Para/Phrase

 

Ash Wednesday:

    a para/phrase

...did he use the same muscles

to paint as he did to pray?

                        Terry Tempest Williams

                        On El Bosco's  jardin de las delicias

it's a cashmere sort

of morning and early

enough and still

with dark and clouds

one great bank of them

melding enough

to be one mass adrift

which ever way the wind

is insisting has 

blotted out the pins

of light i've come to

depend on and so

haven't you and so

haven't we all

for the bravery

it takes to break  

down and shier and shave

the heavy wools grown

then shorn from 

the body that's worn them 

all winter long

how the lanolin can

smooth and soothe the winter 

roads of your hands 

and make them

a blessing to be touched

by.  wait for that.  wait.

for now the ewe

is still in service

to her coat and lamb 

and hasn't yet been flayed into

the cornucopia of her

labor and because 

she'll be delivering both

into the shepherd's chapped

and bleeding hands

we can wait it out

in cashmere in something

almost weightless

and soft as river bottom

rocks after snow has let

go and after ice also

and only so as trout know

to let go (remember going is going

back to the beginning)

there's still clouds that cover

there's still no seeable

light of the stars behind them

and the lambing is yet

on its edge       but listen: 

the wood's been felled 

and the fire's soon

lit and her flame

is a coal we coax

alone in our superstitious 

gloam of last year's palms

dried and burnt and rubbed

crosswise on our third

eye. and who believing wouldn't

see in the dark being lent to them

in anonymous sparks

lifted like lit

pricks of sin and snow

 

 

Notes on Daniel Chester French

 

I

 

What’s more dramatic: the plaster maquette

Of Andromeda, her back flat against the stone,

Her left knee drawn as if to hold her against

Her own falling?  Or the life-size piece in solid

marble in the workshop at Chesterwood, stationed on

A wooden plinth so she could descend

 

Through the floor on the short railway

And be trained to take in the natural

Day, the entire white of her making her light as

Air outside and yet as ever still

Chained to the rock for her crime of being

Too beautiful. 

 

I’ve just ordered a new translation of Ovid’s

Metamorphosis, (they’re finally allowing

A woman her own publication – like Andromeda

Chained, the tongues of us

Have been shackled, governed, struck

By lightning.  Plucked charred from the soot.

 

I’ve seen Andromeda in French’s workshop.

She’s splayed in front of the Lincoln memorial

Study. Waiting maybe.  French’s fingers

Were like breezes, the arrival of wind, imagine,

Beat by the wings  of what will ultimately, (but not

From this workshop) save her.  Is she

 

In distress or ecstasy?  A sister outside

Of time to Bernini’s Saint

Teresa, similar postures, similar angles

Of the neck and hands, the bare feet

And raised knees (Teresa’s beneath her almost

Moving canopy of clothes)

 

  

 

 

II

 

They said she was his last – nearly

Completed by the time he died

At 81.  One single solid

Piece of Carrara marble. 

 

How she lies arched-back

Rock in rock on rock

Paused for all the rest of her

Existence.  I’ll say existence

 

Because she doesn’t live but she does

Exist.  She does stay

Stiff still in the chill.

(Feel her.  Right?)  (And tell me she isn’t

 

More than marble.) He thought

She was I bet.  His own remote

Pygmalion.  He made her

Beyond the clay maquette, rose her

 

Up out of the stone

And kept her

Chained there waiting.

Death is his

 

Pegasus.  How fitting, this horse being

Medusa’s son. His wings

Slam the air, and it pounds

Out in front of him

 

Like a Fury, suspends the flesh

In the air, rider and all.

I don’t know yet how the true

Story goes.  For the sake of this

 

Now, I’d like to

Imagine French lowering

His intimate chisel

When the wind arrives

 

From the valley, a kind

A kind, a kind of well, a kind of bride-

Groom.  The dust

Of his work is still

 

On his lips.  He licks them.

In the stone a chain

The smallest chain

Of all,

 

At the vein of her

Wrist, begins to lift

And rub against

Its companion.

Consider This:

 

Consider this:

 

when reading a love poem

even if it were

written for you it isn’t

written just

for you

just like rain isn’t itself

simply

one drop of water

or snow itself

no matter how unique

each crystal’d speck

isn’t one single flake.      It’s what falls

before and after it

it’s what is

the accumulation

of it

it is the container

and the keep or strain of it

how much it can

bear before it breaks

or reaches the lip

and ripples there against it

before it simply falls

though that may never be

seen and then it pours over

over and over

and over

until it is

no more

or if it were snow

it heaps and heaps on the door-

step and that first view out

across it after the storm

is virgin

is called being clean

(we even briefly,

conveniently,

forget what’s beneath)

being free from touch

though to reach you

and to touch you from where you are

seeing it all means to

mark the surface

unremarkably, the weight

of the white hiked up to the knee

and the drag of the toe

atop the clean

surface of things leading

both to and away from

the door standing open

(right? it’s standing open

and the jamb is frozen

and too the still unknown unshown

surface of the full (frozen also) rain

 

barrel covered in snow

 

as yet unbrushed

as yet heaping

as yet its winking crystals

are still

waiting and waiting for the arriving

light

 

Cormorant Alone

 

Cormorant Alone

 

          for Jessica

 

and holding its own

the soaked bird opens

its wings to the Kalamata

water-road and the spread loam

of cloud.  I can see each

 

discrete drop of water

on the scored webbing of

its four toes.  Is this bird

sitting there on a half-sunk

mud-stuck pine limb that’s

 

hunched up and also under

the withdrawing pond

water (water that will   

finally fall down the dam wall)

drying itself for flight

or for the simple light

breeze stirring each

 

feather pressing and letting

a lift like a composer

at her key or string or reed

become a listening

a new way to touch and be

touched see how

 

the hover and pluck

the tongue and lip

is pitch is tipped

into the listed

ear then into the wind

that’s sifted of the dust

from the lintel of the sun-

touched is lifting

it from the wing

 

into the lightness

of wind.  see then

the shedding

water? how it drops

onto the pond and is

instantly invisible

see how it is its own kind

of falling?  see the cormorant

crouch at its knee

to take wing

 

skyward or waterward

depending on which fish

it wants?  how can

either of these be less

 

than the right choice?

Or how can being neither

while simply sitting there

wings wide and drying

in the fading day

be less than the moment

that grounded it

it too

a momentary way-

station to flight?