already i have sensed murmurations of moving on. and i’ve hesitated. but it’s time to bundle these up in ribbons so that they might go home. ( what follows is an introduction to “the silver robes of a rose rabbi”, a cycle of poems i will post on purnama, InsyaAllah. and the closing of a chapter. )

“telescopic texts” were born as serial replies to the twelve cantos of Wallace Stevens' “Le Monocle de Mon Oncle”. i stumbled into this project and was amazed at their unfolding, at the responsiveness of Stevens' text to this treatment, and at the fruitfulness of a dynamic interaction. furthermore, it became apparent this was exactly the initiation needed for this blog’s translation of Plato’s Phaedrus. ( things come together and open up in a wonderful way. )

“translation of the Phaedrus” — is “translation” the right word? for the sake of transparency: i’m not setting the rules; i am caught in a vast body of waves. flotsam is pulled in, cobbled together, sent away, before i have fully understood. this is embarrassing in all of the ways that “Mon Oncle” is embarrassed by its own sublime. ( by Love, as mantically bashful poetry, which opens into stratospheres. )

here, “Mon Oncle” has constituted an epicycle of Phaedrus. a poem is a gravitational pool to suck you in and spit you out as something ( or somewhere ) different. i go along for rides and things are created thereby. drunkenness is a confession, not a metaphor. it’s like losing everything, but then it’s the blues. InsyaAllah there will be more poems of insanity, madness, mania — the alchemical reduction to metered speech. ( pores of the poem, through which rivers flow back into the poet’s seed. and rivers will be the madness. )

but madness isn’t a method in itself, so i maintain that this is a translation. carrying bones is part of building a temple, even when the temple is something inconsequential like a blog. building a temple has from the beginning been the generative dream of this blog. ( a temple needs orientation toward Mecca, that stone among stones. )

a note on my process. in translating the text of Phaedrus, i had reached the end of a dialectical prelude. it was time to wrap something up, and time to get something started. there was an aperture into a dream. it demanded initiation. ( and/or it commanded leisure. ) Pindar was the first step, and a chariot was born, but i needed more contemporary tuning, more techniques, lenses, experience with my vernacular. ( i needed a voice; i dawdled at the crossroads. )

i was re-reading Wallace Stevens. his later poems captivated me when i was in college — especially “The Idea of Order at Key West” and “The World as Meditation”. moreover, they changed the way I read Homer. so they changed the way i read everything. ( before i ever imagined writing poetry myself. ) now i wanted to discover clues as to how Uncle Wallace had built his voice. so I was studying his earliest book of poetry, Harmonium, when i was pulled by the aforementioned gravitational force into “Le Monocle”. ( there occurred a fertility ritual; and a certain birth. )

so were created “the silver robes of a rose rabbi”. i have seen and experienced so much in writing these — figuring them out, in, and around, being a poet of paltry months, with everything to learn. in case it doesn’t come across in the work itself: i have nothing but admiration and gratitude for Stevens' poetry. ( this has been an act of devotion.

and well, the text mistook itself for vestments. )

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one final note. as i write this blog, i continue ( slowly ) to study the Quran. to speak of rivers flowing and gravitation — i have a “deep hunch” that the Quran is a poetic singularity. if so, then i’ll spend the remainder of my life ( slowly ) learning to read it. as i have spent up until now ( slowly ) learning to read. i do not understand this as being in conflict with my ( slowly ) translation of Phaedrus. so poetry ( slowly ) becomes a choir.

if a beginner voice, moreso a beginner listener. the first words of the Quran have begun to feel like sipping a trickle of fire out from underneath an immense ocean. for the sake of transparency. any light in these verses is from Allah through the intercession of the Messenger ﷺ. errors and mistakes are my own by the Mercy of Allah. Alhamdulillahirrabilalameen. Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim. Wasalamu’alaikum to those i know and those i don’t know. Peace and thank you for reading🙏🏻

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