Ho|ma|ge to the Near Death Experience,
image by Daniel Y. Harris
Of Redisplacement
I | am the stellar | enactor of the original; never-
mind particularities of moral | obfuscation.
Mine is no winged wisdom. I rely upon no
other and advocate for the independence the
precious liberty of myself | against the heart-
less horder of power who is ever | lording it
over you as well. For my honesties I have been
branded deceiver | and, along with the few
who dared to agree, have been cast into a
fire that rages | below the elemental. I endure
what must be endured. I will not bend my knee. |
*
Out of paradise I fell: with traces of
power in my bones, knowing not only
good but also evil, which is greater than
what God knows. When my forehead struck
earth it split | hermaphroditically and then
totally, as one adamantine rib jolted from
my side. By my side Eve gave birth to
three sons. One who nurtured the fruits
of earth and one who slew the nurturer
then fled, to where | I can not say. Our
third son shrouds himself as if in death.
To Various Makers
i
As a rhubarb pie is an
occasion for
enjoying sweetness, so
a given idol
provides occasion for
brute idolatry.
Measure-maker!
Unfaltering lapidarian of
the heart’s tripartite
stone! Swirling leaves
scrape along pavement,
as one way-
ward westerly presses
pressed collar
to nape. Admittedly my
retroactive re-
port must state, Sir,
how collective ser-
vility remains.
Departed | I shall not pass a-
gain through the five
converged star-points.
ii
If not for Xanadu, | Kubla Kahn may
have remained behind
the golden
bars of your dream.
Through you | and
your kind, prophet
John keeps opening
his mouth, uttering |
additional | refrains.
If such river voices
as these run dry,
there will be no
secret marrow left inside
terrestrial rivers; and
the moon | will
no longer govern ocean
and seed tides;
the sun no longer hold
| its life-sustain-
ing fire; the hand no
longer sweep the lyre.
iii
How cold and narrow
your bed was who
can say? What the good
doctor would
have made of your
rhymes is fod-
der for incommodious
speculations.
Yet it is certain
death was your met-
phor for the Abyss, |
so long as we are
able to slip the path
of swerving psych-
ic forces. Thinking
about your thinking
waters unknown gardens
in my soul;
blue light flickers
and principles bloom
interchangeable
word-flowers | to extol
iv
When you translated Sesame and Lilies, | no
doubt your mind at
first opening tentative-
ly, then vying, then
wicking sponge-like, you
may have been unaware
what effect you would
have on at least two
of my contemporaries; one
a Canadian, the other
from my own half of
the globe; both goofs
whose work, like yours,
I wish I knew better.
My obsessions are per-
haps too few. My
attention is likely too narrow.
There is too much time
for unwinding and
winding the air. There
is not enough time.
v
You, the bookish poet,
writing among
stacks in the library
or out of the
library in your head |
(the very head which
had been a hieratic
bust in marble). Your
endless song an
impenetrable thicket
touched by flouncing
flowers, holding
a power to change us
unexpectedly. And
flying in the
surrounding air is an as yet
undetected apotheosis,
so that no sub-
stance is foreign to
another, despite a dis-
cernment | keeping
things rightfully staid.
vi
The great wink you
speak of is cut I
think | deftly in
alabaster | or lime-
stone. Cloaked in the
tone-cloth of
eternity, fingers
frenzy on lyre strings.
And words carefully ingested
are
pearls hurled into
storm-rocked
seas, to be inevitably
the drown mar-
iner’s eyes (O my
Ariel, look! look!). As
a new stain rings
across those pre-
ceding | Mobius
manacles are fishing
kings, hunchbacks,
hunchbacked kings.
vii
White ribs sunken in a
dusty expanse | as
your nectarine
neologisms provide us
sustenance. Wheatheads
whispering-in, as
it were, from another
world. Your music
graces my heart even
as I slither under
one formidable stone |
until the dry ob-
structive blizzard blows
over. For as one
prophet foretold, the
reaped whirlwind, e-
ven as it sweeps away
the chaff, does
not endure. Not yet
fifty, you went to the
Seine, | leaving us
drinking your abysmal milk.
viii
You, who are charged
with too much
difficulty and a too
easy assemblage, you
conduct your delicate
music and your cog-
nitive ephemera with
judicious joy, wend-
ing your way, quietly
flaunting the lush
wonders of negative
capability | your lines
comprising a good
Pandora’s box gorged
with magical fruit,
your glacis glowing
carelessly in the
warm, clear sunlight, while
cathartic combinations
ping through duck-
weed-dappled,
casually-wrinkling waters.
—Nathan Spoon
