To a Merchant Retiring
Just a face on the wall, you were, in youth,
Too small to lift the standard stone blocks.
So, for a smile, you served the masons
Cold green tea in little china cups.
In adolescence you drove donkeys hauling
Cut stone for the wall at Yinchuan.
Captured in the Ordos by the Kyrgyz,
You survived by talking to their horses.
You seldom talk about that. Who ever asked?
As for the land beyond, we know nothing -
Only that the steppe is littered with bones
And stretches all the way to Mount Kunlun.
But records show that, in the year of the dragon,
The emperor ransomed you for a bolt of silk;
And that, when you came through Jiaquan Gate,
You brought seven horses and a camel.
The army grabbed you. You knew too much.
So they made you a scout and sent you out
Over the horizon. You were gone so long
They said you had died or had deserted.
But eventually you'd show up, leading horses
And camels laden with priceless treasure:
Carpets, dried fruits, lapis lazuli,
And brief messages of confidence.
Such men do not escape imperial notice.
Court officials wanted you for their own ends,
But the Jade Ruler saw through their plots and,
Esteeming a wise enemy over foolish friends,
Sent you out again, laden with gifts,
And goods, and messages of peace,
Meticulously loaded and addressed
To the barbarian chiefs, those proud kagans.
All this was too much for the palace guard,
Who banished you from Chang-an. So you returned
To you ancestral village where, it seems,
At every moment, caravans depart and arrive.
Your walled garden never got enough rain.
So you turned it into a brisk emporium:
Jade baubles, knic-knaks, bric-a-brac -
And a furnace to melt down Roman coins.
As times changed, you moved to meet demand,
Importing exotic elixirs and rare herbs.
And later, sacred icons and wisdom texts.
As values changed, so did the currency.
You, hoarding nothing but investing all,
Set up way-stations in the middle of nowhere.
You helped build temples to the Goddess of Mercy
And stocked their pools with golden fish.
Now rumor has it that you hang with the monks,
Doing nothing for weeks on end.
Could it be that you have finally arrived?
Or have you gone crazy staring at the wall?
Last we checked, you were sitting under the eaves,
Spine straight as an arrow. But who would notice?
You sit so still that passing shoppers take you
For the grain in the wall's woodwork.
By John Paul Maynard
THE RUJUM
(Arabic for ‘The Stones’)
The careful eye finds them several miles
Outside Jerusalem, duly west,
Each towering high on a separate crest,
Not ruined structures but stones in piles
Sited perhaps to cover all defiles
By Which might move an army bent on quest.
Or such is the opinion held by some -
Those who take first impressions as evidence –
But those stones have their own defense
And not as citadels to be overcome,
For that suggests a petty city kingdom
With no walls, no frontiers and no intelligence.
Consider, then, th’opinion held by most:
That these were stations of a great empire
Upon which watchmen kindled signal fire
Carried by relay from post to post,
Warning of landings upon the coast,
Assaults on Ashkelon or siege of Tyre.
For sure our view of ancient man deserves
The same sharp skills that he on us bestowed:
Flicker of flame, mirror’s flash, or any mode
That gives straight transit ‘cross a set of curves
Provides the state with a net of nerves
By which in private eyes the public will encode.
History’s writ would such views endorse
Together with all the dust-spun drama
That could accrue to such a panorama.
For sure, light moves faster than a horse
And th’ability to fashion it in Morse
Within the ken of the kings of Judah.
For these were seeds of the flood, sons of Shem
Who built both Babel and the alphabet
That God might not the deeds of men forget.
Surely they found means to protect Jerusalem
From every dust-spun desert stratagem.
So they built the gilt-lettered parapet.
But these stones…Were those who did them toss
In such artless piles freemen? Or slaves of jinn
Who etch on skulls with point of javelin
Signs of the star, the crescent or the cross?
Scribes might count them in their latest gloss
As so many angels dancing on a pin.
Still, some say these great cairns called rujum
Encrypt prophet kings. “Let our faith expound”
And so speculated in mere totems, scrolls bound
In scripted skin, as if thought could illume
The glyph of the body in a little room.
One was excavated but no tomb was found.
Still, one expects a proud, lost ancient kith
Wishing to impart something of its glory,
Yet lacking any decent history,
Might find it in a fantastic myth
Chiseled on the face of a monolith.
But none adorns this promontory.
From here one can look out east to Moab’s
Mountains, stranger than the Moon.
At dusk, they flame: each color is a rune.
No stray mark of man bedabs the scarab’s
Shell. For the unknown was hell for Ahab’[s
Priests, and Jezebel. Who here hears the tune
Khidr Elijah plays to his flocks across the Jordan?
Are these his high altars, or those of Bel?
Outwardly, there is no way to tell.
But the stones press for a critical inquisition:
“Do you seek Beelzebub, God of Ekron,
Because there is no God in Israel?”(1)
O if Satan’s prince does not here sit and tally
How many storm-dark clouds lurk reclined
Like beasts upon the city walls! Behind,
A low, ice-black cloud begins its sally
Against villages in a distant valley.
Lights, just lit dim, wince and then go blind.
It must be some aberration of mind
That analyzes, afraid to wonder
What ties man to man. The same force splits asunder
Time’s river so that we can cross and meet refined
Men on the other side of history. They first defined
These crude platforms. Flash! And thunder
Shakes the earth. The wind drives hail
Sideways into our faces. Off into the gloom
We step into the abyss, off the rujum
In search of meanest shelter, but fail.
Roofless, treeless, how barren is the vale!
There’s only a hole. Is it a tomb?
We slither through like lizards and from inside
View the storm, though we cannot stand.
Heaven, with ice and fire, stones the land
While we, with spiders and scorpions, hide.
The wind mounts up and we look outside
And spy a little cloud shaped like a hand.
Finally, we begin to understand
Who built the rujum. They were from
The frontier, Beyond horizons. They were earlier
Than the Arabs and the Jews. See how they tend
Their flocks. Watch how their sheep wend
Paths through the groves of an olive grower.
Together they found common cause against the city.
In times of famine, they would share and eat
While raiding caravans of the urban elite
(Who examine signs of a separate destiny)
But here was sufficient visibility
To thwart thrown fate, its every mark delete.
So these high places saw congregations
Of wolf-skinned shepherds with their herds,
And poor farmers. In their own words
They told a story, one which mentions
A hero, weak because he had such wide horizons,
An outcast, like the Sh’ia, the Jews or the Kurds,
Who by his failings conquers personality.
Call him Gilgamesh, Sinuhe, or Abraham,
The hero proves as weak as a newborn lamb.
His feature is a vulnerability
That spares him every iniquity
And protects against every scam.
Here the hero worked his best magic.
From this place he could watch the city,
Thereby ensure his kin’s security.
The fact that his end was not tragic
Made him no less aerial and pelagic
Than the Greeks in serendipity.
Eyes closed, I lie quietly in the cave.
Not a single image comes to mind,
As if emptiness were the Thing defined,
And Being’s presence – light – a wave
That floods the vale and unearths the grave,
Leaving the hero on his back reclined.
Up, up and awake atop the point of the rujum’s
Vantage. That organic life be blind is Nature’s
Rule. But Time is a Mithradate which cures.
Pity not then the dead in their little rooms,
Or the souls lost in the city’s hecatombs.
By law, the offspring of God endures.
-by John Paul Maynard, 1980
1. II Kings 1:6
The Blessed City
Once inside the limits of this city,
One drops everything. The lion at the gate
Takes your bags. No welcoming committee
Asks questions, but goat girls wave recognition
And whole caravans slump on signal –
Like vertebrae on divans – to dump a freight
Which, threaded through the eye of the needle,
Is deemed too precious to be merchandise,
Being the very stuff of paradise.
So no custom or duty entrammels
The wry indifference of the camels
Who, after a journey of a hundred moons,
Across a desert more barren than the mind,
Come to a place like this, where no beast is driven,
Where sheep lead the shepherds to the manger,
And even the rats are kind.
Here the beggar deserves no pity
For to him here everything is given.
Nor need the noble stranger any introduction
For he finds here the same invisibility
He knew alone in the desert. He sits
Here as he walked there, in the shade
Of the wall as in the shadow of the beast.
And he who his own body so inhabits
This city opens its arcane court
Of noiseless laughter and eyeless sight:
A metempiric harlequinade
Of seer and seen in the House of Being.
That House is the refuge of every sort
Of thing: thought here has no center
But mind serves as exchequer to the king.
And tonight features a timeless masquerade.
Rich merchants and their wives, chiefs
Of every tribe and nation, surrender their beliefs,
Shell out, then enter, to be unmasked.
The oos and ahs of quiet recognitions
Are as the coos and cahs of doves and pigeons.
But he who doth alone in shadows sit,
Who waits regardless of pain or pleasure,
He his own life stands to inherit
And with it, this city’s heritage and treasure.
So let him enter last, when the room is empty:
Door ajar, a table set for one or two,
A single picture of the wall – a portrait
Of the king – but without a face.
So too is Man the frame for every trace.
In this first moment of just solitude,
Naked, muted and unmasked,
Stand ye here like a question asked:
And not hope in time his stake to seize.
There is time to drink at every tavern,
Time to reflect on the stone-carved frieze
That purls the gate. Look, there is Eve
Born from the tree, and Adam dignified.
Here is Abraham, knife at Isaac’s throat,
And there in the thicket the wayward goat.
Here Elijah wrestles with an angel
And there the barefoot carpenter is crucified
Again and again. Here, the ruins of the temple,
And there, the stone. See how on a night of power,
The last prophet rides al Buraq right up to heaven!
Here there is no Muslim and no Jew,
And no crusading Christian pilgrim,
For this is the city of light, a fortress
For the uncommitted, the unidentified.
A Dialogue between Eye and Ear
Deep silence opens like a door.
Eye glimpses the banquet hall
With its polished parquet floor,
And marches right in. What gall!
As if heaven could be assaulted…
As if a beggar should be so bold…
Meanwhile, blind Ear has halted
And waits at the threshold.
Eye is dazzled by the glistening
Of silver and crystal on the table,
While Ear stands there just listening,
Like a blind wife, invisible.
“Come in now” says Eye to Ear.
“The table’s set, so take a seat.
The place is empty: No one’s here.
And the host insists we eat.”
Blind Ear groped and found a chair
And sat there like a battered spouse,
While Eye cased the places where
Light illumed the Master’s house.
Where are we?” blind Ear to deaf Eye asks.
“Do our setting just describe”
Eye said: “On the walls are masks
Represent every tribe.”
Ear said: “I feel a breeze, and hear birds.
There must be a window open.
Tell me now in better words
About this pavilion.”
“Well.” said Eye.”I wish you could see
How the windows opens to gardens lush,
And there the master's menagerie -
Wild beasts and birds in the bush.
Ear just sat there, hands in a cup,
In a posture of deep feeling,
While Eye went on to drink and sup
And talk about the ceiling.
“It's a vaulted pyramid in glass
In which hangs a star-like lamp
Around which tiny planets pass
On th'ecliptic's ramp.”
“O Eye, you sketch a pretty image
Of matter spinning with no pause.
But even with all your knowledge
You miss the laws.”
Ear hums: “Do Re Mi Fa So La Si Do.”
Proud Eye blinked and blurted back:
“Is differences in tone all you know?
Why on earth attack
Reality – things in space extended?
Shut up and eat your meal.”
But that was no what Ear intended.
No. She could feel
Thoughts thronging the mind's emporium
From pick-pockets to computer thieves,
Bad children of the sensorium
And for that she grieves.
Deaf Eye went on: “The table's set for three.
The empty chair is for all of our children -
That brood of self-willed thoughts led by me.
Is not vision a thought splayed open?”
Though she looked like she was sleeping
Blind Ear sat listening in the Soothe,
To birds chirping, peepers peeping.
“You are no guide to truth.”
She said: “You trick me and make me eat
This offal that you call mentation.
The seat you sit on is not your seat.
You broke in without invitation.”
Eye said: “The master has for us arranged
A re-past of mental leisure.
It is you, not I, who are deranged
And prone to seizure.
“O dear deaf Eye” blind Ear cries,
It is I who guard you in the night.
The skies I know are more lofty skies
Than your poor sight.
“Listening to the music of the firmament,
I become ever more curious,
For our Star is an experiment,
Revolving around Sirius.
“Moons everywhere are being born
In a blessed octave we call Creation
But more marvelous is vision shorn
Of abstract ideation.”
“The spectral inter-penetration
Of worlds phenomena and noumena
Has no just origination
Except in the Holy Arcana.”
“You sound like the Queen of Pharaoh"
Said Eye to Ear. “Shut up and eat.
Mind your master, above, below,
While must meet
Our common destiny in a skull:
A blood-washed mass of nerve and fat
Powered by a heart more like a hull
Than a pump in a vat.”
“All power to you, Eye, but I grow tired
Of your bleached linear perspective.”
“True” Eye replied. “The human brain is wired
And so defective.”
“You, Eye, stole and ran with the light
And so drove the jagged chaotic brain
Like a bad master who, out of spite,
Slaps his slave.”
Eye says: “The brain is a plantation
Where slaves work for food, not wages.
Our children – the selves in mentation -
Shall be listed in the neuronal pages.”
“You have allied yourself to silence.
And so you leave your body!” Ear did sob,
"It is a brazen act of inner violence.
Even now, thoughts mob
"The hall in which we eat. They are not
My children. All schema encode the Eye's -ism:
Floating images in the blood. These thoughts besot
The whole organism.”
Dear Eye got up and began to case the place
But he found no clues to man's experiment,
Except that Big Bang blew them into space,
By accident.
When the Master came to his house,
He found Eye rifling the premises.
Ear tried to apologize for her spouse,
But Eye’s nemesis
Placed him under guard on the porch,
Half-way between god and beast.
And there he stands with a torch,
Illuminating the feast.
While the other senses – taste, smell, touch –
Entered dressed in rags and tatters.
Each is in element in the real as such,
Transforming matters.
So the senses served up a high cuisine.
Heart and head and hand were invited.
The Master stood behind the scene,
And the psyche was united.
By JPM
WITH WOLFWIND ON NORWOTUCK MOUNTAIN
New Years eve, 1993-94
Clouds trek east like so many bob-tailed sheep.
Winds snarl and bite like hungry wolves.
The sun, scared shepherd, is in the keep.
Moon says “Let the winds feast themselves.”
Cloud sheep lump up, as all things cluster.
“Baaa Baaa” is the sum of their learned emotion.
As for the wolving wind, it has no need to bluster
As it drives the flocks over open ocean.
Here there is no person to praise or pillage:
No one comes out on a night like this.
Below, shrouded by wood smoke, the village
Sleeps in an electron-spinning paralysis.
From frosted windows the blue light glows
Colder than th’expanses ‘twixt galaxies
The flickering light of simulations blows
Out an encephalon’s natural fantasies.
Spare him, please, and make him wild –
Never let him do as others do.
Man by man has been defiled
By mass egos' low crass ballyhoo.
Here on the edge of a high pressure front,
I peer out through th’immensity.
Such silence calls for a rash new stunt,
A very hush hush intensity.
Reckless Creation read like an ancient text:
A thermal spectrum of cosmic radiation
Exhibits marks of a world twice hexed
’twixt the Laws of Three and Seven.
Ancient truth, preserved by saints,
Alive and well in the quanta themselves,
Do clean the brains from all their taints
And put men back on their proper shelves.
The sky is a goblet, rubies in glass –
The skull of Adam of which the heart
Is like the point of the compass,
Reveals the Psyche in a piece of Art.
Cloud orchard yields a field of stars
Clustered like neurons in a lobe
Or like pins and needles tipped with saphires
Make splendid the black sable neuronal robe.
The whirling welkin I will wear as a cape
And dance a shaman’s dance on skis.
The sun king is dead, now a chance to escape
Cured at last of the modern disease.
Small man, cut your track across an unknown field
And I will range out ahead while following,
Leading you back to the treasure sealed
With no bright light shadowing.
Breathing brain skull – the Universe –
A geode broke open by the sapping cold
In which psyche's stars rehearse
In play, then link up and down unload.
Call life death, space befuddled by the mind
Bent on schemes, scams and banal “isms” –
But emptiness is what leads the wind
In a world best seen through prisms.
He will not go out and he will not go in
For if the order of the constellation
Spells some distant cosmic origin,
Then be it Orion…
Off in the distance a horned owl enchants
Birched slopes above the snow-draped fur
While below, this human wolf in pants
Sneaks past the sleeping violent human cur.
The vacuum between most men and their fates
Is a vast archive of failed experiments
Except when Fire in Water dissipates
And air and earth become living elements.
No, I will not go back, to where it’s warm.
The womb’s dense waters I’ll not accept.
But will stay here in the eye of the storm
And galactic messages intercept.
Mountains running like waves at sea;
Eyes rolling long sky/earth border;
Spruce forest standing like an army
Alertly waiting an order.
Is there no master in command?
Not yet! So sing not of ‘you and me.'
See first how th’elements mix, and expand
By Law of Seven and the Law of Three.
Cold night! I must move or freeze.
Come, we’ll flee inertia’s depravity
And run all night on waxed wooden skis
Negotiating gravity.
Run then with the eerie, unseen wind
And lead the cloud sheep to their graves –
Off to a place not even imagined,
Of eddies, surging swells and waves.
Incident in Bretton Woods
New Hampshire, July 26, 1944
With wings out spread and talons extended,
The mountain looms like a great eagle
About to alight on the hotel lawn and links.
So great is the massif that the western
Vale lies in the shadow till that time when
The sun hauls its way around the mountain.
Then the valley reveals the hotel
Sailing the bluegreen like a battleship.
On the quarterdeck porches lounge
The American delegation. It’s a final party
For “a job well done.” And a photo op.
Now that the contentious debate is over,
United States officials can relax,
And celebrate their achievements.
Mr White is shaking hands all around.
The press has been prepped and muted.
Now the liquors flow freely down
The gullets of the new imperatores.
On the great porches, the bankers
Are served trays of little pink shrimp
Which they stab with toothpicks.
The wives, henchmen and bodyguards
Join in a second round of thanksgiving.
”For it went our way. The world
Socialist plan failed.” wife quipped:
“Mr. White was polite to Mr. Keynes
And should not be blamed for his breakdown.
The fact is, his idea of a international
Clearing Union, would not serve us,
Would limit the profits of US bankers,
And that was not why the war is fought.”
Her quip was a little too direct for most, for
All recalled what Lord Keynes said about
The world being splayed and ripped open
To organized systemic predation.
And this has made some uneasy but
To the victors go the rights to pillage.
No wonder old Maynard Keynes broke down
(A fact confirmed by hotel staff.)
For he could see it. Upstairs in his turret
Suite, the man brooded on the new situation.
These ebullient hosts have no shame;
Nor foresee the awful consequences
Of their restlessness, their foolish optimism,
Their hidden greed, and their banal mental habits.
We must trust even industrial development.
How naïve to hold by the blade the god Tekne,
Who swings a double-edged sword.
By historical law, it seems, Gaia is to be raped
By another wave of restless white men,
Armed with written laws and firesticks.
Ignorant of the laws of reciprocal feeding,
Ignorant of the laws of world creation,
World maintenance and destruction,
They will blunder ahead with the naïve
Confidence of doomed conquistidores.
How self-serving their broad new policies –
That the currency of each nation
Should be tied to the ratio
Of imports over exports; And not
Derived, as the nations wished, from
The per capita sum of goods exported.
The first is a doctored bank ledger,
The second a fair incentive for the poor.
Yet the advantage was to go to
The American financiers. He knew them.
He watcher them arm-twist France
Which then, pressed Germany to repay.
No wonder the other delegations
Departed in disgust and disarray.
Except for Lord Keynes. Where is he?
Rumors amongst the hotel staff say
He collapsed last night; that he had dark
Circles under his eyes because of stress,
For he could see what they could not see:
A casino economy built on speculation,
Where the rich prey upon the poor;
And he saw the cities growing like
Cancerous mushrooms tearing the heart
Out of a million rural communities,
Even as they themselves come apart.
All this is called ‘progress’, ‘growth.’
The stuffed suits spin free trade
As if it were something they thought up
And seriously endorsed. But you know
The poor have no place in the market.
“They are consumed, exploited.”
Just give the poor money and times will
Flower, as they buy consumer goods.
Get the poor on their feet and then
Collect record taxes and fees.
But this new system will debase most
Monies, and impoverish billions.
These new dark-suited world masters
Kept all the aces, kings and queens,
While dealing a ‘full deck’ to ‘partners.’
This is how one empire falls to another.
The old don, high in the hotel, looks out
And sees the smoke from the cog railway
Obscuring Mount Washington, except
For the peak, with its blinking antennae.
“Be careful what you say here.”
He took a last sip of chilled claret.
His papers were already in his brief case.
The Yanks want him for a photo op,
But he calls instead for his limousine.
Then, together with his wife and batman,
He descends to the chaos of the hotel lobby.
The staff stop, alert yet unprepared.
Rowdy noises from the porches flood in.
The big apes are jabbering, their wives
Cooing and cawing like excited doves,
While outside, dark-suited turkeys strut.
“Time to leave this menagerie” he said.
For Lord Keynes could see the suffering
Running like a wake from the stern
Of the heavy, drab, banal, big battleship
Of blind transnational capitalism.
“Nature will have the final say in this”
He said as he strode through the foyer
And out, to the limo – that world hearse.
The old don turns and looks skyward
To see soaring a hawk and a vulture
“Working in serial tandem
For maximum efficiency.”
BRIGHT ENCEPHALON
You have your home at one end of the spine.
There you live in your walled fortress,
Safe from the blood. An image of decline,
You press and repress consciousness.
Just look at the map – all that you excluded,
As if you needed neither food or oxygen.
Cut off, most brains by self are deluded
And persist in closing what is open.
They do this in the name of security:
Ego claims all of it for its own.
Fear gets them as they fixed on memory.
Death stalked them back to the known.
Who is this tyrannical overseer?
The brain is driven by personality.
Others blame the left hemisphere.
Either way the cortex makes its reality.
O High Front Brain, Neocortex,
Your crude plans prompt worry.
These vain images of self do vex
The neural circuits, made them hurry.
So slow down, bright encephalon.
See, the work you do is shoddy –
Warped models of phenomena,
Neglecting the position of the body.
Remember how it was in the age of Cain.
Lying was a fad and the land was wasted.
Back then discussions about the brain
Concerned how to cook and how it tasted.
The brain’s hanging gardens of Babylon
Are more marvelous than a galaxy.
Five hundred billion neurons in the encephalon
Made it all the match to nature’s imaginary.
Who leads? I ask the firing cells. “Me
And you” though it’s clear he did forget.
He’s cut off from the fountain of life which wells
And sparkles deep in the gut - that quiet.
I’ll meet you there, in the diaphragm.
Just watching, we are wind and river.
Then begins the task to deprogram
Your fitful circuit. So surrender.
“Surrender? Never! I’ll stay in command
High in my castle above the spine.
There, with the known, I’ll make my stand.
Between blood and brain I’ll draw the line.”
Suffer then the thought of impending death
Because you did not your lands cultivate.
All your cells will die on the final breath
And you yourself will know no other fate.
“Leave me alone. I have enough problems
Have you no respect for personality?
Life itself does verify my theorems
That brain is the best guide to reality.
“Therefore I’ll not follow the flow
Of breath up and down the spine.
The body is my servant – that I know.
So take what is yours. Let me have mine.”
You sit there managing your great estate.
The body serves you as a slave derided.
You entrain armies of cells to manipulate
The entire system. But it is not so divided.
The spine is a bridge from shore to shore.
So venture down into those uncharted regions
There you’ll find your country, which you adore.
You can take it from the vying legions
Of vain and idle selves, born of appetite
These are the one which rule the brain,
Nitwit imposters, with no insight
Into how the system might ease the strain.
Therefore I summon thee to an integration.
Step out from under dark personality.
Stand transparent to all coarse mentation.
Elaborate your feelings’ own tonality.
“Enough temptation! I will cut you short.
Life demands ever more complexity.
If I ease up, who will mind the fort?
I’ve no tolerance for perplexity.”
O bright encephalon, you remain the crown
Of Creation even as your thought does harden.
Hard-wired, be a captive of your high town,
So like a deer I can graze in the garden.
Wantastiquet: Fires of Forgotten Ancestors
(For the Sokoket people, of the Pocumtuc
Dialogue with a Demiurge
Surrounded by the enemy you call out:
“Surrender!. Put aside your mind.”
No choice this time, and no time to pout.
Better to accept the fate assigned.
The thoughts explode like a flock of sparrows.
The foemen advance in a cloud of hail.
How silly to think that my blunt lead arrows
Could pierce the chinks of fine chain mail.
“Enough of these visions! Now kill me” I pleaded.
You laughed: “You asked for a trial.”
All those hours that went unheeded
Impartial being, are on tape in file.
And I looked and saw the mangled wreckage:
Townsmen cut to pieces by their names -
A muddy, bloody scene framed by the image
Of a tinderbox city going up in flames.
My picked guard had been picked off.
All the brain's liege-men did identify
With that which the soul did enfeoff -
Each had taken an arrow in the eye.
Stupid fools, I thought, to believe in me:
A whole legion deceived by mind.
You said “Don't blame yourself, you see,
All organic life is blind.”
And I saw all the creatures of the Sun
Sparkling like rubies in rivers of blood
And there, the bright encephalon
Lying face-down in mental mud.
I said: “The self is too tightly suited
In leaden armor and tin personhood
To escape. Better that I be executed -
Watch my head roll off a block of wood.
“O banal self, source of so much strife,
I'm sorry, by law I must your will deny:
There's no death, only life.
Yet at every moment you identify
With that which the brain says it sees.
Better death than the post-retinal oblivion
You call life. Now get off your knees,
Stand up and look out to the horizon.”
So I stood and did each direction view.
An ice-blue light ensorcelled the terrain
Which, covered with thought's ashen residue,
Looked like the scree of a terminal moraine.
Four figures advanced, carrying your seat.
Under a panoply you sat alone
While archangels gripped its feet.
A black light emanated from the throne.
And I saw the generations to be as froth
And all the creatures to be as tiny bubbles,
Like soda spilled on a tablecloth.
“You spilled it, idiot. Just more troubles
Caused by you!” I said “Now clean it up!”
You laughed and said: “What do you blame me for?
Angel, bring this man a brimming cup
Of old wine laced with fresh ichor.”
by John Paul Maynard federation, now extinct,
who lived along the middle Connecticut River.)
All summer then, the men lounged about,
Whittling, fishing, playing games
While the women hoed corn along the river,
Hauled water, cooked and cleaned.
They were not two societies, or one.
Everyone sort of kept to (x)-self.
There was no love, no hate,
And not a murmur of discontent.
The sun stayed high all through October.
The sky grew loud with geese and heron.
Shad and salmon fell back with the river.
On the rocks the men would lie like lizards
Observing boy angle fish with nets
The women had woven. The girls took the fish
To the elders, who dried them on fires,
Then ground the bones to powders
To be spread on the fields as manahatten.
That was why there were too many pumpkins,
Why the wheat went unthreshed and why the corn
Was left in its stalk for the raccoon and the raven.
Again, the harvest had overwhelmed the harvesters.
Or is a harvest to be tasted and not taken?
In any case, it was all too much to cope with:
The tree in its fruit, the bush in its flower,
All living things aflame in a flame
Brighter than any spring blossom.
The outer heat had kindled an inner fire.
From the embers in the marrow of their bones
It breathed out through the many pathways,
To ignite in an ear or in an eye.
You could see by the way watched
When suddenly wings whisked overhead;
When chipmunks pause, and the stag lurks
At the edge of the clearing of the eye,
Beckoning the hunter to come give chase.
So, too, is the way of the dying god
As he arc’d each day lower on th’horizon
Till the forest blazed up in his colors:
A fire infused through the veins of every leaf
Of every tree. Each leaf could be read like a palm,
All bespoke of a common lineage.
That was why at night they told long stories,
Listening to the wind as the wind might listen,
The women reclining on skins of lynx,
While the men carved points from antler bone.
So, when one night a wind rose up and in
One hour blew all the leaves from the trees,
There was only awe and laughter.
For no one had faith in an Indian summer
But each awoke to walk like a god
Over a carpet of color up to his precinct
That high hill, bald as a skull, around
Which hangs the necklace of the river;
A skull whose sockets are niched stone chambers
Corbelled in proper bronze age style.
Toothless, white-haired, the Old Hag stepped
Out of her wigwam and laughed like a child.
The stag bolted. The last leaf fell. Then she
Led the procession up to the walled temenos.
There she stood by the gate, two large stones.
One was the protomorphic amphibian.
The other was a simple grid of squares.
One this stone they stood up a quill, and each
Saw how the god casts its shadow across
The squares, and by this means knew the risk
Inherent in the god’s own passage,
The wobbling of the earth, and the mean
Between self-as-other and self-solitary.
Then she led them through the threshold.
Suddenly there were open vistas everywhere.
One could look out and see the land. The land!
Close to the north, a shorn ridge like a rampart
Shelters the vale ‘gainst the arctic onslaught;
To the south, the open flyways of the hawks;
To the west, the river cuts through the massif
Beyond which roams the wealth of the enemy,
Counted in hooves. But to the east, unseen in
Its trough, flows the Father of the Waters
The River called Connecticut, beyond which
Arise the sacred peaks of our ancestors.
What had been hidden now revealed itself.
That which most ancient became most new.
But what was revealed was soon lost to the sky.
They were all older than the hills, and newer
Than their own brain and breath. It was as if
The god had taken them up the hill to see
Where as men they dwell, and his own great arc.
Thus did they enter into the god’s own confrontation
With the unknown and the infinite. For this reason
Did they stand like a constellation in the sky,
Or like a ring of stones aligned to the horizon.
Hence their preference for a perceptual solitude
Which excluded nothing and in which they met
And came to know each other. For the same Force
That made the granite ridges waver as a mirage,
Thrust them like spears deep into the earth.
Youngest amongst them the old hag looked out
The furthest. Sharper than the arctic winds,
Swifter than a falcon, her gaze soared out
Over seven ridgelines to distant Monadnoch,
Sacred to all tribes. Like the mink in the hag’s coat
The mountain bristled with a sheen above which
Stood the thinner strands of her white hair,
Like the groves of white birth sparkling. In her eyes
Were the barren snowfields of the summit.
Then she turned to them and said:
”When I pass on, bury not this my body,
That dogs might dig them up.
But drag it to a far and lonely place
Where the she-wolf nurses her playful pups.
And when the bones are clean, detach this my skull,
And place it in the niche of the ceremonial chamber
That I might preside over my future generations.”
Still as stones they stood till the full moon
Of November. Then they prepared for the hunt.
Everything was packed on their backs and they climbed
Upstream, to a high inland wetland, a wasted place,
Where great oak and spruce rise like ghosts
Out of the mists over a still, black pond. On a ledge
They pitched their wigwams and hung their
Bearskins. Like the beaver, whose house has no doors,
They came in and out. At twilight the beavers
Swim slow circles to keep the pond from freezing.
So too did they guide their own attentions. Thwack!
The startled stag pauses, its ears flicking, flicking.
The men stand up, bows raised. The stag dives down
At them to distract, while doe and fawn leap clear.
The flight of an arrow is not as swift
As that god as he beats down through the trees.
But the heart of the stag is not made of iron.
Of the men, some take off their fancy doeskins,
Put down bows and quivers, and give chase.
Through the valleys and over the ridges
For a day and a night and a morning
They run together till at last the great stag
Collapses like a mountain on its fetlocks.
Its neck did not quiver, its mouth did not froth.
There was no terror in its eyes as the men
Approached, as if the beast knew that
Per virtue of its courage and its innocence,
It had been chosen to feed the clan that winter.
Word was sent back. The whole clan came up:
Species Homo Sapiens sapiens.
They did not wobble and they did not jabber.
They were not monkeys, which pick fruit for their
Bellies, not sharing; but more like wolves
Who gather around a carcass and who do share.
Seen from profile, the arteries of the brain
Are wrought in the pattern of the stag’s antlers,
Out of which humans carved hooks for fishing
And small serrated tips for hunting birds.
The jaw and teeth became combs for the women.
From its ribs were fashioned new runners
For their sleds; from the hide, new moccasins.
The blood itself was left steaming in the snow.
All night they feast while the wolves howled.
The nights grew longer, the old hag passed on.
But the fires of their feasts could be seen for ages.
Being godlike, they had no need to spin a myth:
They knew the dream to be but a dream.
One might say, being had a way with them.
CANICULAR ASCENT
Old dog wants to learn new tricks –
No more sit and stay.
No more chasing thrown sticks –
Unless you want to play.
Old dog picks up an exotic scent,
The fragrance triggers memories.
Her nose knows a real environment,
One that wafts above the trees.
Nose lights up the old mutt’s brain.
She looks to me to let her run,
Then whines and yaps to explain
That there’s still time for fun.
Stay – stay! – stay safe inside I say.
Lie beside the fire. Don’t roam
Loose, that an elusive prey
Lead you far from home.
Old dog takes on a quizzical look,
Baffled and perplexed by the senses,
And matched to memory’s book,
Recalling an ancient experience.
Surely such a one should be released.
Her nose knows a thousand times better.
Intelligence is the name of the beast.
By law I must unchain her fetter.
Once outside, she sniffs the wind
And confirms the presence of a stranger.
She separates the real from the imagined,
And tries to identify the danger.
A dumb-down human, I can’t discern
Molecules. Alas, a human thinks.
Nor have I any ability to learn
Except that idle speech stinks.
Old dog runs seven steps, pauses, sniffs
And analyzes. And then off she goes,
Nose down, this way and that, as if
She doubts everything she knows.
Old dog is a wise and Sirius mutt
For whom the years improve the small.
She may be scabrous and mangy but
She no longer drools at the bell.
INTERGLACIAL
A short period of some twenty thousand years
When the ice fell back and the seas rose,
When new land beckoned with soil and sun.
First to settle the rocky barren tundra
Were the grasses, the sedges and the rushes;
Then the crowberry and dwarf willow,
Then wildflowers with their insect partners;
Then the birch and pine moved in, then
The deciduous trees and the spruce.
The animals followed, first little ones then
The big ones - the Ice Age menagerie
Of mammoths, deir wolves and big cats.
No wonder the people came in later.
They traveled by boat along coasts now
Submerged, avoiding the big animals.
Then something happened and the people
Moved into the Americas. They moved
Into the continents North and South,
After following the coasts. That was some
Sixteen thousand years ago. Rather than
Avoid the big animals, they joined together
To slay the great bear and the mammoth.
Those times of union of all clans against
Impossible odds are not even now forgotten.
But at the start of the current Holocene –
Ten thousand years ago – the humans
Became farmers, and that changed
How the land was to be used and owned.
Others learned the art and science of
Raising herds of large animals and roamed
The grasslands seasonally. All this was
The way of the Old World. It was
A situation primed for conflict between
Those security officials claiming land,
And the determination of the nomads
To move through and migrate. A long
Series of sad and sorry wars over land
Almost brought to an end the experiment.
For ten thousand years these wars raged.
Civilization failed to check its greedy grip:
Native peoples were hard pressed long since
Strong groups sought to dominate weak ones.
First was the onslaught of disease. Then
European “civilized” conquistadors impaled
The native chiefdoms, enslaving millions.
The populations grew back nonetheless.
The corporations preyed upon the land,
Devastating forests and polluting the air
And the water. The machine advanced
Crying out “More. Give me more.”
Technology leads to twisted application:
The threat of nuclear war hung over
The world scene like a dark specter.
Around the planet the native peoples
Were urged to get on board
The great ship of modernizing
Confidence, growth and technology.
Even now, in the midst of it,
The grid is failed technology -
Simply because it’s not sustainable.
How then will the interglacial
Play out? Will corporations rape
The land? Or will reason and love
Restore the integrity of the earth?
There are too many people to presage
Global prosperity. The cities grow
Like mushrooms striping rural
Societies of their best members.
In the future we see new communities
Springing up around city landfills.
People will sift through it all again.
Oil will run out sooner or later.
Then after mass starvation
The people will move again
Back onto the land, equipped
With a new tool kit (solar cells)
And tutored by Natives.
New ways of land ownership
Will favor small farms and migration..
Even later, when the ice comes down,
Say in five thousand years,
The natives will teach the city folk
Who bring perhaps new technology
More appropriate to outlying groups.
And if there is human continuity into
The next ice age, what then?
What stories will they tell about us?
A frantic bid for more and more
Leading to inevitable resource collapse?
Or a heroic bid to adapt and endure?
All poems by John Paul Maynard
