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The Triumph of Death at Pisa

I


The Tower

Time locus is in the body's person

Corpus force released at death

Sonic throttles             modulates

As distance darts (diminishing) between

Pisan pomme and earth buried green

Cemetery marble name slabs

Given by the living as monument to

Living science and progressive unseen

Advance of inclining generations


All those dead,

                        the tower,

                                            wanting to lie down.


Off balance wavering, a priori sight,

Tips out over, oblique and back, probes

Where shadows rain.


                                    Reason pendulates

when death is near,

                           swings its

natal line. 



Campo Santo                            Trionofo della Morte

Savage odors gaff the body's gravity,

Drive back (trip) ancestral feet.

Gay lords and gray robed ladies tilt away.

Their thin hounds turn, sniff, test the air

And Death steps forth             its bare locus empty

Where understanding rights the casque of

accidence

and rat discovery

whiskers death

laps newness

that is veritas

in skull chalk paws

The visitor sees vertically                     sees

The horizontal dead


                  the fresco freckled

                  plasterings 


imagines all that Death let stand

(master stroke, residuum in form remain)

                                                         Galileo leans

                                                   on the world's

                                                bell and Death

                                            spins in in

                                         terrestrial

                                     heresy

The blistered walls decay,

Leave unreaped fields

Perfidious in broken swatches

Slatted off continents

Viscid on moribund walls

Satan marauding among

Death's peeled cosmogonies.


Wrought studded the ponderous doors

Stand dumbly in the way

The fervid expanse of newsod lawn

Makeroom nature for the dead-in-stone

And the numbing loss of place.

II



Campo Santo

Wind turned now

In ice and air

The frost iron forms

Interstice of space

And framed landscape



The flight of dipping birds outside the arched windows

Beats a rhythm on the waves of the lake of the air



The river a blare of light

Trumpeting against stone

Resounding on the water's glare

The silvered flight's staggered flash

Of doom.



The textured twilight

Sweeps the tower top

Sky and cloud abloom

With moment of reeling radiance

Investing the earth's slight

Tilt with paradise and

Holy soil from Jerusalem

Sequestered in silence

For the sleep of death.



Socrates' wish: To die knowing something more.



The Leaning House of Torun

Where Copernicus was born.

Coincident vision of revolution

Of imbalance born.

Nothing but death

is the battle

.

No war but this

uneven cannonade.



Frontier becomes what it has always been:


historical declivity

in time.

And we depopulate the dead

To depersonalize Death.


The mongrelized dead crawl

Horizontally up the Baptistery walls

Crowd the Romanesque doors


He comes to me in forest night

Like moon beams strike with darkest light

The jagged bark of trees.


That is the way you are in scarcity

And pavid night spreads the lawns with worms.

Odor of mushrooms in fire.


It is lonely here at Death's feet

With fullness trussed in thought,

My dark hair wreathed in guardian

Care about the roots and stones,

Your back pressed against my knees,

Your head buried in my declivities.


So that thirsty nature might her wet world

Renew and fill to standing all her vesseled

Landscapes' parched desire.


Where her conscripts make the watching

Sheep, the cattled hillsides sleep.


Shards of darkness

Where Death's shadow

Moves the land.

      III



         Natural View

as the nearly new

awaits the further side

every window holds blue pattern

of its counterpane

the element of surprise

waits awhile within

its skies the trees

of hunter green

the cypress boughs

deeper upon the light



bring forth

their branches

their branches bring forth

red of bark

suitable to their

poise

it were sumptuousness

indeed rich reprise

to muscle more their

dignity and couch

the eyes

the eyes couch



upon the bed

of memory

here their jaggedness

alerts premonitory

residence in earth

so like the master mark

to hit it so

wide but true

tapestry

permutation

through and through



through

and beyond the blue

yonder imagination

incites the serenity

it invites

incites the mind to inculcate

its version connatural

with what we feel

we feel

innate passion

inbred love

love that we see



see that we

love

consanguinity

of art and art of love

nature the counterpart

to our desire

desert

by a waterfall

baroque thirst wander

lust among the trees



springtide

species of our grounding

brook spring pool

lake of our inheritance

genesis by doing

going

among plants animals

swiftly starring streams

watershed

of our delight

delight



below the plain I

see the lion lope

resolute

to his prey

obscured by dust

devils and drought

zebras

turn in a circle swirl

among whirled stripes

tremble

like the trees shudder

shimmer in the small hope

of wind

IV



Elegy for a Beauty Unknown

Artemis                Astarte                Aphrodite


Look on stone and blend brushed hair

Spread in grey oscuro air


about the cornice of a room


She startles purity and some unwashed pain

For an affinity of endings

              should not see


Fair blushed beauty and what comes before

Energy of movement against the tactile fluted jamb


augury in bones


Two days she lay among

The cottered parts of human

Hatchery


of bones and stone.


Here above unknown

What shall be known beneath.


Rain stains gray stone

Spreads downward from her hair

Fan matted in vibrant grass

Green darkens the cenotaph

Above her corpse because

She could not wait her own.


Then to rattle in the sage surveyed dawn

Matched in lime

Stretched fire

Forms in cloud close bodies


Gather to rightness

Execute for loss


The grave      gathered lot      trampled


Nodding and later


                   redburnt the glowered

                   darkness


                   acacias in lustre

                   flourishing halflight



Blind even for Death

For the closed heart 


Whose burning fondness for centricity

Residue of Iris in mind

Bridges the chasms that deepen in mourning

And falter after famine filled

Galileo lucky even in his numbers


4      9     10      15


Proportion of the degree of speed

To arrive by chance at the parabola

Of gravity that serves nature's need. 


Toute mort doit estre de mesmes sa vie.

Nous ne devenons pas autres pour mourir.


Every death ought to hold proportion

With the life before it.

We do not become others for dying.


Montaigne, "Of Cruelty" 


A hushed propensity for weariness

Weighs heavily on my mind:

Stoneweight

Lifted by a flight of birds. 


Death that comes late is never tardy fare.


Morte cavent animae, semper que priore relicta

Sede, novis dormini vivunt, habitantque receptae.


Souls never die, but leaving one dwelling

Are received into and inhabit a new.


Ovid, Metamorphoses, xv, 158

V


The Triumph of Death:


Hell Mouth

Spoteyed arms, greedy Beelzebub gathers sinners in harvest

Into his Hell Mouth, gaping bowels of eternal gestation

Damnation of endless peristalsis to emerge,

Impaled on hooks.

VI



MauvaisesTerres/The Badlands

An eye through the window

           looks of caught-in-the act


deep embolus moves


                       somewhere among the ease of living


a hidden space unfurls


                       solicitude of diminished


capacity


                        mark of evil eye


                                   one white brow and lashes



constellations of raised white mesas

calluses upon elbows


and a fan, spectrum of green,


                  band of the iris


still within the unclosed eye

entrains radial chasmic light



In London once off

Russell Square I saw a frail



White hand with age

Spots push aside

A white worn curtain

At street level as

I passed I



Was unable to see

More and fear

Coursed with the knowledge

There was no more



That Death let us

See what is small

Weak and diminished



And an arm entering

A coat sleeve once

That I held stayed

Stayed my mind



At the disembodied

Crook of it



The inference of this wedded arc begins

In paleo-springs of an under earth

Transcends her moist designs

The vicinity of a circle



Timor mortis conturbat me.



Death the Taker.

VII


Mutability

A simple augmentation here

Descends as the moon a path

Of memory a shaft of light

Sends across the sea.



"I am as I was,"

The visitor says,

"Peninsular and

Perishable as the day."



Risk of the wave to rise again

Against the land and think:

"This all moves for me.

I am God of this



Individuality. I think

For all. No happiness

Must be but one I see

Irrevocably entwined



With thought of me."

The day amends and

The small sea wave

Bends.

VIII


Easeful Death

Wetness is upon the air

Wet color is in the air

And the brick seep turns dark

To the wall that shudders

Before wind and light



That lust carries prominence

By shape, transcendence

By vertical flit

Or the remnant landscape



To death. To light. The birds

No longer wing but harder strike

And buffet among boughs

The breath wreathes form



To sight, clarity of winter order,

"Send out the flame

Of your desire that it issue forth

With inner mark impressed."


Paradiso, Canto XVII


That season seize

Heart and head

Their inventory seal

By fire of their selfless grace.

IX


Special Relativity

Light glitters brilliant chits on confetti

Scattered waters estuary a diversion of

Light and smooth steel blue surfaces


Three dark figures converse form

Triangle of ease and occupation one leans

Back elbow on top wood grained railing


Another right apex gestures

Rolling circular motion his right hand

Turning stirring his information


The third leans long back straight

Stands listens to events

Mutely unfold tour boat


$5.00 CRUISE yachts in background

Peaked lights triangular chance caps

On concrete posts stately line


Dock a box of pink red white

Geraniums add foreground

Perspective diminishes to figures


Foreshortens through coned lights

To three thin smoke stacks across

Harbor before faint blue mountains


Behind buildings beige and orange

Bright blurry clouds above

Skiffs tatters white shards


Two street lamps wrought iron gate between

Pigeons bob shallow depth of field where

Occasional gull hover suspends the seen

X


Theory of the Present

An Asian woman looks into the distant

Ancestral moonrise and shining bamboo

Waters on the wide river shimmer moon dance.

The light of many moons dragons,



Legendary Phoenix, thousand cranes

Happiness. Her garment of the same device,

Silken thread of rich gold sheen, colors

For godliness, longevity, prosperity.



The forest's jade reprise warbles in the hillsides

Across the river. Her primary color blue,

Blue of her vest, blue of her robe, gloss

And glisten of the kingfisher deep in her eyes.



Her eyeglasses rim the fiery reflection,

Red Viper at her footstool, her view

Of sunlit clouds her husband behind her

Oblivious to her vision and the Mongol hordes,



The passersby ideal theory of the present, the here

And now, god of commerce and industry,

Ledger and account. His green pen moves

Across red lined page, of jade its justification.

XI


TOE

Theory of Everything

The early method by lamplight and curious swirls

Of dust and steam rising from the cup heat

Flows currents over the glass chimney darkly

Smoked genesis of pattern and generation


Of convection turbulence and fluid flow

Dynamics of creation entropy and order

In the universe heat charged thermo

Dynamics and subatomic quantum


Mechanics of motion and unpredictable

Uncertainty of time speed and location

Planck's constant and the drift of stars

Planets in cyclic duration the still cold moment


Of the heart and unknown matter in circulation

The blood clogged vessels waiting abiding

In genetics and heredity their proscribed time

Dwelling and habitation in the drift of things


Human and transcendent metaphysics

Of the molecule astrophysics of the atom

Early and late aboriginal dreamlines

Tracery of patterns of the soul


Geologic striations body markings

Information pouring from the surface

Lip of the black hole electrochemical erotic

Stimulation and emotional vector of the mind


In the morning sunlight steam arises

From the earthenware coffee cup on the glass

Topped table in the spacetime checkered kitchen

XII


GUT

General Unified Theory


1

Dexterous bright movement

Among hidden parks

Of dark imagination


Figure in a landscape

Shadows her idea of

Isolation and necessity


Fear of motherhood

Womb distended

Origin at term


Of fetal information

The buoyant weight

Of mystery engendered


Rock and tree

Dark companions

She acknowledges


Sustains in fear

With graceful gravity

Her steps impress


The soft warp

Of pine needles

Organic matter


Compost of death

And generation

Unknown desire


For procreation

Progeny to belay

Time's incubation


Forces weak and strong

Bind these generations

Their oscillations


Damp and amplify

Uncertain fetal

Movement other


Worldly synchronous

Parallel observation

At the close of day

2

These feelings both

Known and unknown

To me I feel their


Proximity in and out

Of time movement

What movement does


The future hold

Bold stroke of genius

And star intellect


Or narrow confine

Of limitation

The same mind


Stamped in human

Kind symbiosis

Of genetic pair


Or pear shape I

Wear the cosmos'

Vibrant open state


Periodic pulsing

Of our hearts

Independent but


One in time our

Sum of histories

To create a single


Path in human time

The past contains

The future holds


All my complex

Ethos pathos

In this child


Not all mine

Or mine to say

The hieroglyphic


Of the day

Daily life's

Determination

3

This cool evening

Quiet shadows

Are mine are mine


And his in present

And future space

And time diminished


To a single point

Of consciousness

That does not exist


As ever it is before

The wake of awareness

Closes upon thought


Imagination plunges

Forward dolphins

Playful cross


Cut the bow

Before the mind engenders

Ideas caught


In a net of stasis

Spume of recognition

The flying scud of time


While oblivion

Cyclic history

Concede the error


Repeat locked

In closed space

Curvature of womb


And placenta

Loops like veins

Of both hearts


Beat rhythmically

Arrhythmically in

Personal occlusion


Shared experience

Of blood flow

And Ur-darkness


4

This palpable

Darkness in liquid

World where sounds


Transfer to heart

And lungs breathe

Vibrant quake


Proximity of voice

Surge of blood

Flow the swish


Swish wish

Of harmony

Patient foreknowledge


Of birth right

Human hegemony

Spiral of spacetime