Noisy Bridge Rod and Gun Club

A pleasant diversion and general cul-de-sac, wholly unaffiliated with John Crowley (click the link below to go there).

Monday, September 27, 2010

Moulin a Vent

Source: National Gallery of Art


Unpublished.  The Rembrandt used to hang in the National Gallery, and started out one poem that turned into this one. The bone flute is real; you can hear it here. What else. Breath, in Hebrew "ruach," in Chinese "qi" in Greek "pneuma" is synonymous with wind, spirit and life; "Prophesy to the wind" is one possible translation of Ezekiel 37:9, from which comes "dem bones."

Moulin a Vent

Even if I had will enough to turn
the vane without fail raises
my face always into the wind.

Where else would I look but
into an unseen valley,
into a breeze imagined by inkbrush

imagined in soot & from air unmoving?
Breath, come to me, come to
the wing bone of the red-crowned crane;

prophesy to the winds, breath, come
to the dry bones –  & they stamped their feet
& danced with the whistling crane.

Breath spoke upon the ruined walls
where millstones gather in hobbled pilgrimage
to cracked corn & a more cracked song;

came into a child stepping carefully on each –
ask her what she sings & she will look up
in surprise as though she never were.

There once was a miller, I say,
who had three sons & a cat
but they never tell you why you should listen –

she has run away, does not yet feel her bones
pulling her downward, does not ask
the treasure of another’s wing; she knows

the wind is not what it seems: it lifts ink
off the page & with the bone flute’s air
will raise the dead crane back into the sky.

Thursday, September 09, 2010

Cul de Sac, Fourth of July


Source: Tom Handel


 Unpublished. Something due to Dave Alvin and X

Cul de Sac, Fourth of July

Cutting day from day the red scimitar moon
spills
firefly glow, a guttering match
to gather the starlings on the poplar tree,

to sing down needles that shower over bone,
a gown of nettles
on brittle flesh forgetting
the look away that gives each look its own way home.

No one can see his own self alone,
only by
division are we made whole, for when
was Adam loneliest, before or after? After what?

The mirror’s face bent in toroid curve will trap
you in its little bottle
but leave the touch of stars
along your back, the voices whispering

“How far can you run on one borrowed breath?”
“All the way to the moon
& back.” “& what if it was not for you?” “Then
the same save now over smashed bottleglass.”

My scarred knee opens up again even saying this
& bleeds ink anew,
for falling in love is once only
but it will happen again & again.

All gleeful a chrysanthemum falls from the sky;
fireflies ring back
bright constellations thrown askew,
all unknowing of what they are made ,

unknowing the uselessness of their discourse.
A toddler crawling moonfaced over
spent matches
looks up as a bottlerocket shrieks away

& the boys shriek back. O moon rise into
our willed ignorance,
rise into the knife mirroring its bright edge,
shine on fireflies courting their own calling,

shine over spent smoke and the dry heaves
of bent asphalt,
that we may know of what we are made
& still set out to light this dim parade.