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Monday, September 24, 2012

Fast Day 277 September 22 2012 {My Daughter From Eurasia}





My Daughter From Eurasia

So high I am on acid, so drunk and falling down: O, Eurasia!
Intoxicating cider from faithful Alma Ata -
grandfather and grandmother apple of the Kazakhstan!
O, fair one! The orchards of your soul!
Hesperides!
Maid of Inis-Avalon!
The spray of your hair and the plumule of your sleeping eyes!

Intermixing of elixirs of the sov’reign fruits, liquor
smoke, and tablets of wandering religions, where
Buddhists from Cathay rejoiced with wand’ring Christianity!
Peaceful science, cultivars resplendent!
The Blessed Isles!
Learned, curious, romantic!
Astronomy of your beauty and music of your voice!
--
notes

My attempt to out-Coleridge Coleridge.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Fast Day 276 September 15 2012 {Ramses of Egypt Entreats His Coy Lover: Long Version}




Ramses of Egypt Entreats His Coy Lover:  Long Version

I sensed your presence before I ever
saw you standing: fine aroma, chestnut
eyes, the modest tread of your feet coming
across the parquet floor through labyrinths
mosaic of lapis lazuli tiles;
Ah, long ago… long ago… so much changed!
Where is the king before whom a thousand
nations bent the sweaty and dusted knee?
My body dead so long that I cannot
tell the difference between this limestone
and divine wind of ibis taking wing!
Nor the mute sphinx and all my vibrant dreams!
O, God is great!... filled with Mercy… and Love:

When I first took your pearled heart in my hand
to breach the kernel of the nut of fire
that lay within that ruby pyramid;
to melt the ice from your pure, snowy breasts!
to plunder the delta of Avaris!
love no longer subdued to the haughty
shepherd kings of your remote horizon brow…
my back cut by long nails… our wounds, not deep… a few…
exhausted we lay… scorpions and asps…
breathing hard… memorious pains of love… !

Were you not the firmament of the sky?
And did you, O, star!, not condemn me to
endless pilgrimage through the Sinai’s wastes?
Exiled from love, where does one find to run?
Love is not a trifle that grows and ebbs
like the Father Nile before and after Sirius
has run his speedy course through the posterns
of the city in the sky of darkest night:
Love desires a mansion for it’s soul’s rest!
The eternity  in mankind is love,
and love itself for all of mankind
shamelessly does lust and like a river
overflows and it cannot be constrained,
and once love has passed us by, it will then
be lost at sea, or evaporated
in the desert, or sink through pervious
stone to the unseen world of aquifers;
then shall our mortal eyes shine like weeping
scarabs no longer affine to the sun…
all our days obtuse angles of winter..
I wait a thousand, thousand years for Spring!
In obscurity of sand and stone where
everything seems dull pain and slow passage-
creeping metronome of nature’s cruelty!
Yet, we shall be reborn, my love, my love!
And we shall sweep away the wasteland sand
and hidden fountains will cleanse the portals
and I shall bring again golden bracelets
to clothe you once again within their bands:
silks and hair, silver tongue, agates and eyes!

--
notes

Avaris                     
the capital of the Hyksos on the eastern part of the Nile delta

Shepherd Kings      
ancient translation of the name Hyksos

memorious              
the pains are filled with memory, not that they are memorable

Sirius                     
the star by whose movement the annual Nile flood was reckoned

Friday, September 7, 2012

Fast Day 275 September 7 2012 {Labor Day 2012}



Labor Day  2012


The rain will descend,
then comes the drought;
we’ll take up our canoe and carry it
to the garage where it will winter,
but spring follows the snow
and we shall put it into the water again
so we may come and go by the river
and visit the islands,
and all the places
where the wild things are
awaiting us…

The sun bakes the ground,
then come the rain;
we’ll harrow and scythe the gardens again
and leave them to hibernate;
the hibiscus will bloom again
and the deer will eat the hasta down to stems;
we may not return to the river
this time… this future
the sun rising in new horizon,
and you and I have defeated
the alien gods…

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Fast Day 274 September 1 2012 {The Film "Hugo"and a Political Convention}



The Film "Hugo" and a Political Convention

The very failures to which they lead,
through causes unforeseen,
are as beautiful as stunning success,
when shown upon the screen.

The arcana of the cinema,
applied by chemistry,
through deeply laid principles and appliance
resolve our inquiry.

Roman rotations upon the clock,
white arms of odalisque,
and Hero's pipes join clepsydra -
around the temple whisk.

The automaton convention claps
in synchronized adulation,
and smiles break on well-oiled lips
to mislead a nation.
--