;.cPoems 1978-1982;  Input from Typescript
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=po7882

COLLECTED POEMS, 1978-1982]

.P

*Cielsong I

working together
like ice-skaters, eagles burst
free, but close as thought

slow summer river
water-lilies on their pads
hold without clutching

riding your wild joy
sea-swallows skirt wind-tipped waves
breast like the sea-swell

rooted narrow trails
each one behind the other
clearings for two minds

to be, side by side
free in the light-filled space
rejoined, ennobled

-----------------------------------
.p
            
What the philospher said, "'Ain't's quaint"

because
the brown bear mumbled
frasgility of fawns
soft beauty of does
and the strong grace of stags
cuts me like an icicle knife
so I tend to fleas in my fur







.P

*
discharged from my post
mountain stars through cold fall air
how rich I am now!

again, those two reds
shimmering against blue sky
sharing light with light

          south MOat Mtns., 10/81

dusk-darkened snow trees
as I rush back to shelter
blanketed ski trail
            Bretton Woods, 11.80

a few nimbus clouds
sparking wings of wheeling terns
distant cresting waves
             Crane's Beach, 7/79

--------

*Three Seasons above the Sudbury River, near Mt. Misery

Orange sun, dark clouds
pale blue sky, geese, grey river
leaves turning brown

down hill in one piece!
ski tracks over the river
who would dare go there!

Old leaves through wet snow
the air damp, not brisk
river flowing past ice

---------

clear stars through cold air
leafy boughts, weeping wwillow
soft flow of warm air

--------

motly'd greys of trees
chartreuse appregios of leaves
wait in pink-tipped buds 

.p

*the valleys are full of mist
from each rise I find myself, surpised
still climbing the distant mountain
                     Lama, ca. '69

------

endless horizons?
tacking through the fog
false walls keep yielding
                7/79

--------
from my small island
muddy waves and sunlit calm
the pond I live on
              5/82

*cat at the window
watches the squirrel chasing his
mate through feeding birds

brown leaves, cloudy day
squirrles at the bird feeder
is it drizzling yet?

*squirrel in the rain
stealing stale bread from the crows
bushy tail down tree
           12/25/78  8:30 A.M.   Belmont

brute power of waves
motions of clouds and water
white light of full moon 

          Nantucket, on Surfside Beach

fish slapping in cove
plop and flapping of a shag
noses of two seals

clouds hutling the hill
dark grey, high, blue, mad blue,  pearl
storm passing to the east
                        9/6/79

---------------------------------------------------------
of the Yetzer haRa

sunrise in the mountains
trivial accusations 
of a nagging scold                          


paddling against the wind
damnit!  just too hard
paddle the wrong way instead

---------------
.p

to live is to hurt one another
"we mistake, forgive us"

too slow, too soon
Elul;  new moon
loose ends like clouds

how awkward it is
this time of begging pardons
forgiveness like grace

---------
*Chanukah fragment

silver sword
candle flame
they would have destroyed us utterly.

---------
*Two footnotes for a libretto

1.  Full moon racing through snow-clouds
    "dios deteleito boulde"

    too high to see who played Haman
    Leary, a tale of two gunas?  No,
    one speeding schemes and trips as the the other waits
    and in time the scepter, echoed gold, tilts to the fallen girl

2.  she was myrtle, named Astarte, and dind't see such things

                 Purim, 1978, ouside Elsie's diner
                 Ref.  Iliand Book I Line 5
                       Leary, the Psychedelic Experience           


shimmering Sabbath
light behind the city's clouds
stores and cars like toys.

------
pensive time
in the shadow of The Fear of Isac
is golden light
   muting glowing greens
they lifted up their eyes, and beheld one another
he brought her to his mother's tent

----------

*but (suppose) the goat hung around
it  (presumably) didn't want to got ot -- "Azazel"
so  (one might imagine) it
    (eg) lurked around back streets, palling the procession
         behind the HIgh Priest's 
incomplete absolution

{This theme is developed, far more gracefully, ca. 1989, 'let usbegin by pretending}
----------                     
.p
The Death of Flower Ears

"Time to butcher the Hog!"
viz., Flower Ears, New Buffalo's sole livestock
who presumably thought herself a household pet
"the men" tied her up, clumsily
	one had the knife to slit her throat
she started shrieking like a baby
and the let her pull loose
had she run off then, just a little ways
we would all have chased her until we were out of breth
then smoked more dope
	considered the problem meta-dimensionallly
	concluded that the hcicks should cook up some more beans
	while we hustled the next visitor for beer money
someboyd threw down some slops
and she walked over a few steps, pleased to be free
	-- presumably thought all was forgiven
One shot did it. 

                      :"lacht die Wind im Kornen"

[N.B.:  I think somewhere I have a much more compact version ofthis; the key line is the last one, "One shot did it."




.p

IMITATIONS FROM Tuvya RUBNER, Ha-Aviv HaOlam; from The Hebrew PoemItself     

Transliteration, as given in loc. cit. 

Haprahim gdolim keilu
Efsar lagur betoham
Ananim skufim bathelet
keilu halev rhuam

parparim mitpartsim keilu
Lo rau et haor meodam
Gufi im gufeh, keilu
eyn gvul beyn dam ledam

lahvot tisporim keilu
hasashak levasof nislam
tsitsey tshokim, keilu
aviv baolam

------
My imitation (conserving rhythm), after the translation andcommentary, op. cit. 

And the blooms burst big as if
they're homes in which we could be
skudding clouds, soft enough to see through
as if the heart braethed peace

*Butterflies flutter by as if
they scarcely had dreamt of such light
and my body in yours as if
there's no wall dams blood from blood

Flaming song-colored birds as if
All the skies had come home at last
Laughter bursts forth as if
'twere spring in the world 

-------------------

Imitation in Haiku form:

Verse 1:

each one builds a home
that floats till it's a flower
wandering, clouds rest

flowers soft as clouds
clouds peaceful as the flowers
homes in the springtime

flowers bursting forth
into floating clouds for minds
small homes to dwell in

Verse 2:

float like soft giggles
colors that fly through colors
burst free into light

(Verse 2 Line 3:)

you reflect sunlight
off the sheets; the room's dark wood
enfolds humming bloods

(Verse 2 Line 4:)

long night, fire heartens
flames leap to the ledge daybreak
becoming songbirds

	They float, bathed in light
	We float, bathed in each other

.p
In memory:  Yudit Musnick
	"may the Almighty cause us to inherit the realm that iswholly Shabbat"

like the morning star
rays of a forget-me-not
Sabbath peace, beauty  

--------------
Notes (11/97):
	Larry Bean wrote, as I recall:
	Foolish girl, you've gone and broke our heart in two
	Nonetheless, we love you still.


--------
[The following is a less successful attempt at an eulogy]}

Axiom   [1]
	"we have it from the wise  [2]

vessell passes on
but subtler sense confirms
mast acring a chord   [3]

such small horizons!!     [3]
"no one ever gets lost"       [4]
"our souls ... in they keeping" always   

Notes:  [Written at time of poem]

[1 ] Axiom:  "A truth accepted without proof"
[2] Motto:  from the Upanishads?
[3] At sea, from the levell of a boat's deck [ie, a sailboat, atwater level] the horizon is only 6 miles.
Due to the curvature of the earth, a mast may be seen after avessell disappears.      
[4]  I dreamed once that my mother was aobut to leave, and I askedher to wati for me, fearing thast I would get lost in the blackoutside (thorugh which one must journey, one supects for only ashort time, to get to light.  In truth it probably reprewsents thetime during which consciousness has revived from the shock ofdeath (which lasts about 3 days) but has not yet beocme able tosee or accept subtler shades of beingj); in my dream she repliedas quoted.
	following Leviticuts, "No one" is given the sense of "nosoul"

----------
Notes (11/97)
Yudit Musnick was a member of Haverat Shalom, a lovely, gentleperson who sometimes, as I recall, gave dvar Torahs.
She had suffered repeatedly from depressions; and, I was thentold, had decided to take her life rather than go through another.
I tell that all only because it highlights the inadequacy ofpresent treatments for depression;  the medieval or mechanisticthinking.   Electro-shock, still used in Israel -- one fellownamed Hananya, was said, by Mrs. Gal-Or of Moshav Meor Modi'in, tohave received 9 "treatments" of electro-shock (note 11/97), neverpretended to theoretic justification; like kicking a stalled carto get it started.  For some reason, the notion of exhaustivephysiologic testing is excluded from the treatment of mentalillness; and the role of environmental pollutants, and ingestedbodily pollutants -- eg from dental work -- not considered(although in the USA, I'm told, there is something of a movementtoward holistic dentistry. 
.p

said a lady, over tea
"you see
deep; 
say tunes"
who, me?
no, stop.  Bach in sound
maybe
Klee in color
(no ribon Kandynski)

Yeats, some say, played darkly
grace of Plato's musike recollected
or the counterpoint seas of Schwartz

	"when I said to her, Mable you look good in sabvle"
      she said,
      'I look best in my bearskin"
      "but poems are rich old ladies; clothe with care"

so,
no
more fat old poems
I can't write tunes
But here's How to Do Philosopphy:
First, look stupid ("like dumb Indians" (t'aint' easy)
	maya, netti-netti, 
	"Yup, nope, that ain't it"        [Steve Keyes]
	"I dunno nothing"                 
See those flyhing jellyfish
runaway frames for cloulds
say they're Plato's polygons
match each one to its cloud (quick!)
stick 'em together with chewing gum
thaat's metaphysics
If you do it right, you don't feel dirty afterwards

add pants and a jacket for show
that's poetry enough

that was my clown poem

.p
To Ann-Marie

flower drifts downstream
not seeing her own beauty
touch lighter than touch
     9/24/78
----------------------------------------------


mountain peaks in passing clouds
lovers greet and part

"when the fires ...have burned down"
fat racoon foraging for food again
washing, see
our closeness reflected from my past
grateful, belatedly

But
  such peculiar privlege
  is anyone's due
   disint'rested tenderness; an
   honorary intimacy, almost
   abstract of passion

spent racers
post sunset blues
 
         (near South Moat mountain
           to Elaine)

-------------
.p
[Poems to Nancy Neyhardt, 62 Dana St., Cambridge}

gulping your stew, Red
nesting in crook of your arm
autumn tides in sky


---------
blue-
      grey daybreak
dawn-colored woman

strong handsome woman
like a warm sloping mountain
baffled bird in bed


                                      Fragment:

                                      ok, we'll
                                      play it for real
                                      space; your place and
                                      mine

this teardrop crystal
is all we can keep of me
if you let us split


                                  Sentimental Fellow

                                  Oh, Nancy it's
                                  "odi et amo" again
                                  I'm
                                  fine when I'm with you
                                  but
                                  drunk, alone
                                  on a cold night
                                  I
                                  so wanted you by me

                                       Tu b'Shevat, 1981

euphorically drunk
I must look up my old friend
could we but share this!

         Houlihan's bar, 10/5/81


                            Nancy, having come
                            from your home, let me say:  Thanks --
                            it was sane, and calm
------------
twice tongith Red I
wished you here to
play pool at Gatsby's &
slurp a hot chocolate




.p
each failed affair
leaves special plans
that another scarfs

[Variant]:
each time taht it fails
there are special things we'd planned
that some other gulps
-----

Body surfer

	but the sky looks clear
	he tries to keep his mind dry
	knocked down in the waves

enraged -- a trifle --
sit down.  blue-green pine tree
bay of gray-blue ice
               World's End, Hingham, 2/18/79

tidying up the house
everywhere something to do
body, mind, spirit, soul

hung up on marble
Pygmallian shapes and plays
chilled by warming flesh.

.p
CHARLENE

*Portrait of Charlene as Rube Goldberg machine 

Waking, baby
grips   tits
ignites clit
advises mind
close   hole
'd rather  sleep.
	

[Rev. 11/97.  Notes:  
Just bad luck that 2 of my formally neater poems are obscene.
It's patterned, not after a Rube Goldberg machine, but after aDada construct that I once saw on video:  push the button, a boxopens, a hand comes out, pushes the button,  retracts into thebox, box closes. 

-------
Algebra of Dungeons & Dragons

simplest case:  fairy tales
constant:  knight; variable, dragons & maiden
eg:   Charlene, chained in own-made maze
  reciprocating maiden, castle of muscle, emgracing babied dragon
vassal oscillating. 

{Comment:  Yuck.  Might make it into somehting.}

--------
Charlene as warrior:

1.    flicked kick zaps chap
      gutter scurry Lorre drown

2.    leaping steed screach parking spot WAIT
      "you ain't going nowhere"
      gobble huddle, modify mollify

3.    patient as the College of Matriculation Snake                      --- Stone drops flop!
     "you dopesd was scared to think

[or:  The Poet awakens to watch his love practicing karate kicks]

---------

Shrager at 18

Shrager, at 18, could say it plain:
"your tears came", framed in your home spun maze of pain
I'm less kind, can't
hack that blackness found

[Comment:  I don't have the poems of Carl Shrager; some wereprinted at Oberlin, in their literary magazine, Snowmen &Scarecrows , I think it was;  that would be ca. 1960.
I've lost touch with him; he was last noted in Santa Barbara. Ricky Sherover had also lost touch with him -- that was when Iphoned her, ca. 1988 -- and told me she regretted it.
By now he's maybe either trapped in a nuthouse, as I fear, or amilionaire.  
Ed Mooney, who was teaching philosphy at Sonoma State College inCalifornia, last I knew, might know; he married Penny deWynd, towhom those poems had been written. 
I'm taking the liberty of embedding some of these merelyi personal remarks in my poetry, because these are things left undone, andwho knows what tomorrow may bring. ]

-----------
 now that you're leaving              "the day love you / left I"
so little passed getween us           flung away the Wesson Oil.
seems like yesterday                     Now my pancakes stick. 

(the crrelest part is]
rear-viewing escapes you missed
as she blocks you in)  

[Comment:  OK, Shrager again:  "[Honesty] turned to bile by thenecessity of translation".    That was from some prose piece hewrote -- a short story, I think, or novella.  Quite good as Irecall.  Included:  "Climb mountains."  "Who do I trust"  "Carry agun and climb mountains."] 

*"The Day Breaks / Your mind aches"   [Beattles]

blue sky too early
after that thought-racked night
but oh, the robin
  
--------

a march nor'easter
blowing our minds to wraiths
sunny day's approach             

--------------------
         
*P.S.

just when I was ready to
mail you my love poems, Charlene
you lobbed my shoes into a snowdrift
.p

*Ciel, if I ask
how can we really
lay on each otgher heavy
hangups, hassles, head-trips and
complicated karma
(oh, wasn't it gret to be free!)
remind me
it really
wasn't; mostly only
oh -- whistling in the dark
                 9/28/--83?  

---------

it was a dull day
only, as you flew away
I --
      your face --
        everywhere

----------------

fragment:

Our bodies come clean to each new affair

------

.p
More fucking haikus  [Excerpts]

years afster we failed
I wanted to make you, Anne
retroactively

Insatiable lust?
Nope; too cheap to buy supper
"Beating a dead horse"

time I pressed her she
hissed "hou won't like me this way"
but I liked it fine 

Personalities
intellecutal affair
knowing each other

[Oh heck, a remark by Shrager:  "Well, it's been nice knowing you,in the biblical sense."]

My birthday present
I knew it was too damned cute
who had the clap first?

Debby, our love flamed
like a log burned jut for light
an Ideal affair

Though we've neer screwed
I'd write you one too, Mindy
but now you're engaged

Once, I dated a 'nice girl'.
She'd onlyh do it
after I'd gotten too drunk.

She said, get undressed
I'll be right with you
in all likelihood.

"We can't -- it's my period"
adding, politely,
"really -- it's not just today"

"You'd better go now
before someone comes home and
introduces us."

she was a callgirl
though on vacation, she was
too cooperative

-------------

Valedictory for ex-lovers, from an Oregon Indian

Manx crosing a track
along came the east-bound train
'sliced off piece of tail
cat turned around to pick't up
along came the west-bound train
and sliced off his head.
	Moral:  Don't go lose your head
    over piece of tail.
                        (Arroyo HOndo Hot Springs, 1974)

----------
American folk tale:

skunk shat on a 
stump:  the skunk thunk th'stkumpt stunk;
stump thkunk the skunk stunk.

[I think I heard this from my brother, with the word 'sat', whenhe was in college]
.p

damit, I can't                  keep
to form no more
                        nor              syllables'
hammering assoance; can't
comprehend these
broken lines
or even find reason fro rhyme
even rehythn; 
still verobsity's
iteolerable &
interpenetrating images ridiculous.

                       12.27.80

-------------------

*damit, Mondrian
didn't grap th'half of it
traffic -- crash --
                     ing
nobody every stop -
                     ing
crass ads
news paper lies
Broadway Boogie-Woogie?
Harliquinade in Harvard Yard.
                     (loc. cit., 10/82)	

 --------

anti-Haikus  (7-5-7)
                             
The Poet, back from a long weekend in the mountains, retursn tothe suburbs afster working for a day at the University preocessingothers' words and complains:

Honkey heaven
(Yankee clipper -- Slave trader)
shov'ling up bile in the hold

Nonsense; I have cheered up
ain't thinking of us.
Globe says the ozone's goin'. 

---------

*Selected better fragments:

right on schedule, I repent
my spent (or uninvested) youth

I, having proved enlightened and urbane
call others' lovers, friends and my muse to compliain.
{I've duly tried to
spoon my spleen into sev'nteen
worded haiku, too }
and ballads whose paramount thrust is 'Fuck you';
I've come across my beaverbooks but rue it
the goddesds intimates she too won't do it

----------
                   
Polonious of Dallas

*Forebearance, poor Clarence
this ostentatious Austin Texas wench's outrageous 

--------

Trying to find
another, Nancy and
finding I
can't quite hack the 
hassle -- bother!
I'd rather ----


Grace is spacey, unreal, too good to be true:
Under-
stand ("can't you")
that 
'Fools' Paradise-
s' (Luftgebaude)
floating found
about minds' mists
tipped over precipice
are remarkably snug ----

       [:Another Hestitation Rag]

--------

working on the perfect tan
Zonker plays the gentleman
	tooling about in his Mama's car
	playing tennis like the Shah 
like a brook the autos pass
carcinogenic and leaded gas

-------
Nymph, in my orisons I'm true;
there's my compassion; now, let's screw
recalling in your lean embrace
a softer ass, or warmer face.

---------

.p
Text:  from L'adorable Russe, Appollinaire

 ...
vous don't la bouche est fait a l'image de Diue
Bouche qui est l'ordre meme
Soyez indulgents qunat vous nous comparez
A ceux qui furent la perfection de l'ordre
Nous qui quetons partout l'aventure
NOus ne sommes pas vos ennemies
Nous voulons vous donner de vastes et d'etranges domaines
Il y a la des feux nouveaux des couleurs jamais vues
Mille phantasmes imponderables
Auxquels il faut donner de la realite
NOus voulaons exploer la bonte contree enorme ou tout se tait
I y a aussi le tmemps qu'on peut hcasser ou faire revnir
Pitie pour nous qui combattons toujours aux frontiers
De l'illimite et de l'avenir
:itie pour nos erreurs, pitie pour nos peches

Voici que vient l'ete la saison violente
Et ma jeunesse est morte ainsi que le printemps
O soleil c'est le temps de la Raison ardente

                                      Et j'attends
Puor la surivre toujours la forme noble et douce
Qu'elle prn afin que je l'aime suelement
Elle vient et m'attire ainsi qu'un fer l'aimant
Elle a l'aspect charmant
D'une adorable rousse
Ses cheveux sont d'or on dirait
Un bel eclair que dureait
Our ces flammes qui se fanent

Mais riez riez de mois
Hommes de partout sourtout gens d'ici
Car il y a tant de choses que je n'ose vous dire
Tant de choses que vous ne me laisseriez pas dire
Ayez pitie de moi

--------
[Comment:  I have often misquoted this poem; though maybe thatimproves it.   I get the last stanza right -- though the 'ayez'could drop.   But I usually take it:

Soyez indlugents quand vous nous comparer
a ceux qui furent la perfectionde l'ordre meme
 ... Nous ne sommes pas vos enemies
 Nous voulons vous donner des vastes et d'etranges domaines ...

--------
Imitation:  To ne who spurned him for his slovenliness

Nancy be
compassionate implicit-
ly comparing me to
paradigmatic archetypetonics'
  mathematicimagination
The Sasquatch is your friend
  perpetually tripping, flipping, or shipping out
I had things I anted to show you
a good place, beyond games, where we all shut up

The Age of Holocasusts arrived
the days of my sprintime drift behind
   ("viens la nuit, sonne l'heure]
     \les jours s'en vent, je demeure

      ...les mains dont les mains tandis sous
      le pont de nos bras passe
      des eterneles regrdes, l'onde si lasse"

[2nd quote is from:  Sous le Pont Mirabeau coule la Seine.  Thinkit's titled 'Le Pont Mirabeau'.  Think it's Valery.]

