The Burlwood Symposium

"art thou yet content
the bear is gone
and with it left thy blue-eyed son
who brought him on" . . .


The curtain waved; beige lace is no match for the sun,
the air is thin, weak and blistered;
my sleep lay never more undone.
So wakes my cousin, I had sent away to bed
who's come from antique Memphis,
        from the dry mud grass beside the Nile
        from the restless and oppressive sands
who crossed the waste to call on me again.

Much in the style of Despair without the gloomy Celtic drapes
        (the uncomfortable hemp knots
        swaying in the courthouse breezes;
        a painted carriage boxed in glass, hitched
        to blue-black funeral stallions);
yet that this angel dominates
who is fire-bleached, wicked, pale-white and false.

White as an eye fixed too long and blinded by the sun,
        molten, raw-delicate, exposed;
five fingers gripped in forehead rivulets and hair,
the widows peak dissolving in the valley of some king;
        (my sod, my grass, my holy earth!
      the daylight stripped and the sad nightfall;
      in time such things are rearranged, eclipsed
        behind a wall.)

These precious histories are foregone and grievous,
        (here they are no more and done)
left floating helicoptic through the lotus on a boat of reeds,
numbed by railroads and of symphonies
as yet sleeping, unbegun.

Here the stained glass stairs began to sink
        from the steeple to the sand and mud on down;
(deposed sarcastic apparitions haunt this space)
        violet shadows crawl like sonnets on the ground.

The petals of my own time here on earth
peeled like daisies backward one by one
        lie stripped beyond the bloom,
from their purest unfamiliar resting place,
here to the slow fan turning in this airless cutting room.

Here will our hero of a thousand days be so weighed down,
paralyzed one dehydrate afternoon;
a voice so badly broken that it stings to speak of.

White haze of the heavy August city,
        the only one I know.
Hope's blanched face uplifted from the sandy floor of Africa;
beyond the crazy root of man;
the camel's cradle gone to fire.

To where the meek, stark naked lie awake
center-field upon the searing cobble-stones of Memphis,
anxious and foul violated;
(oil weeps in drops upon the surface of white gasoline
and here does vaporize without the will or nerve to scream.)

        and the artist sings:
             When I work, I bid the shadows spill down
             from the fragrant lilac, here to frame my art,
             that if removed will tear the tender fabric of my heart.

Heaven in her wilder days set forth upon the darkness
with such experiments,
there exceeding all the courage of our galaxy combined against it.
Darkness seeps into the mortar of the temples
melting in the clay Jerusalem.

His temptress worked to draw him to this place,
who bored with Eldorado sought distraction in her overlapping waves and umber'd folds.
The fool, my captain, dropped an anchor here;
who sipped green tea,
who defiled the Dead Sea scrolls.

Let the blackness set upon and drown him,
do not mourn;
I burn to merely look onto and envy such a man,
        (my heart and eyes of salt die slower down.)
Heaven wills that White destroy with all new force,
then leaves the chapel in her brand new robe and brand new voice.

I understand the rain, the grip of battle and the guilt of crime.
I mop the stain of evil with experience,
avoid the steel and rope of catholic avenues and wine.

        the artist laments:
            silence blackness! stand aside;
            I measure thee familiar still,
                (in all thy wee, unholy numbers)
            as though were water 'pon my sweated head;
            if not by scale of purpose or dementia
            I then count thy mildew'd drops instead.

The smell of death.
The rotted hem of habits and of hopeful projects
        slaughtered in the dank manure by the flower bed.
these things did heaven weave into the tropic depths
of dirt and grime,
that give thee rabbi and good cardinal germs to speculate
in your initiation and odd-meter'd rhymes;
        the countless sermons on the mount
        out from the good lamb's helpless, gaping mouth.

Black are the layers and the waves,
imperfect folds of Death's first and famous half.
And here the lord composed his strictest code:
that Faith alone shall never earn the peace my generation seeks;
        (up on the scaffold kneels the brutal, broken Night
        who sand three hymns to this strange Daylight.)
Such a cause is lost,
a conga line blind-folded high up on the canyon's edge;
black sickles and black demons dyed into the skin
of these last eleven holy men.

Where truest evil spawns her arch-white felony,
these pallid vapors wash, forever hid;
for here the brightness blinds me as the darkness never did.
The goat will likewise reach the children with his curious tongue;
the legend of cathedral bells already cold, already rung.

That on one afternoon as this,
the dogs and leopards wail below a sane man's window sill;
      (three songs from Memphis in an unfamiliar key)
that here no color and no sulfate seeps
to darken where the cursed sunlight spills.
White does kill as will the cankerous ebony,
yet here there is no dampness, filth
                . . . no fame.

Whiteness.
As did the pale horse ride; white of Sorrow, white of Uselessness;
melancholy white.
White star and white night.
Kill the artist on these days.
His will sleeps lively as Death's jig inside the swinging tavern door.
The waters are acetic with the evermore.