EUROPE 1999
FINISHED INDEX
AÉ
A DROP OF WAX
AFTER A VISIT TO AREZZO
DÉ
DANTE AND MOSES
IÉ
I ATE AN EGG AS THICK AS MEAT
IL PARADISO/ITALIA
RÉ
REMEMBRANCES OF ITALY
TÉ
There are rewards issuing from
the wind
7 POEMS
LAST POEM: DANTE AND MOSES
May 10th 1999 Ð France
A DROP OF WAX
A drop of candle wax
fell on my watch today
and I can't tell what time it is
except that everything is very old.
I'm in France again, and all the world
is full of wonder:
from the chicken clucking in the grass
to the ease of country wine;
from fumbling hands upon a goat's udder
to the story-book castle on the hill.
I saw a countrywoman's face
that was as kind as milk.
I met an English lad who spoke
impeccable French.
I'm living amidst hazel nuts
and
deep garden grasses.
The stars here are the same
as in the Oregon sky.
That's an amazement to me
for all else has changed.
My heart is emerging from deep dreaming
into a passionate awareness
of adventure.
This is the world of my soul
where
spirit intermingles with my body's
emotions.
This is the place I heard an angel's voice
and the people love a poet and his stories.
How
can I express the wonder except through
thankfulness, and words,
and to let pass through me
this spirit that caresses
elegant
trees with wind,
that puts songs in birdÕs beaks
this moon in that sky
and a sweet silver light
in my own eyes.
I ATE AN EGG AS
THICK AS MEAT
I ate an egg as thick as meat
with yoke the color of poppy seeds
when the pollen has fallen
thick on the ground
like a ring of fire spread around.
It's shell was tough; it's taste was sweet:
I ate an egg as thick as meat.
-------------------------
A place where one could grow a poetic soul.
Candle-light; white walls;
old wooden windows, old wooden doors;
old
mirrors, old stairs, old keys.
The stately trees, the plants;
the interwoven lace of leaves.
Even on gray days the land shines
with
beauty.
In the green glades of France.
AFTER A VISIT TO AREZZO
I want to carry the world with me
I want to carry this village
like
a varied meal
waiting for an eater:
from a pine cone in a specific park,
to a fountain gazed upon by a billion eyes
through countless centuries.
Love expands, fear
contracts.
Can it be said simpler?
The spirit moves upon the dreams of men
and carries the heart
through the essence of ancient frescos
into the freshness of
winter streams.
The mind freezes and turns inward
upon the cold core of fear
as the world falls away
in countless conspiracies.
An old priest paid me the
complement
of a warm smile,
sensing the sound of birds
in my foot beats.
An old women wept
at a few coins dropped in her purse
and
thanked Madonna for a child
that stood behind me,
hidden in my shadows,
so I couldn't see
it's beautiful face.
There are rewards issuing from
the wind
There are rewards issuing from the wind
as the circles of the world
grow large and thin
while the radiant child jumps up then in
and disappears through
reflections.
REMEMBRANCES OF ITALY
Here is the famous, art filled square
were they made a torch of Savonarola's hair
and Israel's David long stood at ease
with that monstrous man called Hercules.
Here, on a scale minute and grand
is an art-rich, robust, confusing land.
ItÕs hunter's guns and farmer's shears
that
mark the rhythm of the years
where cricketÕs songs and wild bird's beat
meld with the sounds of caw and bleat.
Here, Ivo the farmer daily keeps
watch upon his scattered sheep,
and a 1,000 candles in the night
have bathed my soul with milky light:
a tender light which often kills
pure white moths which have no frills;
and
olive trees each slowly say
their olive oil's slippery ways.
Where are the Romans, where the Goths?
Gone the way of fragile moths,
for the resinous flame of everyday
burnt each empire clean away
while Giotto, lost in candled light,
painted his mind from black to white,
and Michelangelo, all alone,
carved his soul in Carrera stone...
while Fra Angelico became a saint
by carressing God in colored paint
and Bernini built on Peter's bones
a new Cesar's brazen throne.
Oh, Micaleangelo, create again
the sacred family with your hand;
come Botticelli, spatter your graces
in a thousand perfect angelic faces;
and St. Francis, with your burning eyes,
run
through this night with fireflies
where a 1,000 years of prayers and moans
have soaked into San Antimo's stones,
and an island of Lilies floats on the sea
like a dream of God that sings to me
while the sun sinks deep in a mist of gold
like visions in stories Dante told.
8/16/99
IL
PARADISO/ITALIA
For three months I've been living
under the summer scorching Italian sun.
Three months with the crickets and the krills;
three months offering my ankles to invisible
mosquitoes;
three months alone and open
drinking summer into my belly
as if it were a sweet drink
of peaches and carnations.
I've
sought relief from the heat
in the naked expanses of beaches:
the ÒmareÓ (that sea-soaked place),
then walked for days through furnaced cities
with sea salt sucking moister from my skin.
The wind has been a savior.
It has brought a little cherry popsicle relief.
The grasshoppers are slowly eating my tentÉ
I dreamt of a grasshopper king the other night
as I lay under a glistening sky.
In spring I lived with nightingales and fireflies.
Now, only the hardiest creatures remain:
the ants, the grasshoppers, the giant flies.
Even the spiders have melted away.
Perhaps it's good that it is so:
less creatures to battle for the swollen figs which
are spilling out their sweetness.
I'm
full of hay. My skin is brown
and IÕm happy. I don't think much:
just listen to the crickets and the krills
and pray without words.
9/2/99
DANTE AND MOSES
Why do poetÕs write?
Perhaps to wake up from the night;
to put their little shoes of fragile lace on;
to let their minds move with words
like a tango dancer, sensuous
and silky with song.
I write for the sake of joyÑ
that secret delight in living;
and for that passion which wrestles with all
that keeps one from breathing
the blue sky so deeply into your lungs
that your toes flair
red like roses.
And I write for color:
that splash of thought,
that wild smear of paint
in the bare breast
as the mind opens
through the movement of words;
or relaxes into silent rivers,
savoring the passion of lifeÑ
or approaching the root impulse
of a poem, longs for the naked holy
as Dante hovered near Beatrice,
or as Moses, high on the hills of Moab,
gazed through blue haze
across the unattainable Jordan.