Variorum \ Found: Sound Sound

Nancy:  Day after day, week after week – I’ll never know how he saw us or what memories we may have revived.

Variorum

Did Thomas Hardy sit,

sit waiting, in his last years,

for poems to happen by, an old gentleman

in his study, sitting –

– My neighbor sat

at the wheel of his car, which was parked

in tall grass.  He blew the horn

at girls.

He blew the horn at girls, in salute;

at me, big bellied with my son

and pushing a stroller;

at my landlady with her print dress,

her farmer’s arms and flat chest.

Like Hardy, perhaps, he revisited us,

clothed our lusts; as his eyes failed

he may have had a thousand second chances

at the breasts and buttocks of his memories.

One day he blew the horn at the postman

and slid forward, his head on the wheel,

and we came from the houses

all around, women, came where he sat

waiting, all day, for us to pass by.

Alan:  In the 1970s, the Poetry Society of London was housed in a once elegant but by then seedy building in Earl’s Court.  In its dusty environs I was exposed to a variety of poetrys, from the rantings of Bob Cobbing to the flinty mythology of Basil Bunting’s “Briggflats.”  It was an era of “found poetry,” “sound poetry,” “concrete poetry” and who knows what else.  Combining two genres, I wrote the following: a found sound poem.  To be read aloud, andante, with a gently rocking rhythm.

Found:  Sound Sound

Bartholomew’s Gazetteer of Britain, 1977

The Sound of Shuna

the Sound of Ulva

the Sound of Vatersay

Soundwell

The Sound of Papa

the Sound of Pladda

the Sound of Raasay

South Sound

The Sound of Shiant

the Sound of Scalpay

the Sound of Islay

North Sound

The Sound of Gigha

the Sound of Barra

the Sound of Handa

Sound Gruney

The Sound of Harris

the Sound of Hoxa

the Sound of Rum

the Voe of Sound

The Sound of Monach

the Sound of Mull

the Sound of Luing

the Ness of Sound

The Sound of Eigg

the Sound of Arisaig

the Sound of Eriskay

Upper Sound

The Sound of Jura

the Sound of Kerrera

the Sound of Iona

Sound Heath

The Sound of Insh

the Sound of Bute

the Sound of Sound

the Sound of Sound

“Variorum” first appeared in Slow Dancer magazine.

Affirmation \ At Milerepa Center, Barnet, Vermont

Nancy:  Caught sometimes in the never/forever, I’m reminded by the world that things change.

Affirmation

If the blackberry were a bitter tangle

of thorn, or were grudging of leaf, or sullen

of flowers, I would shrug.  December.

Reason enough.  For which of us

has not had Decembers, when cold gripped us,

times of dark days, iron nights?  Then

Words like trust and love are nothing

but frost flowers, abstractions; we are

cold to the core.

But the blackberry arches green, not in denial

of December, but in affirmation of July,

and in the grace of its abundance

Crowns the meadow with flowers, and draws light

into the shadows of the trees.

Let Decembers come; they are passages

through which love and trust will come in their own time,

just as in the dark of the year

The blackberry had within it this green,

this grace of flowers, this affirmation of July.

Alan:  To offer well-wishing to the universe seems like such a hopeless act.  But then, who knows where the threads of our prayers may lead, and to what uses they may be put?

At Milarepa Center, Barnet, Vermont

Red and yellow,

blue, white, and green,

the prayer flags

move slowly

in the morning mist,

their long lines

silently belling

between farmhouse and flagpole,

pole and barn,

barn and farmhouse.

In every weather

they give blessings

to this sahā world,

and fade, fray,

releasing themselves

thread by thread

to the air.

I have seen birds’ nests

woven with fur, hair,

bits of yarn,

rug sweepings,

bright plastic grass

from last Easter’s baskets.

I would like to find, somewhere

in the thicket behind us,

the nest of the catbird

that has kept us company all week:

a secret, cupped offering:

a rainbow at the moment

it disappears.

The Black Dog Runs In The Grass \ A Sumac Brake/A Jungle/Polynesia/The Peaceable Kingdom

Nancy:  Every dog different, every dog a treasure chest of indelible images.

The Black Dog Runs In The Grass

Hay Weather

             Grass falls to the mowers and cures

             without rain or dew, and the men

             sweat and work in the heat of the

             day, sure the weather can’t hold.

Even Now

             The only fields I own haven’t yielded

             a crop of hay in years, “since the war”

             they say, but that was the war before

             the war before the war, still I judge

             the hay as it comes off other fields –

             the rich dusty green, the fragrance.

And Here

             In these run-down fields where brush

             infiltrates year by year, there

             are still pockets of grass, Red Top,

             sweet Timothy, good for horses.

Just After Dawn

             The air is so still that the black dog,

             running, sends clouds of grass pollen rising

             in the sun.  It takes so little, just this,

             and scores of July mornings, a lifetime of

             July mornings, follow the dog, running golden

             in hay weather.

Alan:  After too many trips along the interstate, the thickets and tangles, the half-wild margins, begin to call, whispering of escape.  Something about the sumacs made me picture the paintings of Henri Rousseau, Gauguin, and Edward Hicks all at once, in a strange hypnotic blend.

A Sumac Brake/A Jungle/Polynesia/The Peaceable Kingdom

Tiger-partitioned, green-parrot-feathered,

the sumac brake hides a small child’s intentions

of summer, hides Paul Gauguin’s lost works,

the brown-skinned woman, her brown breasts and brown hips,

hides the child, hides the tiger, hides the parrot.

All of each day, drivers tom-tom past,

acutely unaware of this island just askew the interstate,

this slow eruption of innocence, electric,

deliquescent as ferns, as antennae of moths.

Only the febrile, swift dragonflies and, by moonlight,

the incautious deer look in, past stag-horns’ cinnamon,

seeing Gauguin, his moustache and brushes, his woman,

seeing the child, seeing summer asleep and dreaming,

the parrot fastidiously preening, the tiger

watching, enormous-eyed, preparing

to lie down lambent and languorous with her lambs.

Sleeping Into Art \ Yet The Mock-Orange Still Blooms

Nancy:  So much ink!  So indelible!

Sleeping Into Art

While the poet sleeps

the pen wicks ink

and her nightgown blooms

with Himalayan lakes

Rorschach tests

The Dragon and the Phoenix

encompassing wisdom.

Freed of the rigidity

of words, the pen

glides on

fulfilling its potential

on and on

a Japanese screen

a garden lush with camellias

far archipelagos.

The poet is sleeping

sleeping

     on and on

the pen slips to the floor.

Alan:  After enough years in a small town, we half-know so many people.  They lend their names to the land, at least for awhile, until all sign and memory of them fades.

Yet The Mock-Orange Still Blooms

That’s Bill’s place.

Gone – what? –

ten years? fifteen?

They say he fell asleep

smoking.  On oxygen,

too.  Bad combination.

Went quick.

Left a black space,

charred out

between the road

and the woods.

No one cleaned it up.

Old green garage

to the side,

untouched.  Small.

Hardly room for a car,

tractor maybe.

Last winter it finally

went.  Roof down.

Just two walls now,

leaning in.

Oh, and that shed.

Back there under the trees.

You wouldn’t notice

without a good look.

Last thing standing.

Old.  Eyes

not too good. 

Drove slow.

Way over on the right.

Took his wife around.

Guess she was lame.

Used to pull up

to the mailbox.

She’d open

the window,

grab the mail.

Then he’d swing left

across the road

into the dooryard.

One time, toward dark,

he didn’t see the other car.

T-boned.  Killed her.

He wasn’t hurt.

Stayed on there

‘til the end.

Never knew him much.

Just to say hi to,

around the neighborhood.

Wonder who else

drives by, thinks,

“That’s old Bill’s place. 

Gone now – what –

ten years, fifteen?”