eleven young italians

         i

Eleven young Italians
half bent upon their instruments

(Gabriel, Virgil, Palestrina,
Francis, St.‘s David and Joan-
Barabbas and sad Romeo
Isis, Genghis , Tintoretto even . . . )

Whose strings heaved wind and rain
across the upset violets;
changing Day to blackest Night
here beneath Orion
far down below the green, green grass.

Somewhere sang it, this I know
a little voice which sang it so:

“Snow white eyes and diamond hands
half bent in search of daffodils;
one sleepy sky engulfs the sands,
Time and all the bird calls still”

An album of some pagent (from some time)
on just such a day
become suspended,
gilt licked by a cool gold star, upended
Death
. . just like that.

        ii
The young corn widowed in its icy husk of blue
Knelt down to pray
And thus three years
Did bend his cob a grievous way

Yet that one dove grey afternoon
Weightless,
Ascending drew the air like a balloon
Up from the snow glazed field and hill
Black umber’d woods
The glycerin shade
And the thrush in the wicket

Yet all these things
In a fabled wink
Had given way to mark
Just such a path between the crops and rows
And there the orange hinges of St. David’s door.

Clouded shivers herd the thunderous April thaw
Antique and blistering
News dropped down from Paradise
Like pebbles on the straw
(and changed the Night to brightest Day)

St. David, busy at his clocks and pressing wine
Called to his flock
( . . . Were busy threshing heather of their own)

And thus the knife dropped gently in the sink
Nearby the first tomatoes of the spring
Nearby the crocus and the rowdy plover-ing.

Angels and good Catholics set thy bows
And measure for him how the gate
Swings back and forth in equal dose.

Packed to hike the field and hill
He drew the shutters, bolted down the door
Burned the timbers, razed the still
Collected every hand-cut nail and fill’d
His empty pockets with these things.

A city on this site hangs in the sun-filled air
And so to claim it
Turned his back and left this place
The moon remained
(to till those muddy rows companionless.)

Thus stripped
each fair vision and remembrance
from the sleeping stones are peeled
then creased in twenty-seven folds
(these he tucked into his heart)
A face so hazardous,
eye witnessed in the several color Polaroids
of Saints entranced, who loved their rose
yet fear the pot is built
of silver’d and familiar cameos.

        iii
Where can he place
his sad, unhappy face;
disguised from hungry angels
who have set their fiddles down
upon the holiest of ground
excited and allured by quaint skullduggery?

A pink subpoena for his dreams
And cameras for the halls and doors
(will it be said that Harry was the finest husband in the fatherland?)

Seek ye Gabriel and sweet Isis
for the answers they would give,
ask me Thursday how I measure
what a man must be to live . . .

Yet that an honest man could love
ten thousand wives within a month
is not the subject of the stars
nor in the writings of the monks.

But started off instead, the trail obscured
by dust unsettled into faint heroic shapes
behind the sloped-backed mare and to the forest edge
he made off to Cumber-land,
whereon the prairie rests inside the hollow
where the mountain gapes.

Somewhere sings it, this I know
a tender voice who sings it so:

“bring on thy fears and set your furrow’d brow
then loose your mare unto the dotted hills.
thou art now the host of every pleasant sight and sound;
for thee the cuckoo and the killdeer shrills”

        iiii
Good night Barabbas, take thee off and into bed
tell young Virgil now to change his spots,
drop his costume by the village head.
All you numbered on the warrant raise thy strings
retreat to let the weary lovers love
and clamp the honest virtues of the harp
tight beneath the soft pink arm and chin.

The tall leeks anchored in their bulbs
rise in defense outside the cottage door
(shame lies wasted and disfigured,
left to beg for mussels by the shore)

Myself, content
to stalk the deepest blue of night
unsure of how the chimney smoke will pour;
ageless in my multi-colored tent,
(who questions knows you all the more.)

blue

The change lay still curled
on a thin stretched woven blanket,
where last evening
England's oldest and most hurtful words
have cut themselves another nest;
frozen patches where my Jenny wept
exposed on one too many
moon stained winter nights.

These hours, when the mere anguished
find sleep,
(dim glowing butts, dead cigarettes);
when every finger of the wind trains nickel horn pipes
through the cracked, unpainted window sill
and the cruel blue light

Emily, my little lamb inside that decorated crib,
who lured persistant catalogues of deaf,
demented quiet;
(the antique glossary of medicines i most fear)
coughing like a fortune teller on her last
precocious holiday of faith and charm;
who curled the sallow quilt inside her acorn fists.

Through the clever spin of cradle bars and bows
the midnight doldrums of her innocence convulsed
into a dirge of wisdom,
(. . . were blue-bells in the clutch of strife.)
this vision through a perfect crystal
pressed too hard against the husk of life.
And from this tiny cradle where I witnessed holy things
tossed the many pink May-berries to the ground
and grew instead unsettled petals
naked on the vine.

Who should gain my house that doesn't ring the bell,
who saps these nights with meek unrest?
There inside the bassinet, your malicious cell,
young histories and my daffodil unraveling
'ere the morning had the fairest chance to turn
the hill face into spectacle.

the bells

the deification
(by your own definition)
failed to gain notice in a manner befitting;
i won fabulous at that specific table
last night
yet slept through midday seething.

'was not the bells or barnacles
thrown up by her watery engine pipes
stoked, reciprocal and
gaining beachhead-
not the clams

but a haze of understanding
(great ships and barges in a fog far off Jones Beach)
passing untouched through the fine mesh
of book pages
and lionized light from a small hole in the shade
midday,
upsetting victory with a tax.

advice

. . . follow the yellow cat to a place in the garden;
where the crocus yawns.
drop your keys here, in a hole with a shovel.
its time to friend yourself again.

courier

Purer than the fresh spiked junkie, caged
can heaven to;
distressed gold bags of glycerin and smelted
poppy chills,
(wine frees the dour Eucharist.)
Sarcastic dropper squeeze
and tidy ebb;
Love would not glorious is
a spider web.

Look for combinations in a settled water drop
for flags along the straight sea's edge . . .
come see how Autumn violates the spectrum
with her glue.
(the sky a bell jar just as well)
Where are they every rushing to?

Grey fountains fan medieval in restrained trajections
torn into sphere'd halo threads
are atomized below : the prickled pool;
and dear old Butterpro! turned ecclesiastic with his knife
there adds a serif, trims the heavy weighted moon;
and want for honesty? . . . this is my Courier!

Yon handle heavy topped in glass, reflexes:
here stare gaunt cheek bones wreathed in chin.
Yours but cannot in two places solve humanity:
- one steams in the winter crow-call myrtle,
rang a far off gun
- the other debtless in an unforgiven afternoon
of truth;

What scratches proud fretting narrarations,
what balances the keys, the combinations
who digs a hole into the waves: mythology
(laceless footed toes in twilight sleep, anon)
yet still no pulse.
The Very-lock is realer than the sun.