~1~
RUINS CONSEQUENTIAL
a sonnet sequence by Harvey Hess
~2~
~3~
RUINS CONSEQUENTIAL
a Sonnet Sequence by Harvey Hess
漏 1967 Harvey Hess 路 all rights reserved
~4~
W
ilfred Owen tells us, nay, he warns us to warn, as he did when he spoke of his art, "the poetry is in the pity," his art of (that is, "come from out of") war.
Poets, "and who is not a poet," must warn, still. Yes, even though each man -- not to say "Man" -- is now passed away across that no-man's land that summoned forth the "poetry in the pity" and its warning, for even though we are here and now, "we are here and now," at this present time, by being there and then, as well, at once, like it or not. The poetry shall always be in pity, even as poetry is in the ruin and the ruins of great cities lost and alien to us, beyond relationship, understanding or hypostasis (save but in poetry!) cities we inhabit, as we inhabit ours, be being there and then, by humans being what human beings are here and now, and vice versa. For we are in a place where we have always never been before, where scriptures absolutely undecipherable -- because their alphabets were sacred secrets, closed, unique and privy as an "in joke" -- stand out universally comprehensible to all, in all but timeless stone, nearly indelible. It is no mere dark saying, no mere paradox of which I sneak in, unless two-in-one or divine metaphors like "ball-and-chain," "Bread-and-Wine" or "Flower-and- Song," wherein in each and either one, the Flower quite as well as the Song, that each exists always as itself, though is in, with and for the other -- as it were, put in a bold saying, as though that both of them were each, or other were the self -- yet neither is confused with or confounded so as to be other, and each one stays in purest authenticity as above stated. So it is, that we are, here: by being there, at least until this world's final end, not yet an event come to pass. Even then -- here comes a warning: and the poetry (is and) shall be in the ruins -even then, something from without beginning, and beyond. Wilfred Owen's self, pity, war and poetry shall abide here, in earth new, a "for good." Abide, yes, and rule, even as mortals live (and sing) the type or image of the two-in-one, at once dweller and abode, of which I speak. "It" is two perfects in one whole. Call "It" what you will, this wonder-and-household-word, this mystery. -
Harvey Hess
~5~
RUINS CONSEQUENTIAL 路 a Sonnet Sequence by Harvey Hess Copyright 1967 Harvey Hess 路 all rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the trustees of the Harvey Hess estate. For further information contact Rod Library Special Collections, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa.
~6~
~7~ I RUINS - AN EPIGRAPH
We shall journey to a ruin, a place Of snow, stone and sunset, a decadent And lushly jungled city where creepers trace Forgotten writings on the stones, where rent And tattered textiles drape deserted altars, Where perfume and mildew marry at night and excite Desires in leopards, the silver vessel alters From white to black, and men had fled to light.
To Macchu Picchu, Ankor Wat, ChichĂŠn ItzĂĄ1 and cities still unseen by man Alive the two of us shall go; and then We shall love in such a place as our love began. For I was once a ruin, a place few knew, Save ghosts and beasts, and would be yet without you.
1
Ancient ruins in Peru, Cambodia and Yucatan, respectively.
~8~ II PRELUDE TO THE JOURNEY - POSSIBLY A DREAM
Fanned by the god and hummingbird's wings, frilled With august thrust of fragrant, rain-rinsed air Where Orchid Cacti gleamed, an agog pair Of orchids fluttered to earth, while drops thrilled Half of a rainbow in rippled ponds filled With rain. And one butterfly glided where The corn glistened beneath the sunset's glare. Then, in indigo distance, one bird trilled.
A single planet calmly placed its beams Into the east and shined as shadows lost Themselves in dripping dusk where stars arrived. Vision ceased, relinquishing me to dreams, Again, leaving me to waken to frost -And Xochipilli's1 pledge my love had lived.
1
Meso-American god of music and dance.
~9~ III THE MUDDY ROAD - KABAH1
Leaving the mud road in exasperation, The guide and I had parted, each one going To his own side, neither of us showing Need to be at one in our aggravation. The guide skirted around an excavation, Though what he saw I have no way of knowing Since at that spot the road was overflowing, Keeping us together in separation.
What each had walked in common came to be The thing that made both separate, to go Apart, though each one's goal had been the same. Though passion's road were muddy to the knee, Should that, my love, have ever made us grow So far apart had love been our sole aim?
1
Kabah - a ceremonial Mayan city in Yucatan.
~ 10 ~ IV STARRY NIGHT IN CHICHÉN ITZÁ
No more does astronomic priest, quetzá1Feathered and fuming with divinity, Creep along this flight of stairs to see What matters in the stars which slowly crawl Around his world. No longer by this wall In starry nights do lovers hastily Exchange a gaze of that astronomy Which makes all stars to rise, to wheel, to fall.
No longer do the meteoric Spanish Rule the rulers who measured earth by stars – The Spaniard moves, now, in another sphere, Which whatever it might be, does not vanish. Though scholars struggle with old avatars, I am the star-eyed population here.
~ 11 ~ V EVACUATED RUINS REVISITED
. . . heart beat . . . . . . sunset mist And zeroes . . . . . . chambered exquisite Stalactite-bangled gallery . . . . . . Bat-like, backward . . . . . . veins of amethyst. Jaguar's footprints lugubriously twist – Like the conquistadors who sought "shit Of gods" 1 (no luck) -- through dreams minds wince to fit Into place, even as those minds insist.
Charting it bit by bit, I am my own Heart's archaeologist, fitting together All that honesty can help me to chart. Not best, my love, is learning you had grown To love me, passing youth and lust. And whether A tomb or not, I excavate this heart.
1
A common Meso-American expression for "gold."
~ 12 ~ VI ON THE JAGUAR - THE FIRST GREAT SYMBOL OF MESO-AMERICA
The pelt is all but pure duality On which the gilding of the dawning east Contrasts with final black -- the beast Cannot perceive if one be destiny. The habitat is humid greenery, An endless island which conceals a feast Of bloody victims, where a latent priest Has dreams of solar ocularity.
This is the beast that man takes as the brink Of higher culture, as his theocrat From whose wisdom better days shall have flowered. This is the Olmec's 1 base; at least we think So from what little they have left, from that Which time, carnivorous, has not devoured.
1
Usually held to be the first great Meso-American civilized peoples.
~ 13 ~ VII DAWN AT TIKAL
As close to dawn one song-bird's faltering To tentative invention, at the first, Provokes disheveled preludes which soon burst To treble ribbons trailing, on song's wing; As when the gauzy dawn, half slumbering In dew-brocaded mist, stirs part-immersed, Sleepily-stiff lips of the lotus buds, part-pursed With dreamed-of kisses of day's flourishing;
And, as the orchid and the hummingbird Tumblingly weave on temples' gold-topped heads Unveiling weaving shadows to the day; So, my love, does memory, at a word Or trace of love's last dawn, loosen to threads, Penelope-like, in wild disarray.
~ 14 ~ VIII TIKAL - A MAYAN RECONSTRUCTION
Quetzรกl plumage spreading in maize-jade bogs Ruffles on lotus-odored, humid breeze Which -- black with copal smoking through a frieze Of tinkling priests, drummers with ornate logs, Flutists' shrilling that tortures naked dogs, And acolytes with sacred properties, Some bright as "excrement of deities" -Ascends the steeps in jaguar-spotted fogs.
Now in the jungle, temples clogged with mosses And littered with flutes, broken long before Their pyramids' white flares guttered to jade, The temples amplify the baroque losses Of jaguar pomp by prompting dreams to soar Like copal pillars which soon thin and fade.
~ 15 ~ IX ON A SERIES OF TEMPLES AND PALACES SUPERIMPOSED ONE ON THE OTHER SUCCESSIVELY
The ruins stand on other ruins come To ruin no one knows completely why. Urbanity is what their plans imply Without the least hint of a single slum. Artists who worked here must have felt at home Between the temples, sculpting deity – Mindless of all but time's divinity -Who, likely, rarely bashed a careless thumb.
Feathers and flowers wave ephemeral In mathematic, carved stone long as God Had made stone to last, not a moment less! If Spain had come with love corporeal Or spilled Christ's chalice in the place of blood . . . The palaces request our quietness.
~ 16 ~ X ON ARCHAEOLOGY
This is an art of probability Carried to cautious science's extremes, Becausing cause, examining man's dreams Against his possible reality. This, too, proceeds from God and Memory No less than Muses do, except what seems And what is factual unite in schemes Of scientific method, hopefully.
Almost. For that which makes this science art – Like medicine -- is that unknown, known factor, Man who finds facts frequently by surmise. And by surprise. This science takes man's heart – Or ought to -- as man's patriot, defector, Scientist, fool, priest, and his artist's eyes.
~ 17 ~ XI VISIT TO A RUIN (KABAH)
Watching someone asleep is similar To visiting a Mayan ruin where Bee and hummingbird drone through drowsing air All wears an air nearly familiar. One still feels slightly lost, peculiar, Intruding on a city one would swear Dreams of being inhabited, where care, Beyond that dream, seems farther than a star.
This is the bed of Lethe and the sun The yellow waters where a butterfly Bobs listingly through doorway's noonday dusk Waves of the sun seem audible as one Drowses on round debris and rubble by A Rain-god's bubbled, mellow eye and tusk.
~ 18 ~ XII ON THE MAYAN CONCEPT OF TIME'S DIVINITIES They tell me that the Maya dared to think Each time's division is a very god; Each has His nomenclature, gives a nod To stars and heads to His returning brink. Each of Them rises with His star to sink – As tone in song, as seed the sowers prod Into the soil, as bloom which falls on sod – But to return conformed, each One a link To time, each One enchained in deity Historic in predestined incarnation As a certain time rounding its cycle. Perhaps some Mayans, also, thought that we, Out of time, reach an eternal destination, Which makes one think of Gabriel and Michael.
~ 19 ~ XIII AT DZIBILCHALTUN (WHERE THE GATEKEEPERS KEPT ROSES) IN THE TEMPLE OF SEVEN DOLLS
Water and calla lily, cactus, rose And sudden dusk drop in the temple, "Seven Dolls" with the only Mayan windows -- haven From loveliness is gone as daylight goes. Minute or mighty, beauty rarely slows To match the metric which the heart is given To or is merciful to man, as Heaven Is, to reduce glory to what man knows.
Silence, at last, is merciful to still Awhile singers and breeze, a Whippoorwill's Strident serenade in Dzibilchaltun. Where in me is there any room to fill? Just that my love was never here; that stills My wrists which faint with beauty come too soon.
~ 20 ~ XIV OLD AND NEW POPULATIONS (UXMAL AND CHICHÉN)
The architects and artisans, who made The Palace at Uxmal, mingle with clay Which tourists track old structures with each day (Though some view glory tamely from the shade). Old star-gazers, who watched the day-stars fade At dawn in ChichĂŠn, gaze at night no ray Of cosmic light can pierce; nor yet can they Who study stars here where the ancients prayed.
Be beautiful or worth considering, One's former populace seems inessential -Tourists and scientists will come apace. What would I care, though, what new days should bring Me since my problem is one existential? Is there that one that can take my love's place?
~ 21 ~ XV ON SOME CACTUS BLOSSOMS AT UXMAL
I set the spine-rimmed cactus blossoms, bright As retinal retentions of the looked-at sun, Down on the sunset-lighted altar one By one upon the temple's crimson height. My spine-pricked fingers left one slight, Cinnabar, sacrificial drop upon The golden petals impaled by spines; done With the day's sights, I left the place for night.
Loveliness, not romance, had prompted me To pluck cactuses' paradoxical, Unkindly structures, thorned as for war's duty. And then I found the Orchid Cacti, free Of spines, magnificently aureole, The corollaries of a lover's beauty.
~ 22 ~ XVI THAT PURITY IS NOT FOR MAN, NOW
The Aztec chieftain and the priest -- each master Of a War of Blossoms, each of Blazing Water -- had met the Spaniard's stench by raising Blooms to their nose, thinking stench a disaster. Olmec wise-men wrote down love songs. Oh, we write faster Now, perhaps, than they did then. But phrasing Songs in black and red was no more amazing To him than verse is to a poetaster.
After the fact, often, a thing seems clearer, Except for when what one has knowledge of Is past, or is one's self or is iconic. Love -- though you seem farther -- are you nearer? You come simply to complex worlds, 0 Love, Wearing one scent, sounding but your tonic.
~ 23 ~ XVII TO HIS ESTRANGED LOVE, AT UXMAL
Man is confused. He knows that he must perish. Why does he not live as though art, religion, And love serve as his patterns and emerge in Such a way that he, at last, may flourish? Today about a glory which I cherish, Birds and butterflies and blooms are legion, Looking happy in this gracious region While men look on confused, amazed or foolish.
So were the Maya tourists, looking on While all they were and had was blossoming And singing -- did they stop to see and hear? Yet, I still think of what you might have done, Though what you are sufficed to stir and bring Me here where Muses work to cast out fear.
~ 24 ~ XVIII CONSIDERING THE LOST WORKS OF PRECOLUMBIAN POETS
They burnt your rosy odes, O Sappho, too, Perhaps since poems wear the thorns of thought Below the primitive enchantment caught In meter's blooming. They were through with you – They thought. Lovers can also misconstrue The means of sweet hearts' ends with flames' onslaught Of roseate disaster. Love I sought In dewy-bud combusted; love seemed through.
Yet when a poet or a lover speaks His mind, roses with rows of real thorns Flourish and stalk fresh conflagration's rage. Sprung from papery embers, the rose streaks – Lion of blooms -- towards life's crackling horns, Gory with nectar, downward toward the page.
~ 25 ~ XIX OF HIS LOVE - IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM
Ascetics of the strictest discipline My Muse exacts, my eyes, focused by fire Of love, blazing with beauty and desire And sacrifice, have seen through opaque skin. Invisible -- though their strength's origin Your spirit is the vision they aspire To comprehend, as darkness would entire Christs have extinguished were there not the Nine.
My eyes shined at the art of Mexico Imperiously as Prometheus' Eyes blazed when he stole the fire from his peers. But that this beauty's spirit could be so Like yours; that eyes could veil the virtuous Ascesis of their Muse, streaming in tears!
~ 26 ~ XX CUAUHTÉMOC'S TOMB - IXCATEOPAN LYRIC FOR A WORLD'S END
Here, where the bee impales upon the thorn, Lethe would have a Lethe of its own, Of ice or lava flows, to dip and drown Remembrance in too massive to be borne. Blooms are more abundant than the corn Choked by the wild Dahlias and over-grown Tigridia (with fear-large eyes) once sown By men who pluck no blooms now, though they mourn.
0 Rose, floating on Lethe in emotion's Jetsam, the bee near you that queried why Your face looked so familiar now dozes. His jetsam question poses you an ocean's Tears to sweeten. He wakes. Ask him, "Am I Perchance reclining on a bed of roses?" 1
1
Remark made by CuauhtĂŠmoc while his feet were being seared by live coals.
~ 27 ~ XXI ON THE SO-CALLED "IGLESIA" IN THE CLASSIC RUINS AT CHICHÉN
Now where time is doing its worst and best, (Cosmic as mind) the turtle, armadillo, Conch, and crab, are held by carved men, sallow And lichened to the structures where they rest. It might have been sufficient to attest To known cosmology without the pillow Of human arms (so much to peccadillo Given) as comforts for each hard-shell breast.
However, I am not at all displeased The iconographer portrayed a man Holding each universal shell in arms. Though classic attitudes have not yet eased Man's death (I doubt that what is cosmic can), Their universe, it seems, bore friendly forms.
~ 28 ~ XXII MAYA - PIEDRAS NEGRAS One cannot help but speculate not only upon the origins but also upon the strange circumstances that caused the brilliant Maya civilization to disintegrate at the very height of its maturity. -- Alma Reed, The Ancient Past of Mexico
From jungle scene to farmland orchestra Superstitious farmer and theocrat Parade enmasked. A hoe and feathered hat Comprise their full paraphernalia. Corn scans their scathing stichomythia. The priest presents his rites as ultimate. Though once espoused, their fates are separate. Their fates divorce them, inter alia.
Human fate and historic destiny Have flourished and sung; though we are bereft Of much which might complete our panorama, Our partial glimpses end in tragedy And ruined scenery. The Maya left Us with some stony petals of the drama.
~ 29 ~ XXIII THINKING OF THE HAPPY ARTIFACTS OF COLIMA
Colima people popping out of clay -Happy, bewildered, comic, whimsical. Here is a boy about to toss a ball. This plump puppy keeps his betters at bay Merely by being roundly comical; This. grim woman, you can tell has her gall, But even she is comedy at play.
If I had been an artisan of old Colima, clay had learned a smart salute, Whimsy of love jocose in shrill requital. Lipped flutes I would with mouth have formed and sold Them for a song. From such a happy flute I'd later hear from Eros in recital.
~ 30 ~ XXIV APOSTROPHE ON A FEATHERED SERPENT AT TEOTIHUCÁN
O Image of Impossibility's Impossibility, O Plumaged Snake, You're all I need to see of hearts that wake To how the heart relates to deities. I doubt that You, Serpent with Plumes, would seize A baby parrot with Your fangs and rake It down a chthonic gullet or forsake Your stone mosaic for a flight through trees.
Tourists possibly would laugh first, stare, Then faint, though, Wingéd Serpent, if You broke From stone to flight -- even they who could be You. Cupid and Psyche share the same affair That you, O Hybrid, are: O Love, O Joke, O Hope of Man to those whose visions see You.
~ 31 ~ XXV ON THE EPITHETS USED IN NAHUATL POETRY - "FLOWER AND SONG"
"Flower-and-Song" is wisdom, in a word, A doubled parallel in metaphor Peculiar to bards (our either/or) Whose gold was plume of the Quetzรกl bird. The use of such a figure can afford The poet myth the sum of which is more Than either part, which union can restore Wing to wing in words which rarely had soared.
Or, if not soaring, then the unity Of love in love, "Flower-and-Song," insides In two One; no duplicity is meant. If I were making such hyperbole I trust that this, "Beauty-and-Love," elides Esthetic truth to vital sacrament.
~ 32 ~ XXVI A THEME PERCEIVED IN TEOTIHUACĂ N
Chide me for finding poetry and myth In works of sculpture; scold me for my knack Of willfully fulfilling what things lack For truth despite what they had started with. Established censure is a monolith Which little daunts me; I will find a crack, Like Pyramus and Thisbe, and bring back, Unlike them, my love's viable pith.
These plumed serpents, these love stories in stone, Unite the tempter, truculent in dust, To his winged opposite, a Muse above. Though meanings I perceive had not been known Or meant by snaked plumers, still I adjust The ends of prey and narrative to love.
~ 33 ~ XXVII ON THE FRESCOES OF TEOTIHUACร N SEEN AT SUNSET For Jean Charlot
The artists painted concrete poetry On walls at Teotihuacรกn despite. The well-known fact that even painted light Must set in time with walls' mortality. "What's a metaphor, in reality?" They might have asked and kept on with the rite Of gods in pigment till impending night Took them from symbols to eternity.
Here, where the dawning of the Occident Grew splendid in ascent, painters began To build the world a window with their painting. Now, as by fortuitous accident, I view their ruined Teotihuacรกn Where, in the west, a dusty sun leans fainting.
~ 34 ~ XXVIII ON SONORITY DISTRIBUTED
The ancients measured music's movements by A calendar of cosmic darks and lights And placed a spatial emphasis on rites By specializing each authority. Trumpets for this, pan-pines for that, the cry Of shin-bone rasps, anticipating nights Of this, then drums with modes to fit the sights Of that, with timbres for each deity.
You put into the triply worded phrase Part of your love for me, which is enough If I distribute it in a long echo. Setting your phrase in verse in varied ways – So I accumulate its music through My days and echo Muses' Mexico.
~ 35 ~ XXIX THOUGHTS BY AN ANCIENT INTERIOR ON THE DECLINING POPULARITY OF MYTHIC LIFE
Echo has skimmed to Mexico from Greece Phenomenally. Someone is managing To bounce her voice on ball-court walls and bring To mind her proper noun -- then echoes cease. Above this broken vault of stone a piece Falls from a nameless god and, echoing For instants, lies inert, a native thing Whose deity has held his hollow peace.
Names in this plumage-patterned pantheon – Much like initials tourists have inscribed Are soon anomalous, an Attic relic. Echo is hushed; nymphs near oblivion (In volumed melic verse) may have imbibed Lethe with Kukulkan1 to be angelic.
1
The plumed serpent, in Mexico, Quetzalcoatl.
~ 36 ~ XXX ON AN OBSIDIAN MIRROR
Nature gave the mirror-maker this black Glass which reflects museum visitors. But what is not before it, it ignores Blindly -- its maker's spirit, face and knack. We, too, are darkened and opaque, a lack Which iconic art in part mends, restores To us a fluent, crystal, naiad source. Nature looks in, but Echo gazes back.
Echoes or icons, even those which prove Beauty and love exist, cannot complete The more-than-visions which they formalize. Fully revealed, truth must be seen in love, A new creation one must make concrete As one's own face mirrored in others' eyes.
~ 37 ~ XXXI ON A HUMMINGBIRD LOST IN A HIGHCEILINGED ROOM IN THE "GOVERNOR'S PALACE" AT UXMAL
What blossoms or what new light lured the bird To leave profuse florescence in the outOf-doors for this obscured, dank room about Which, now, it seeks an exit, ceiling-ward? (A bat would seem in place. The squeak I heard Out in the tropic shine, the tiny shout A guide declaimed, seemed bat-like.) The bird's route, An upward habit, leaves it quite immured.
Back and forth near the vaulted, narrow ceiling The Hummingbird blurs, chitters and bumps smack Against what it should not be headed for. A dove lost in a church instilled a feeling Much like this in me. And can I just hack Doors out and say, "Fly through, friend -- here's a door"?
~ 38 ~ XXXII ON SEEING A MOT-MOT - A BIRD WHICH DISFIGURES (AND THUS DECORATES) ITS ALREADY SPLENDID TAIL WITH ITS BEAK1
Close to the classic section of ChichĂŠn On a path air-plants were shading with complex Patterns, I saw a Toh bird, plumed with flecks Of sky, settle and preen and fly again. I clearly saw us intimated then When the bird preened and somehow dared to vex His tail, for any bird which picks and pecks. Pennants against his grain acts quite like men.
Nature is one thing. Life is yet another. Consciousness is something else. Beyond? At least the first two wrangle in the bird. Esthetic, azure thing, my self-plumed brother, What did you seem in days when priests were fond Of myth, when soul seemed timely, not absurd?
1
Its Mayan name, "Toh," is pronounced "tock."
~ 39 ~ XXXIII ON SEEING A BUTTERFLY ALIGHTED ON A SCULPTURED STONE FLOWER
The paint was worn away, mad butterfly, From this once splendid blossom years and years Before you flew this blooming vale of tears, Before you came from liberty to die. You almost dare to pose the question "Why?" By settling, long as my own gazing wears Stone down the more, on what no more appears As that which whets your kind's cupidity.
The bird called "Toh" which roosts on ruins, too, Who changed nature's plan is, also, a creature Stubborn, willful, perverse, unnatural. Perhaps Toh-birds could eat you, though you knew What nectar you, upon this sacred feature, Seem bound, determined, to make actual.
~ 40 ~ XXXIV ON THE STAIRWAY OF HIEROGLYPHS AT COPĂ N
Closer to the foot than to the eye Glyphs lie, too hard for me to crack. Although I know they mean something, it is enough (Or might be) to ascend upward at sky. Scattered anthropomorphic figures lie In ruined climaxes which I bestow Stark rationale upon nearly as though Not to examine them meant no more I!
Neither I nor the wisest man alive Decodes this stairway I am here to climb Or leave ignored or climb part-way and stop. Here I receive exactly as I give, A heartless equity; in the stairs' prime, Still room for them, whole temples stood on top.
~ 41 ~ XXXV ON TLATCHTLI, THE BALL GAME THE ANCIENTS PLAYED
If it derives from gods at play and dance Who make celestial bodies run their heat For well and ill, what an ascetic feat This is which echoes cosmic skill and chance! Track the hard rubber ball's fatal advance In orbits arbitrary to rules; sweat (And other accidents) while teams compete With gods, inertia and men frail as ants.
While teams agonize life and death, immortals Hurl their illumined orbs and inert nature, Skillfully aiming what concerns them, too. Their planets and their stars, though slow as turtles, Bounce as the hurtling balls bounce; but one creature, Man, always encroaches on what they do.
~ 42 ~ XXXVI AZTEC ARTISTS
Woe to the drummer who had missed a beat. They dragged him to the sacred, city square To make him holy, more than he could bear: They sacrificed the wretch, and he was meet. Woe to the dancer careless of his feet. They sent him where the gods took pains and care Enough to teach apotheosis there Where dancers gleam with Xochipilli's sweat. 1
One little speck in an unhappy place Spelled sure a painter's or a sculptor's doom Who, with bad builders, soon saw things gods' ways. But all of this meant not so much disgrace As being sent to gods that gifts should bloom. They cared for art. Those were the good, old days.
1
Blood
~ 43 ~ XXXVIII ESCHATALOGICAL SONNET TO THE BLUE PLANET The burning of incense formed an indispensable part of every religious ceremony. It was made principally of copal.. . -- Morley, The Ancient Maya
Blue is the Maya hue for sacrifice On turquoise, sacramental, cross-hatched cakes Of copal incense, incised blue which flakes Daintily onward to flame's paradise. Lovely in this museum, blue as ice, Copal awaits the flame which mankind takes To cosmic size; the blue museum aches With beauty; and the flame forms in a trice.
Because they went, your self-destructive Maya, Into the blue, that is no reason you, Blue wanderer, need act out the same nonsense. But if you do, expire with this idea: If other life exists, smoke from your blue Exhale would be our galaxy's choice incense.
~ 44 ~ XXXIX ON THE EARTH - THE STATUE OF XOCHIPILLI IN THE MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY, MEXICO, AND THE CROSS AT ACOLMAN
Not in your strength, O Earth, subject to snare, Nor in your subtle woven nets of thought, Nor the snags caught in the gilded, distraught, Civilized worlds, snagged in their wise despair, Not in these will we find what makes you rare, Eden's cradle, whether or not they ought To make you so, but rather in that brought By love, which places you beyond compare.
Beauty perceived in love, embracing all, Enslaved in none, beauty perceived in love Is that, O Earth, which shows your rarity. And this is simply proved: imperial Of universal realms, the gods remove Themselves to you for love's emergency.
~ 45 ~ XL POLEMIC ON HUMAN SACRIFICE AND CHRIST
To us, first human sacrifice was murder. Afterward, people passed it into law, Perhaps to appease conscience which can gnaw Down in the vitals like a nagging martyr. Reason behind such sacrifice is harder To understand -- holding our fatal flaw (Mistaking ends for means) before our awe Of death, though, once inspired us to love's ardor.
Without freedom and love the death is loss, When such a sacrifice is foolish as Committing suicide to avoid death. Freedom and love make sacrifice's cross. Freedom and love are all the victim has. Mentioning other things is wasted breath.
~ 46 ~ XLI ON THE HIEROGLYPHS ON MAYAN JADES
What does the snake in green maize mean? What does this physiognomy assert Beyond jade surface other than inert, Masterly ornamented serpentine? Aesthetic escapades can intervene Just so far. If we want these stones to blurt Out literature, something, then, must skirt Past fancy and the lapidary green.
Ask the gems to tell us what they bear. Ask them, and they shall tell us all they can. Ask the stars. Ask a serpent. Ask a clod. I wonder, is the world itself more clear? As with these glyphs, is it so to know man? Even with revelation, so with God?
~ 47 ~ XLII BY THE GREAT CENOTE (OR SACRIFICIAL WELL) AT CHICHÉN
Out of the starlit jungle, like a dream Of some unequal love, the ruins rise As though to disapprove of paradise While still insisting on a deathless theme. The stars, fluttering, on the silent stream That flows from well to well, do sacrifice Tonight where gold-anchored victims' cries Were music to the ears of hell's regime.
Human sacrifice should have as its ends Its means, like love, or else be blasphemous, Barred from the self-justice that ruins do. Tonight, ruins and the stars are my friends And guides on paths holy but perilous, Love, as I sacrifice my love for you.
~ 48 ~ XLIII THE SCULPTURE OF THE YOUNG CORNGOD FROM COPĂ N So much is the delight and gratification they got and still pet out of their corn fields...as if their cornfields were their final goal and ultimate happiness. -- Morley, The Ancient Maya
What ardor is concealed within this youth, What a devotion made to persevere To classically formal atmosphere, What triumph for the sculpture of the South! Only once do Muses need fill the mouth Of Beauty's Priest -- that "once" is surely here (Though not alone) to prove beauty is where One's love is and that Muses shape such truth.
This young maize-god is surely what was meant As love's own beauty to the sculpture who Had formed all of his ardor into praise. What, then, my love, is music's sacrament To me, held by the love of God and you, Whose ardent praise belongs to more than maize?
~ 49 ~ XLIV ON SEEING A FLAGEOLET IN THE SHAPE OF A MAN - (THAT STRINGS WERE LACKING IN PRE-CORTESION MEXICO)
Lyric things are meant for measures that clutch The heart-strings. And from Sappho's tortoise-shell More was taken from song than I can tell Of string and shell and rose and bee and such. Lyric things have loveliness as much As ever -- harpsichord responds to quill, Piano to the hand, guitar to thrill That lovers feel -- the string responds to touch.
But yours, 0 Flutist, is the spirit's honor. Yours includes not only rhythm of The touch, though that, but also life and death. Indeed, all rhythm has acquired the manner Of the heart, as well as that of love -But you, flutist, share rhythm with your breath.
~ 50 ~ XLV CONSIDERATIONS ON A JAINA FUNERARY FIGURINE OF A MAN WHO IS DANCING IN A MUSEUM
Artist (and who is not an artist), gaze At length with thoughtful reverence upon This stock-still being standing on and on, Poised in the dance, oblivious of praise. Out of excellence, the figure still prays For artists; but the grave's mysterion, That for which he was bent, is not that one Earthly public that the artist could raise.
Honor to them who, certain none shall see The craft-consuming time and care they lavish On their work, work well with calm and content. Let the dancer be viewed or let him be Invisible, for true art first must ravish The gods; this so, all may grasp a content.
~ 51 ~ XLVI ON LOVE AND DANCE -THINKING OF THE BALLET FOLKLORICO
Love is a pair of dancers dancing, clad In a kiss, dressed in architecture of Terpsichore's design; these temples move To their own metric feet, sounding a glad, Self-applauded music of myriad Percussions of flesh -- limbs of Muses' grove Blossom with music of flesh moved as love Is moved in ecstasy, inspired and mad.
Dressed in the kiss of their adagio In the warm dews of dance's healthy fever, Dressed in exultant breath and quickened, drumming heart, Both visible and audible, they do Precisely as they are; but if they sever, Partner from partner, the dance falls apart.
~ 52 ~ XLVII ON THE CONTINUED APPEARANCE OF MUSIC - THE BONAMPAK MURALS For John Paul Thomas, only
The drums of tortoise-shell suggest some tinges Of Sappho's lyre, but the unpainted lime Of drummers' headdresses beat white for time In cross-rhythms with rattles' plumaged fringes. The gilding lineage of strings: One cringes! Trumpeters flare Indian Red and chime In with the upright drum's columnar mime Of rhyming tropic coloration's binges.
Esthetically, we are doing well. But have we any hint within the mural Why Mayans fell before it sustained damage? But one -- we could, too, if the Mayans fell. If we would hear or see our song, my moral Is this care for the Muses' Maker's image!
~ 53 ~ XLVIII WE ASKED
We asked some poets of the Christian west What love was, and they sang to us, "A bloodRed, thorny rose called death yielding a flood Of nectar to the bee that courted best." In song some Buddhist poets, too, addressed Us, "Love, a lotus blossom sprung from mud, Is dream, enduring as the moment bud Wakens to bloom (which is love's lengthiest)."
Dreaming through death? Flower and song? Who knows? Most verse those poets wrote show they note us In love, whether or no their worlds approved. Perhaps love's truth in love is far from rose And lotus as the rose is from the lotus; Poets sing, though, only what things are loved.
~ 54 ~ XLIX WHEN VANQUISHED ANÁHUAC'S MEN OF FAITH PRAYED THAT NO MISFORTUNE REACH THEIR PEOPLE
In Black and white -- not black and red -- the plumes Of scribes scratched as the wise, whose faith was subtle, Angelical with logic, heard the prattle Of fools, whose faith's reason was song and blooms. Sharon's Rose and David's Son (faith presumes) Heard florid, lyric prayers, in Nahuatl, For mercy -- but Christ's priests saw Quetzalcoatl Idolatrous and made the prayers' tombs.
The missionaries of the Faith of Love Despised broken hearts, contrite spirits' trust – They broke jade, gold, plumes, and the holy image. With Serpentine reason and gold means to prove Their right, they raised that Serpent from the dust No pen of faith writes but of logic's damage.
~ 55 ~ L FLOWER AND SONG - THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS
So lovely is the bloom, the lyricist Is moved to music; he is moved to set The bloom to song so as not to forget Its unique moment's drunken amethyst. The bloom, rooted in music, shall persist As wisdom's wistful flourishing, drenched wet With ever evanescent freshness met At, dawn, until man's song be dust and mist.
Whence came this lovely, doubled metaphor, Centripetal-contrafugal, this "FlowerAnd-Song" in which blooms fly that barely move? From loveliness' immortal root, before All floral lyricism's fugal bower And, root, "Love-and-Beauty -- Beauty-and-Love!"
~ 56 ~ LI AT THE MUSEUM
Mirrors that move the soul as breath may move Flutes into tone, such is what we have left To us in tons of artifactual heft Too great for conquerors to crush or shove. See apocalyptic plumes of God's Dove In serpentine's hard green, the Spirit cleft To arts; look in obsidian where deft Fingers transfigured opaque glass with love.
Look at yourself, O man -- stand still and look! In meta-serpents volatile, perceive An image of yourself as angels know it. This Xochipilli is an open book. That you reflect his grace, why not believe So? Ever since your birth you were a poet!
~ 57 ~ LII SPECULATIONS OF THE MAYAN CONCEPT OF TIME'S DIVINITIES BY A STELA IN TIKAL
If time's divisions equal gods, you know, O Poet, that the craft of metric makes Your artifacts divine and takes Your works straight to the Muse as moments go. Time, in a mortal's measure, seems too slow To rise eternally from its own breaks With the past: meter takes wing when God shakes Scripture into what we scan here below.
Eternity is not just a long time. And metric is eternity's reply To time, identical with this old stela. The Mayan Angels mark their star-stepped climb From time's measures to points of ecstasy. Each bears new sons in jade-like arms. Selah!
~ 58 ~ LIII THEORY ON PRE-COLUMBIAN ASSYMETRY
Before Christ came, Mexican pottery Was asymmetrical, for to have thrown A pot upon true wheels, which God made known As astral cycles, were a blasphemy. The spindle -- as the stars spin, centrally In air -- might spin. No wheels, though, dared spin down In dust, except on toys, and toys alone. The things of earth were kept from symmetry.
Only when Christ had come did earthen vessels Take starry symmetry and incarnation To heart in harmony centrifugal. Men were no longer astral cycles' vassals. Metric of life neared art in revelation That love makes men more than sidereal.
~ 59 ~ LIV ON A CERAMIC SCULPTURE OF A MAN (WHO IS ALSO A FLAGEOLET) IN A MUSEUM
Molding nothing within a shell of mud, Mingling his spittle in if breezes rose, The Potter put his heart into the throes Mortals go through if mortals are to bud. His sculpture of a soul wants breath for blood, Wants life invisible which overflows The mouth; when breath enters its lips, it blows Blossoms of startling tones in a shrill flood.
Flute-song reverberates florescent plan, Sculpture unearthed whose home once was a tomb But who, as art, blooms in undreamed-of city. Pity, then, this pitiless creature, Man – Musical potter who can flute his bloom In arts; who makes art can, as well, make pity!
~ 60 ~ LV ON ZERO, THE MAYAN HIEROGLYPH FOR WHICH IS A SHELL
Freedom contains it -- only freedom can. The Maya, though, conceived and put it in A shell not to lose it. None could begin To destine that which contains any plan. Only conceptualization Defines it. But a concept's origin (As all creation there had ever been) Takes place in this, including that of man.
Shells have a way of bursting, too. Deprived Of self, freedom conformed; amorphousness Became real through creativity. That they who first conceived zero arrived At -- nothing! Freedom's strange contrariness Is that creation destines destiny.
~ 61 ~ LVI ON WHAT THE VANISHED MAYA LEFT
He left, according to the scientist, Abruptly and bequeathed no lasting reason, Nothing conclusive, why dispersion's season Came to arrest this chronic diarist. Merely his gem of art, his amethyst Remembrance, makes ignoring him a treason. His letter to the world, like love's, agrees on This -- to attend to love is beauty's gist.
His love, still lovely on the pyramid, Is what had meant his dignity; the veils Hiding his fate cannot conceal his art. Sappho is right. Beauty's reason is hid In what is loved, and what one makes reveals Treasures belovĂŠd of the maker's heart.
~ 62 ~ LVII ON THE SPIRIT OF ARCHITECTURE - A MAYA TEMPLE For Don Hollenbeck
If imitation be a law of art, The architect makes spirit of its letter Simply because his tools exclude the fetter Of using creatures as a mimic chart. He mimics nothing that exists apart From man's means and dwelling places. Who better Than he reveals icons of art's chief debtor Or pictures prepositions to his heart?
The pyramid that lifts a temple from The wild necessaries, the temple bordered With a frieze, the stairs with glyph-masked features – Dwell on this dwelling, poet, and become Its imitator. Poets, too, are ordered After verbal breath as much as on creatures.
~ 63 ~ LVIII ON A CERAMIC, REMOJADAS "SMILING HEAD"
Tragedy grieves; comedy laughs; between Them this smile smiles its hopeful interlude Of comi-tragical beatitude Smiled between Good Friday and Halloween. This face reflects a rainbow which is seen On stormless lips which, honest and almost crude, Part as to sigh (though not for kisses, food Or oaths) something tropical, half serene.
The monkey on the head-dress scamps to race Back to its hinterland, to bear the wile Of comic, cosmic, mental mischief off; Reversing tragic history, the grace Of certain hope thickens a plot whose smile, Like this, is not a thing at which I scoff!
~ 64 ~ LIX ON THE PURCHASE OF A REMOJADAS SMILING FACE
This I would give all but my love to have, Which never may be "had" at all, which now Is "mine" -- but still is quite beyond me. Throw Me in hell; give me but this smile as salve. If love be of its kind beyond the grave, The one who made this smile loved me, I know, As well as Bach and Michelangelo, Though the comparison may seem too brave.
This blissful smile, to love and art a martyr, Will help redeem Judas Iscariot And hearten me when death and I keep tryst. I earned the stuff that paid for this. But barter Buys it. I give you this: that Art is not Beauty or love but proves that both exist.
~ 65 ~ LX ON A SMALL CLAY FIGURE OF A SEATED MAN WHO OPENS TO REVEAL IN HIS INTERIOR AN ENTIRE PANTHEON - FROM TEOTIHUACĂ N
St. Justin Martyr tells us that the Lord God, Who created our creation, has placed Seeds of His Word in earth, seeds not defaced By any fall, seeds none need leave ignored. This figurine bears witness to that WordSeed for, when opened, it reveals (encased, Disseminated through the clay God graced With breath) God's blossoms in an earthen gourd.
To bring the seed to bloom, love shall instate A sun; otherwise embryology Becomes this seminary's terminus. But that a mortal creature dared create With clay, that clay is vase for deity, Is right; lesser wording were blasphemous.
~ 66 ~ LXI ON A LITTLE CLAY SCULPTURE OF A MAN WHOSE HOLLOW INTERIOR CONTAINS A PANTHEON, A WORK WHICH MIGHT HAVE COME DOWN TO US BUT UNIQUELY IF AT ALL - IN THE ANﾃ？UACALLI Human existence holds particulars In common, most of all. To be a human Means being where you are, of course. (Such commonPlace expressions, though, might have helped stop wars.) God knows how much is lost! Out of the chars Of Teotihuacﾃ｡n, polar to mammon, This small, clay sculpture snares my spirit famine Of light in its revealing avatars. The tiny man's interiors contain, Entire, a microscopic pantheon. (Justin Martyr's "Word-Seed" seems justified.) For angels to fill space is neither gain Nor loss (Angels are spaceless); but clay, when done For, must take after its angelic side.
~ 67 ~ LXII ON PERSONALITY - A JADE MASK FROM TEOTIHUACร N
This mask through which the spirit speaks is made Of jade, precious in Teotihuacรกn, To show that personality in man Is worthy of memorials in jade. Sculptors portray what they have found portrayed Within; each shapes his stone to his own plan, His personality, so eyes, then, can Behold inner things overtly displayed.
Jade is the calmest precious thing there is, The green, life-like leaf of the precious sphere, A mask revealed as worth earth had concealed. Man's personality is really his Green, precious mask of jade. Truth, stated here, Is that through masks the inmost is revealed.
~ 68 ~ LXIII ON SEEING THE UNSEEN IN ART (FOR EXAMPLE)
Not that the spirit is beyond the flesh – Like it or not, in us both are together, Affaired in love distracted, flight with feather – Rather that we see spirit where they mesh. Not that the body can corrupt the fresh Eternity of spirit's bloom, that weather Of corpulence could wilt such bloom, but whether Or no life's breath survives when such storms thresh.
Like shadows of the spirit, fruitless blooms Of beauty, works of art, flourish to prove Spiritual realities in earth. To know spirit in art's blooming presumes Such paradox as that we still may love Flesh as spirit-sculpted proof of our worth.
~ 69 ~ LXIV ANOTHER SONNET ON THE SPIRIT OF ARCHITECTURE -THE FACADE OF THE "GOVERNOR'S PALACE" AT UXMAL
Museum of the soul, temple of bone, Mortal, shell-like thing exterior To immortality's interior, You show Who made you though your soul seem gone. Though ruined and with heart of sand or stone, Still your design reveals you as a storeHouse of the Muse's grace; and man is more Than janitor where God's image is shown.
Architecture is the hardest of The arts, the one we live in; an example Of this is seeing through a stone facade. Ruined or not (still home of love, in love Created), my love's face is one such temple Facade, one of the surfaces of God.
~ 70 ~ LXV IN A RUIN WITH MANY HIEROGLYPHS
It says "the letter killeth" and "the spirit Giveth life." Creatures of ruins, gray Enigmas, congregate about a stray Ray of the sun and hieroglyphics rear it. A serpent in the blossoms and a parrot Glare at their images which glyphs portray Vigorously upon the stones. But they Act unaware of portraits or their merit.
Desire, we may presume, had played a part Here or the glyphs should not exist. Beyond This glimpse, spirit portrays the glyphs' begetters. Living on love mirrored in works of art, Serpent and parrot stare -- but not respond – Although they are themselves part of the letters.
~ 71 ~ LXVI THE HUMMINGBIRD AND THE ORCHID
In love how many worlds have coincided! Love -- like a humming-bird with song in wing, Feathered with rainbow's hearts, able to wring His flight to one, small spot on song-elided, Invisible, enzeroed wings, confided In unequal, bird-like orchids -- must cling To all its worlds or not be anything To love and fall into itself divided.
The orchid to the ardent humming-bird, However, is the only world of love, The only being that there ever is. That he sings, shines, and flies has not occurred To him -- but fragrance, nectar and, above All else, his life -- love -- makes the whole world his.
~ 72 ~ LXVII THE ROSE AND THE ORCHID - ON SEEING THEM BOTH IN BLOOM IN MEXICO
The rose is rooted in the earth, whose flower, Classic to love and beauty, blooms above (But with) a host of bee-like thorns (like love), But leaves us wishing her demise were slower. The lofty orchid, sacred to the hour When spirit entered man is, like a dove, Thornless. The orchid is divested of The earth and lives on breeze, on light, on shower.
I saw them both in bloom in Mexico, In ancient ruins -- roses in the ground, Orchids with architecture for a nest. BelovĂŠd, if you wish so, we will go The floral road again (which we once found), Crowned with orchids, with roses at the breast.
~ 73 ~ LXVIII ON A GIFT OF TOTANAC HEADS
What have I purchased, love, as souvenir – Blooms of the thornless, orchid cacti, cages Of hummingbirds, a book with colored pages Of ancient arts, replicas of the yearStone of the Aztecs showing a career Of time much as our own? Each of them ages. I have chosen something; worthy of sages, This head from Vera Cruz full of good cheer.
I have been told such heads made substitute For human sacrifices which, before Art came to be, were votive to the dead. If to spare life should ever come to suit Your fancy, this should please you all the more. If not, at least it is a handsome head.
~ 74 ~ LXIX ON RESTORATION - TIKAL, TEMPLE I
Opulent tropics imply sumptuary Splendor to the people who create Temples in jade infernos where the weight Of jaguar dawns and night will scarcely vary. Green, level heat makes passions temporary, Passions which themselves debilitate Builders' burning dreams and necessitate, Sometimes, that what is built be fragmentary.
So with the love we made in humid passion. I am not surprised that what we built, Though grand, ruined to near annihilation. Yet of *these stones some calmer men may fashion Well (since stones and some hearts do not wilt With tropic heat) our temple's restoration.
~ 75 ~ LXX PARAPHRASE FROM THE POETICS OF THE AZTEC, TEMILOTZIN
Though war be waged throughout the calendar That dates my days, flower-and-song is my Vocation and my true identity -God has sent me as a messenger. I am transformed into a poem far From home. Listen, my friends, since deity Created us creators, let us try Transfiguring the fatal warrior.
Whose is the true flower-and-song of love? Where does it bloom and sing? And what, my friends, Happens to what we make when we have died? Fate is a shield. We may choose to remove It once love becomes our means and ends; Then flower-and-song shape what we decide.
~ 76 ~ LXXI A VISION OF FLOWER-AND-SONG INSPIRED BY ANﾃ？UAC For Jerre Tanner
Spring does not produce on earth such bloom As I may dream in dreams, bloom of a kind Leafed with jade and Quetzﾃ｡l plumes, with refined Petals of gold, with incense for perfume. Such blooms flower in song where there is room For dreams, room where my breath is not confined Only to breathing but is re-assigned To flutes, my flowers' fruit and, thus, their tomb.
Blossoms of song rise from the flutes -- as words Are in bloom when sung -- shaped from precious metal Which shine through windy nights of sacrifice. Above all, love transfigures blooms to birds Whose florid songs yield nectar, whose petal Wings can bear me past dreams of paradise.
~ 77 ~ LXXII ON THE CROSS AT ACOLMAN (THAT BEARS THE ICONOGRAPHY OF ANﾃ？UAC) This is flower-and-song of Ayocuﾃ｡n Cﾃｺetzpaltzin Who without doubt had faith in the Giver of Life -"I hear clearly a bird's lovely word As he answers the Giver of Life, As, fugitively chanting, he offers flowers, A precious effusion of well-meant words, Like downpours of Jade and Quetzal plumes. Is this the Giver of Life's pleasure? Is this the only, the sole truth on earth?"
One carved the Dove's cross with the hummingbird, Who had feared life as rootless dream life's worst Threat -- till Spain gave him reason more accursed Than that to fear -- and then became absurd. Love's Body and Blood brought by fire and sword (Spain's sacrificial paradox like thirst For mushroom wine's -- not life's -- illusions) burst Into stone bloom, fresh flesh for a kept Word.
Rose of Sharon, the Son of David here Is offered, lifted up, flower-and-song Orchid-perched in Anﾃ｡huac's wind and stone. O Beauty and Salvation, rooted where Both Love's Faith and Dove are, O Blooming Tongue Of Burning Water; O Holy Ghost Groan!
~ 78 ~ LXXIII ON DEPARTING FROM RUINS
Not that these ruins are the only place Where Beauty, sent from Love, may hesitate Awhile, in earth; not that the ultimate Is here, glorious in final grace. But here there is revealed, somehow, a trace Of beauty one, alone, cannot create But which is made when two appropriate To Themselves love to see Love face to face.
Here in these ruins I am well reminded That we are torn from communion into Parts, and that Beauty still is not in vain. Not that I shall stay here foolishly blinded By pride, denying you by what I do, Nor that -- for you -- I shall not love again!
~ 79 ~
~ 80 ~