Element
silver robes of a rose rabbi
(This 12-part poem is a reply to Wallace Stevens’ “Le Monocle de Mon Oncle”; Further explanation may be found here.)
I.
—and did you ordinary women mock
in liturgies of utterances contained,
lines overwrought by time-keeping cant of yours?
and did you burst from bullied syllabub,
or clockwise stiffen into winter walls?
the musicals of ghosts, midwives and angels
echo, hollow, down stone-cold corridors.
and did you consecrate your spectacle,
coupling one who spoke—no, no—not nothing,
a stand-in that you killed while playing swords?
to quell the babbling spring by means of rain,
or merely quote the Mother’s name in vain?
she has been up at nights, considering
how to un-kiss this devil-gendered thing.
II.
well, i make believe an uncle, dead
and dear. less clear is fortune of the bird.
to fly, to seek, and what on earth to find
but torrent of an obsolescent mind
—he said, obscure and arduous to hear.
and yet, it flies. and though he doubts her crown
and midnight sight, she will fly too. and though
her silver glows in anecdotal mood,
her lilt, of stellar tilt, still loving, lingers
in braided dancing round a pool of blue,
tuning her clutch in nesting eddy of
said bird, whose course is old and hardly true—
and yet, it lives. rising, as golden-red
in flight, crowing like Scorpio in the East.
rest easy, uncle cold and fluttering
and lately of rambunctious residue;
a dove survives heaven to choir anew.
III.
O man, if you could see her witchlocs now,
or what’s become of Eastern expertise.
she is swamp-bitch, and twisted, twined and hitched
without romance by ruby claw to thorny crown,
her hair—each barb a bell, each bloody herb
a suicide. she’s heard of nobody’s
outrageous feats of raw technology.
in wracked rumors of Western fantasy
she knit a while textiles anti-exotic,
but sweaters have no use in the tropics,
where skin is king. and now we’ve come uncrimped,
uncrumpling, algal Anadyomene
of muddy water, Charybdis of the bog.
what’s history is past—nevertheless, he asks
why, woman, have you gone au naturel?
IV.
that spotless glass is not the book of Adam.
that trinity you stole cuts like a knife.
to be uncrumpled is to be un-uncled—
un-uncled, i become the poet’s wife.
i am un-hidden woman of the garden,
body un-ridden by the dust-bound word.
the queen of poet’s tongue, i lounge and lean
as music on my salivary throne.
the syllable you speak, my roundness is
her shapely immanence. our rectitude
is life—of tree—of life. so eat me, fallen
father of mankind, and know your foolishness.
speak again, brother—madly, as husband.
my honeyed bone un-spells your make-believe
kafir—he sees his wife sans négligee
who tastes the ripened fruit by naked eye.
says ordinary woman made explicit,
who steals your spectacle to save your life.
V.
can we remember together, after all
or does my voice harden the picture frame?
by being body, do i gather you
intolerably, or spread you thin as kin,
one stroking throb of summer esoteric—
you tickle me with feather of a peacock.
a gazer’s gloomy imagery is perfume
of incense, arousal at great distances,
long-smouldering and lit by tender match.
far from the proximity of virgins
there burn the Verbs of Love, arrayed
as galaxy of irretrievability—
before my eyes, you took and held my hand.
VI.
we used to call you man of twists and turns,
the dynamo—reckless, drowning, sea-rendered
until perennial blue, the one i knew
well enough to know, i loved nobody.
his thirst, prostrated, clutched me from below,
desperate to conceal from wingèd word
a history of suffering. a babe
buried his need in bosom of my nature,
drunk on the deep milk of disappearance.
his subterfuge despair was mythical,
until he made her fiction. he may not
remember me—but i keep by my heart
a wavy lock of sunset-auburn hair.
VII.
suppose a parable is just like her:
desired and defiled in equal measure.
his chivalry requires a blushing knight
to guard the Word, who is incarnate treasure.
i heard of one such rescuer of women.
who, for his lovely sin, was de-mountained
by crippled foot, and fated never nimbly
to climb again. but faith in constancy
makes deliberate gifts, arms built from hours
spent torquing tongs before roaring earth-core.
therefore, no purity of heart is borne
that lacks an alloy in the sooty forge.
thou shalt not fear the courage of your virgin,
is the limping gist of this comparison;
her shining is at once translucent bloom
and armor’s lustre, welded by humble Vulcan.
VIII.
if doom begins to seem antipathy,
baby, you’re scrolling past the blues. that time
of year thou mayst in our humanity—
but not the Muse—behold, of warty gourds'
cosmic grotesquerie. and there’s the rub.
as long as tongue still holds a gentle fold,
i will elucidate your grim hallucination.
launder and bandage the decaying limb
of sense, of memory, of time. wed heaps
of conscious compost consummate the bloom
in star-swept dimensions of titanium,
where whorls of microplastics never end—
machine poetic, of pumpkins meteoric,
becoming metaphysic—tender beings,
fizzing histories apocalyptic,
chime and rhyme as flutes of pink kombucha.
we sing the tropical-epochal view
at end of universe, or two. until
séance à trois, with chaperone of grackle,
i love the laughing sky—let’s make it crackle.
IX.
most oblatory heart, i bring you news.
despite our deadly faith in prophylactics,
resourceful Cupido pricks porous tactics,
ever hanging hymenal fools. behold:
on spun-gold surface of radiant yolk,
in sky-strewn milky way of albumen
suspended, questing’s lustiest conceit,
the part-less heartbeat of a person third:
as ancient aspect touches youngest plume
to stir, pure destiny, the origin
of life, as love, in pilgrimage secured:
the red point points, and to itself—as bird.
O holy gift, O crack in everything!
the mad midwifery of paladins
births not a baby, but a voice on fire:
ecce peep. now go, and meet your daddy-o.
his name’s Pipit the cocky chickadee;
he is a theory of fertility;
enthusiasm incommensurate
with clock-a tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum.
X.
a balmy chickadee alights on bough
of jepun tree—gigantic, bristle-trunked,
beatified—by tipped cosmos of day
and melting star of paradise, bodies
unveiled. we lie in kindred shades of them,
verbing and flowing, in blues made legible
by greenborn leaf. in leaves there hides a forest
where braid the wanderers their briared maths.
a souvenir shelters nectonic paths,
ancestral courses wild with counterpoint,
and mercy of geometry—proffered
by rivered children of Love’s oblivion.
XI.
dilated pools, star-gazed—surrender pinkly
to phobia of frogs. if you dismember
those bracing, faceless bodies—lost in love
their coiling gyres, desiring—helixing
directions inward, home. or intervene
against the skyward cough—raw, gaping need
to swallow more—when pollywog is strung
by lunar air. ritual drowning of gills,
suffering insurgency—the gulping word,
fata Morgana flooding Camelot
is twinned ecstasy of triple betrayal.
for swimmers' lust, the sea is all. and still
her cries are not for us, alone—we hone
the bluest chord of velvet-driven reverberation.
XII.
now all of us have lost our taste for mince,
the history of grinding, darkly, Adam;
so schooling blade, student of buah, prunes
til circumspect the hour. and she has thorns,
forms of her own—we prick ourselves and bleed
to name her flower. bending the voice to crown,
we’re drunk by literal skies of melody.
you found her singing by the sea, where she
had fled, as she remembered you were drowning.
who is the rose rabbi? i read, she comes
and goes. knows herself not. how would she know?
if glass were introspect, Iris of time—
to find she had been borne, a cradled question.
//
🌕
corpus
so this is memory accounted full.
the one, the final word they wrote, to lay
a crying babe to sleep. a lullaby
to keep, against the fragmenting mirage —
a pile of rocks for angry men to stack,
to sit on. bone-built towers, against
the synthesizing might of desert hours
break first before the mother of the fast.
and these divisive scratches were daughters
of dust, heart-scriven on the dune. to say
my thirst was never for parted or past —
her caravan, sand-winding, ever-last.
//
a pewter chest for the silver robes
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 “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 “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. )
(
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🙏🏻
)
//
believing
and glass it was, the longing of vision.
for i have always needed you, she said
before the stone among the stones. and it
was true always, the howl that i was owling for.
or ever since it dawned on her how fine
the fiery threading of a needle, how
it blisters years with uncompostable weight,
the enemy one synthesized oneself to be.
to feel it as self-same brutality
from every spectral angel of your mystery.
the alchemy from suffering to face,
from poverty to panic, from the carelessness
of mirrored towers to a groundless refugee.
a fool, believing stones could learn to fly.
//
sly //
proving ground
desire is a world of promises:
endings as sorry causes everywhere
i look. unkind is my outward explosion;
inward, it’s terribly bereft. while you
who are my second self, nimbly reflect
the shining order of my bronzen failure.
sightless, i touch your skin, and we are moved
by sterling promises of moonlit measure.
hunger stretches the bend along your limb
as multitudes, desiring one. believe
this melody. let melt the muscled heart
whose turning grief recovers ever Love.
//
nocturne
the veil was flowing flowering
like a breeze across the skin
warm as light, so you anointed us
with periodic rain
softened surfaces of fresh
and inner corners, feline lapsing
liquid weighted, frogs speaking
like guardian musicians
permeated the ending day
with silk, like incense curling
darknesses deepening pools
of sandalwood and agar
brick walls were tall and solid
the house was made of wood
tempered by burning beings
blending tongues for shadows
the flicker of shapes, familiar
arguments were unresolved,
touching was being touched
and sound of crescent, salivary
//
🌘
otherworldly //
incense of apples
rosy for harvest
the corn lifting her brow
woken to see, to please
interior pearls
of vegetal readying
silver to sunny yellow
the wind caught her silk
like paper, billowing husk
parched with radiance
cerulean burning
alive, by chattering birds
the reaper turning
against the blinding
day, a farmer is shaded
black bladed in gold
knowledge of dual-
lit flicker, the letting heart
the heartless taking
aroma of apples
as if autumn could visit
the island of gods
on rolling tropic
whiter sky and violet flight
they fall to the light
for all of the past
a year, the gravelling ground
a measured after
verdant and weeping
sweep the coconut trees, stray
air from everywhere
//
red stone
here is where
greenway unwound
by time, by time.
here is where
salt, rust, corrosion
the wound word.
here is where
given untimely springs
sprung locket.
here is winding
roses and figures for
give, by vigil, by rest.
//
elusive //
deeper hospitality
a hedgehog digs down,
away from the wailing blight
of amplified multitudes
of lawnmowers and weed-
whackers, cutters of blades, root-
hackers and hoes of rows.
the damp earth dampens
all those. she wrinkles her nose,
raises reluctant eyelids.
a quiet guest
brings cookies, cozy with bitter
tea and conversation.
she eats the nuts,
leaves crumbs for ants,
an offering of grubs.
the world above
is too superficial, too high-
and-wired to fathom.
not much room, in the bright-
fraught world, for views
of under-ground.
close in her den, but not
too close, the good amount
of room for tidbitting.
cats' claws are sharper
always, in the ever-
wetter year.
the peanuts planted
in Pak Su’s field are swelling
bellies, growing round.
nibblers of words
become the reaping and
the kettle-ripening.
lower quills draw deep
as dirt-sighted sensitive,
burrows inky in-habiting.
//
🌒
telescopic texts (avec "?") (12/12)
now all of us have lost a taste for mince,
the history of grinding, darkly, Adam.
a schooling blade, student of buah, will prune
til circumspect the hour. and she has thorns,
forms of her own — we prick ourselves and bleed
to name her flower. bending the voice to crown,
we’re drunk by literal skies of melody.
you found her singing by the sea, where she
had fled, as she remembered you were drowning.
who is the rose rabbi? i read, she comes
and goes. knows herself not. how would she know?
if glass were introspect, Iris of time —
to find she had been borne, a cradled question.
//
if you ask me (about Agung)
it’s been a year
without the mountain.
comforter clouds continue
indeterminate, forgetting
to stop raining, forgetting
to end
if you ask me
how i am doing, these days
that’s how. i am just wondering /
wandering about the mountain.
whether he is there, whether
he is here
or anywhere
//
enigmatic //
statuesque
it was her, who stopped troubling
the land with niceties; stepped out
onto the battlefield; declared
her nation iron, under copper;
ignored the children wandering
her heart. youth was her cause, but not
her destination: yapping pups
complicit in decay: the younger,
the worse. she drew a blazing sky-
ward line: from torch to sea of salt,
past oxidized decline: thou shalt
not cross this primary design.
so she was plagued by change, and change
rendered infernal mumblings
absent colossal reality.
she swallowed smaller poetry.
commissioned shining arrows from
hard-laboring masses, to quell
their rumbling curiosity.
her staples were cement brownies,
lampshades as circus gags, popped in
electrified mazes, they tongued
chromatic polystyrene sporks.
her trick was firecrackers for
proposals of shotgun marriage,
with orphans, locked in sheds out back.
essential documents were stacked
inside official cases. fireproof.
the starry skies reflected in
a muddy flood of tasteless rain,
with deeper rivers reluctant
to drain her isolating kingdom.
so spread the miasmatic air.
seen pieces, scened for maximum
invictus — hot-bulb flashes — lost
their knack for light. she was the news:
scaffolding posed as oracle.
and when her history grew old,
turning explicit, they buried her
in broken rubberbands.
mutely, her constitution says
you shouldn’t look, or else you turn
proverbially inhuman.
so close your mind to this broken
container of one billion eyes,
open to fight the warlike hour,
their hearts pumping in empty beds.
the roosters crow to lose their heads.
on glitterbombs sit satanic
afterimages of her,
as rounds of necessary loss
resound on poorly-tuned guitars.
with no time for ambivalence,
her multitudes march on.
and nothing here to be unknown,
perspective infinite as stone —
from bone reflected, light of crone
across her scorched and haunted scars
delivered signals of empathy.
by flickering night, camels repose
in contemplation of footsteps
forgotten, where plod the wind-
whipped monuments of thirst. and all
that is unburnt is a mirage.
//
🌔
on bad days
on bad days, the silence
has more to say to you
than i do. and yet
every day i worry
you’re not a reader
of silence.
if only i could give
my shape to silence, then you
might hear the crickets.
if silence
were nothingness, then
i would be green leaves.
but i saw the silence,
its air of winter,
its shape of clear empyrean.
its emptiness, strewn jewels —
all of it was precious;
none of it was secret.
above the radiance, i heard
earth is a place of rest —
and i believe it.
i press patchouli
to your wrist, your temple.
i draw the covers.
//
boundless //
telescopic texts (avec "?") (10/x)
a balmy chickadee alights on bough
of jepun tree — gigantic, bristle-trunked,
beatified — by tipped cosmos of day
and melting star of paradise, bodies
unveiled. we lie in kindred shades of them,
verbing and flowing, in blues made legible
by greenborn leaf. in leaves there hides a forest
where braid the wanderers their briared maths.
a souvenir shelters nectonic paths,
ancestral courses wild with counterpoint,
and mercy of geometry — proffered
by rivered children of love’s oblivion.
//
doleful heroic //