by her daughter’s thread

and hand, her bastard son’s assassin weaves

in and out of the labyrinth, he weaves

more deftly than a needle with his sword,

piercing the darkness at each turn, the thread

leading his hands to the mouth of the cave–

soon Theseus will emerge, his shadow

reconfigured in the light, and the beast

now a story upon his lips, the beast

reduced to a tapestry that he weaves

from the edge of his unraveling shadow.

Yet still its blood is hot upon his sword

as he is running blindly through the cave,

his left palm scorched by Ariadne’s thread.

************************************

His left palm burns from Ariadne’s thread

as he is running blindly through the cave

to draw its blood, hot upon his sword,

and join the remnants of his own shadow.

Reduced to a tapestry he later weaves,

a story brimming on his lips, the beast

is reconfigured in his mind: the beast

and Theseus will converge, their shadows

reeling back and forth within the cave,

facing darkness at each turn, the thread

then deftly wending under hoof and sword

along the labyrinth’s edge. He weaves

through night, the bastard son’s assassin weaves

fatefully led by Ariadne’s thread,

he lunges under the minotaur’s shadow

as Pasiphaë lurched under Daedalus’ beast.

She hears her child’s echo in the cave:

Queen Pasiphaë is redeemed by the sword.

 

 

 

The first time I dreamt of Primum Mobile,
Beatrice led me through a silver postern
to a baptismal font and two sculptures
arranged about a primitive garden.
To my left, a brass replica of Earth
rested upon a marble capital,
the entire length of Italy covered
by a finely molded Roman sandal.
To my right, a statue of Perseus
pointed upward with a golden scepter.
When I walked around the garden, Jesus
appeared before the baptismal water,
a cross-beam turning slowly over him,
a goat’s and lamb’s head fixed on either end.

As it spun, each head dipped in the water—
then he cupped his hands to drink from it
and said, “It is evenly mixed, Father,”
whereupon it turned to blood on his lips.
I bowed in deference when he finished
and trembled as his footsteps came toward me,
gripping tighter still the hand of Beatrice,
too dazed to lift my head to watch him speak:
“Having drunk from the source, I see the end
arising, the thirst that came before us—
a flaw in the midst of perfection—
thirst that wells up in an empty darkness
to shape every story of the living—
it precedes us and brings the world to be.”