{"id":5254,"date":"2015-08-27T16:34:52","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T16:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregglory.com\/wordpress\/?p=5254"},"modified":"2023-07-08T10:19:43","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T10:19:43","slug":"burning-byzantium-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/burning-byzantium-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Burning Byzantium"},"content":{"rendered":"
\r\n\r\n\"He who dies shall live.\"<\/strong>\r\n\r\nGregg G Brown\r\n\r\nCopyright \u00a9 1988\r\n\r\n
An Annunciation<\/h2>
\r\nDrowned in the puling cradle emptiness has lit,\r\nIn empty action of a tragedian's strut\r\nHollow on a stage, a struggle in the sheets\r\nTosses some watery image up, toiling to be born.\r\nWhat rose, with stolen bone or shafted ear,\r\nLash-astonished, oceanic there?\r\nWas it some dragon-fantastic\r\nImago of a phaseless man, phantom-real,\r\nOr a sea-struck Hamlet's ghostly father\r\nRising out of night to the topmost walk\r\nWhen all the mind's aroused?\r\nThose dying eyes in a face blood-suffused\r\nScan the gathered stares of men, new-ignited\r\nOut of an age's hesitations, dying to be born.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Burning Byzantium<\/h2>\n
\r\nIn night-devouring pride\r\nGod and ghost deride,\r\nAnd not knowing what is best,\r\nPeering past his death\r\nMan's untiring vanity\r\nConsumes his bitter rest.\r\n\r\nII<\/strong>\r\nFlame emanating, spout upon spout,\r\nFlame on his head that shouts\r\nFiery Dionysus climbed\r\nOlympian plenitude and dined\r\nOn rarer bones than men's eyes\r\nBefore or after spied;\r\nThen, finished with that golden feast,\r\nBurned statues down, head and feet,\r\nIn serpent-seas of fire that we\r\nMight build again from perfected memory.\r\n\r\nIII<\/strong>\r\nWhat if destruction of vast colonnades appalled?\r\nWrecked form to formless called:\r\nHoly fire makes wide mind a wall,\r\nPaints thereon, and names that image All.\r\nWater and desire and stark upright flame begin\r\nWhere world grew ocean from some ecstatic limb.\r\n\r\nStarved eunuchs hunching bald-eyed at the law\r\nKnow Adam to the marrow, jumping to the fall.\r\nAn engendered emptiness can beget\r\nStrong delight for those whose minds are full;\r\nStark contemplation hollows out delight\r\nSave when sword or scalpel pull.\r\n\r\nIV<\/strong>\r\nAnswer to sorrow or suffering comes\r\nDisplaying ornate mask or abrupt gun;\r\nMichelangelo lobouring in the sculpted dark\r\nBlazed imagination forth upon uncertain tides---\r\nPale constellations of his thought\r\nBrought death and life out of one troubled heart,\r\nOr might have brought ---O How long can man\r\nOut of narrow sorrow extract a song?\r\nRight action finishes out the thought\r\nA lonely exalted mind began;\r\nLong-loved monuments fixed in the sight\r\nAssemble us out of desire to dissolve\r\nInto that unutterable One again.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Die Wille<\/h2>\n
\r\nI banish all\r\nWho fret and stall\r\nTo finish out my work:\r\nPitched to that extreme of thought\r\nOr dark, and shambling room to room\r\nAs from spirit to spirit\r\nAnd always preparing for that\r\nNever-arriving guest,\r\nI have labored over-long\r\nOr too-thick with theme and means\r\nHave overwrought my song.\r\n\r\nOut of night like a distorted dream\r\nOr storm more mysterious\r\nA penitent ghost that cannot crest\r\nThe bound of rotted day appears;\r\n\r\nPoets, learn to live as clay\r\nAll rich substance to underpin\r\nWhatever a great man might make\r\nTinkering with his fate\r\nIn momentary play,\r\nOr more solemnly erect,\r\nOut of an undistracted hate.\r\nAll our lot have spurned and sung\r\nBrevity of man, necessity of guns,\r\nUnable as any mirror\r\nTo sing ourselves aright\r\nCaught in enlarging night\r\nWe turned from face to face\r\nAs if every face would save us;\r\nWe who had arrogance enough\r\nOf thought to have thought\r\nThat careless hands had made us.\r\nSo that a few good words might not perish\r\nOr empty imagining sink unmanned\r\nIn unalterable loss\r\nCollect like solemn children round\r\nThe myriad confusion of the foam\r\nAnd write it out again:\r\n\r\nLive, and live again, as old men say\r\nAnxious for eternities\r\nThat make their own wisdom seem\r\nBut momentary toys that gleam\r\nAnd are beaten back to mud.\r\nI am not that holy sage\r\nRemembers the misery of knowing all\r\nOr turning to a wall completes\r\nWhat body and its pleasure\r\nWere forbidden to decide---\r\nUnder burdened moon\r\nThat sinks in July to rise on fire\r\nOut of the glittering wheat\r\nKnows man and his defeats\r\nAll the sudden infirmities\r\nBlind violence took for sureties\r\nAnd looks on them and laughs.\r\n\r\n     From the womb man falls\r\n     Or from the widowed breast\r\n     Dispatched to a sultry grave\r\n     That gives no rest.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Three Songs<\/h2>\n
<\/pre>\n
I. The Glass Mountain<\/h2>\n
\r\nNight and fire surround a broken tree\r\nMade blacker by the fire;\r\nA head, an arm, barely distinguishable there\r\nCant towards a broken sky---\r\nBlack eyes unwired in the ancient face,\r\nHis old heart's thudding done,\r\nHangs that great man who's mind's a sea;\r\nRed torches gutter tongues.\r\n\r\nSang the burning lion on the fierce mountaintop.\r\n\r\nNor proscenium nor orchestra\r\nNor gilded balcony set\r\nAbout the vaunting terror of the scene;\r\nIdiot crawls to idiot\r\nAnd idiot begets.\r\nAnd none's alive who'll now recall\r\nUtter nobleness of limb or sin,\r\nBeauty beyond a fall.\r\n\r\nSang the burning lion on the burning mountaintop.\r\n\r\nI picked a blank mask\r\nAnd put on a changing soul,\r\nExampled by those blessed men\r\nWho suffered all in all.\r\nBut I reject the holy past;\r\nThat banner cannot lift again.\r\nForgotten men can't raise a song\r\nOr change my ranting soul.\r\n\r\nSang the burning lion on the fierce mountaintop.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
II. The Salt Heart<\/h2>\n
\r\nSang the burning lion from the fierce mountaintop:\r\n\r\nDeath's insults emanate from ourselves;\r\nTerror riven images that complete\r\nMan and heaven, heart and feet.\r\nScarlet briars in her hair---\r\nLove from I know not where\r\nDescends the bitter air.\r\n\r\nSang the burning lion from the fierce mountaintop:\r\n\r\nThe empty prosecution of the skies\r\nStares at a struck stage\r\nThe tired heart derides,---\r\nMan's best instincts gambled there---\r\nAnd the watery heart about to burst\r\nAll lose out to the worst.\r\n\r\nSang the burning lion from the fierce mountaintop:\r\n\r\nBeaten man twists his neck to curse,\r\nWhite head in heaven\r\nGolden heart in a hearse---\r\nA scolded boy or oblong body bends\r\nDark by uncertain suavities of fire to request\r\nThe sea's intercessions.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
III. Third Song<\/h2>\n
\r\nGod built man in a black fit.\r\nI tell you suffering a pall;\r\nLone men could not fashion it,\r\nCould not create themselves at all.\r\nHeaven itself is what I gate-keep;\r\nDescended from that sphinx\r\nCrossed centuries between her paws,\r\nAnother hand has finished me.\r\n\r\nSang the burning lion on the fierce mountaintop.\r\n\r\nEmboldened by riches\r\nA steeple mind had heaped,\r\nFather son and holy ghost\r\nIn his flaming mind are linked.\r\nStale generations that bred him\r\nRecanted at the leap;\r\nRule square and trine\r\nBut toys to make the typist think.\r\n\r\nSang the burning lion on the fierce mountaintop.\r\n\r\nA man displaces a woman\r\nWith the image of her face\r\nUntil some loud stone betokens it,\r\nMixing ecstasy and grace.\r\nA great Adams and Hawthorne knew it,\r\nKnew it and turned sour;\r\nBut it is the best that man can do\r\nUnwound by the backward hour.\r\n\r\nSang the burning lion on the fierce mountaintop.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Blue Heron<\/h2>\n
\r\nAmong the wrack and disorder of the day: dusty floors,\r\nHalf carved resemblances and journey-work,\r\nA symbolical blue heron stands\r\nWith wild protesting wing and look\r\nNo living heron could have struck\r\nDeep in the grain; every crack,\r\nEvery waver of the resinous wood\r\nWakes a pulse in the unnatural neck.\r\nBarren out of a barren sky---\r\nA heron falters to the waters here.\r\n\r\nThat artist in his studio having aged\r\nPast all bitterness to stark astonishment\r\nAt life's rapacious play\r\nHammers out, from all other unlikelihood\r\nOr savage guess at parts, his fixed man\r\nCrouched in dark patterns of the wood;\r\nAnd because that image, once complete,\r\nCan finish up the man who bodied it\r\nGangs of ghostly herons range against the glass,\r\nStiff against one window to witness it.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Drowned Head<\/h2>\n
\r\nThe gangling legs are absent; nothing whitens\r\nThe deep blue surface curling there\r\nAnd never breaking. A stiffening face\r\nTurned mask-like and muscle-stricken frightens\r\nWhite birds that pern in whiter air.\r\nRiotous cries cannot give its tossing countenance a place;\r\nBlotched reds that crust the desert water\r\nUntil all color cakes and lies motionless, falters.\r\n\r\nWhat but attitude of all man in a rage\r\nCan reverse a death's complacency and kick\r\nUp foam? Agony of living lonely as a bird\r\nBetween sun and moon, moving like a spade,\r\nEmpties the ragged features, the dull wickless eyes\r\nThat looked on nothing common, commonly interred. A bird-\r\nLike woman lingers on the quay's interrupted sounds\r\nTo witness drowning sailors, her head in beauty bound.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Overturned Head<\/h2>\n
\r\nStands in this sand waste\r\nAn abandoned stone,\r\nAn overturned head a half house high;\r\nWaters that have flat its cut\r\nVanish as a dream untold.\r\nBut on this head is concentrate\r\nIntolerable memories\r\nOf youth grown old.\r\n\r\nI am that bright familiar\r\nWanders through the street\r\nAnd banging merchants' windows in\r\nMust beg for my milk and meat;\r\nMy old face by time betrayed\r\nTo an indistinguishable mass,\r\nBut when night and wine grow great enough\r\nI dance on the weedy grass.\r\n\r\nDown this long shore as a boy\r\nBody and soul were sure\r\nAs any pale, unalterable rock\r\nThat I now dance before.\r\nHands urgent as a hangman's cord,\r\nAll body warped to a board,\r\nCreep in the salt beneath a face\r\nHeavy, androgynous.\r\n\r\nSliding up through valves of storm\r\nAnd mastered by a rage\r\nThe variable sea has seen that form\r\nDescend from age to age.\r\nWind-beaten I but seem,\r\nFlat on the wetted sand,\r\nA derelict, not worth\r\nThe dock-dog's howl or tooth.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Archangels Comb Their Muddy Hair with Sticks<\/h2>\n
\r\nTwelve white birds glimmer in a ring\r\nAbout my heart like fiery thorns of things\r\nUnable to be forgotten;\r\nAnd of all things else\r\nOblivion alone most would bring\r\nEase to the burnt heart's ash.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Weeping Womb<\/h2>\n
\r\nOut of woman's weeping womb\r\nStrode Hitler, Jesus and Michelangelo.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
History<\/h2>\n
\r\nUpright in nostalgia's vice,\r\nThe newscast knocked me flat; I am\r\nHammered from\r\nA stiff expectancy that the past,\r\nUnder augers and a strong carpenter's hands,\r\nCould endure\r\nInto significance like a three-legged stool.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Generation<\/h2>\n
\r\nStarting sex up out of books, pale apparitions\r\nact again the hairy rounds under always weary skies\r\nStraining sweating eyes for a typed text\r\nAlways the same. Always the same\r\nGhost upon their heaving back like nets igniting\r\nSpines of blue fire, turbulent on the doused skin,\r\nFalling with hope of the dead on locked hearts to find\r\nCoffins of beating victims too glad to die.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Disturb the Eagles' Nest<\/h2>\n
\r\nBlasted rocks and an old warped tree\r\nLift above a still spot of the sea\r\nAs though some vague hand had painted them;\r\nA little back from the verge,\r\nA step or two back from the verge,\r\nAnd compelled by a strong salt wind,\r\nA clanging ear and troubled eye\r\nA battered head without a tooth,\r\nRags and crutch and old broken bones---\r\nAll that wreck which I call myself,\r\nHaving climbed an unaccustomed stair\r\nIn a changing state of mind\r\nOr with a bewildered mind,\r\nAnd revealed to the weather \r\nOn the promontory,\r\nStood shaken by a vision.\r\n\r\nA burning woman and a man\r\nIn Quattrocento gesture struck\r\nAbove the bed where all began;\r\nHalf-risen above the multitudinous sea\r\nAbove the tangled branches of the yew,\r\nTheir abstract bodies are not mixed\r\nWith commoner dirt, nor sullied by a cut\r\nThought of sin or guilt begot.\r\nIs that sweetest skin, ghostly there,\r\nHalf human still or all celestial?\r\nWorld-engendering Pythagoras\r\nStalked Heaven and never took a bride.\r\n---O all that golden multitude\r\nHad clarity to unpuzzle it. I,\r\nA skittish old man upon a rock,\r\nWith a mouthful of rue\r\nWith a slippery crutch on a rock\r\nAnd reeling backwards in a fright\r\nAm blinded by the unbearable light.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
An Old Man's Hawk<\/h2>\n
\r\nAn old man raving picks up sticks, vitally erased\r\nUnder mazy roughness of his thumb, except where\r\nA counter-coalescence of the grain\r\nTurbulently surrounds a knot of blood.\r\n\r\nOut of fisted clouds, white\r\nAnd distant as his stiff bride\r\nCoiling in her grave, a falcon\r\nEyes the wormy meadow and descends.\r\n\r\nNo arm, no mind controls\r\nThe powerful muscle, falling to a branch\r\nHeavy apples mellow to a bow\r\nAimed at an aimless sky.\r\n\r\nRed memories of the man disperse\r\nIn meditation like an arrow's throw;\r\nThe turning falcon's shaft\r\nFalls in its desire.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Old Man and the Demon<\/h2>\n
\r\nOLD MAN Vanquished is the sorrow\r\n                   That rages in my breast;\r\n                   I am too old to care.\r\n                   What passes for the serious\r\n                   Is a younger man's affair.\r\n                   Loves have burned and leapt between\r\n                   Yet staring doubt announces:\r\n                   Have hands as old as these\r\n                   About a woman's lightness crept?\r\n\r\n   DEMON Rough centuries have trod\r\n                   Your thin spirit out.\r\n                   What can woman's body hold\r\n                   For one who's worn and thin?\r\n\r\nOLD MAN I am an old man, a withered\r\n                   Stick, lacking all right monument.\r\n\r\n   DEMON Lacking all right monument,\r\n                   Gather close what worth you can,\r\n                   Draw your spirit in.\r\n                   For when you lay you down to die\r\n                   What can she but by you lie?\r\n\r\nOLD MAN Until all, all penalty of God\r\n                   Or eternal mystery forgot,\r\n                   Dissolve paradoxical\r\n                   Into death's bone knot.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Solitary Body on the Pallet<\/h2>\n
\r\nIn the high tomb, the windows blackened\r\nA solitary body stretches on its pallet.\r\n\r\nThe hush of broken candles, glistening\r\nAttend the vault of remotest night, listening\r\n\r\nTo the exquisite montage of the moon decieved\r\nBy that which ancienter vocables had revealed.\r\n\r\nStrumpets came bearing like tom-cats in\r\nThe bronzen flesh of him, of him;\r\n\r\nPrimping ladies laid the ledgendary body out,\r\nQuip on quip, in storied profusion.\r\n\r\nPrepare the touncing oils, maids, to scent\r\nVestigal joys that pip the corpse.\r\n\r\nSome backwards catastrophy of the stars\r\nLooked in, like a forgetful mother,\r\n\r\nAt the voice laid out in state, hugely blue,\r\nHacked out as it was from one immenser slab\r\n\r\nWhile sleepy birds unconscious of their pains pursue\r\nThe day's spontaneous symphony, beneath\r\n\r\nA watery dawn that washes out a sink\r\nFull of the moon's bleary oils.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Discarded Tower<\/h2>\n
\r\nBlows that wind of every sound\r\nUpon a battlement\r\nWhere a ripping Andy Jackson stirred\r\nEvery rebel heart to its head.\r\nRaging after beauty in a fire;\r\nHorses tremble; men-at-arms are quiet;\r\nHeavy cannon are crunching through the wood.\r\n     Noble minds all by ancient battle set ablaze.\r\n\r\nUpon that black battlement where\r\nGreat Caesar stoked,\r\nHalf in admiration,\r\nRome's mother-forges against the barbarian herd,\r\nNot Egyptian Cleopatra's whispers\r\nNor Antony's sweet words,\r\nCould still his already conquering hand.\r\n     Noble minds all by ancient battle set ablaze.\r\n\r\nStaggered stars over the geared stone whirr.\r\nElectric fires in the mind's eye blurr\r\nTill all the creeping hill's a blaze;\r\nPacing ceases; the last\r\nBird dies into dark;\r\nAll night sounds transmogrified\r\nTo a monotone.\r\n     Noble minds all by ancient battle set ablaze.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Eisenhower's Son<\/h2>\n
\r\nTurning in my mind\r\nThat famous, heroic face\r\nThat ciphered out\r\nRight government from wrong\r\nAnd brought boys flying\r\nOut of bed to death,\r\nAnd because he is dead\r\nAnd cannot annul my choice,\r\nI make my name and death.\r\n\r\nBefore a great Greek head,\r\nHalf ruined and knocked\r\nFrom a blank rock\r\nAt bleary midnight slumped,\r\nWhen night-owls in their hunt\r\nToil from branch to branch,\r\nSome wrong-eyed philosopher puzzled out\r\nThat all mind's sunk\r\nIn the rut of the world,\r\nAnd can't drag out its ragged theme\r\nBecause frenzy-driven, riven mad\r\nBy terror-ridden hours that rend\r\nShifting tapestries of soul.\r\nAll man's but broken pride,\r\nWars reduced to bandages.\r\n\r\nBecause all image\r\nHe can be all suffering\r\nOr exultant hatred personified\r\nTo a deity. What once\r\nWan man, and now's a shade\r\nStands here--- lonely as the hawthorne\r\nTree traced in winter's\r\nResiny dews. Dead shade\r\nHammer again this form, if you can\r\nTo make of bone and tendon\r\nPure image.\r\n\r\nFamous men and solitary souls\r\nHave cursed with equaL breath\r\nGenerations of stupidity;\r\nMonuments flooded in a hole.\r\nI fed by the boards as a boy---\r\nBut when I consider that,\r\nOld and wrong and out of breath,\r\nI hammer out my death:\r\nRepetitions of mere breath\r\nSatisfy my thought.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Mareotic Lake<\/h2>\n
\r\nA bald summer and an empty lake return\r\nImagination to a childish race\r\nPast strange muds broken-up by the sun\r\nSome famous dead indian's grave breathing face\r\nHung its stone arrowhead over as I dug\r\nDown the sharpening years as the edges mix,\r\nRattle blankly in a rich pocket, and repeat\r\nThe one sound early delight had fixed\r\nIn whatever's left of the mind's ground.\r\n\r\nUnremembered faces are crowding to the top\r\nOf a mist-covered muddy lake; sharp cries\r\nRise and stop. On hands and knees I grope for bones,\r\nClacking the blanks, back and forth, back and forth,\r\nCasually as dominoes, or bullet them\r\nBack to mud--- to see how the flesh gasped\r\nOr must have, ebulliently spilled to stone....\r\nI watch my life appear as the waters drain,\r\nAs if some restless hand had opened a vein.\r\n\r\nI set all compass by this wrecked shore,\r\nDry blood shelved dryly against a wood;\r\nDeposited among all that lush scenery once,\r\nAnd outfitted for a war, we put on an alien mood.\r\nTen years' unholy sweat for change, and after\r\nWhat man, bandaged or unbandaged, what man\r\nBut brought a jungle to his house? There breaks\r\nBeneath the out-worn branches of the lake\r\nSome invisible water-bird's penetrating cry.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Manor-House<\/h2>\n
\r\nSlow and late, with bloodied\r\nPaw and stumbled hoof\r\nSlouching huntsmen drag themselves\r\nThrough the opening gate\r\nRetiring hands had bolted.\r\nUnshaken belief is proof\r\nThat the abjured rounds of pursuit, and late\r\nLoss of a scattered trail traced to mud\r\nBut confirm the circuit\r\nOf hound and blood.\r\n\r\nUnliving bodies lie heaved to the brink;\r\nHeavy-bellied gulls stare about.\r\n\r\nLow and rough, a drunkard mouths a tune\r\nDown the old dirt road,\r\nHalf out of mind---\r\nA tune the king's players once\r\nRepeated at the palace.\r\n\"each moment dies and\r\nNothing may its breath renew.\r\nYet minute piles on minute\r\nA solace none wise would dare refuse.\"\r\n\r\nWhispered low the drunken man\r\nNear where slept the hound.\r\n\r\nFailed fathers that have failed to deepen\r\nThe ancient track of an old race\r\nNo bunched mountain's back\r\nCould have rightly steepened\r\nRant at rigor mortis;\r\nDeep tears eat their faces.\r\nLead bells tell the hour of the house.\r\nChildren blow their candles out.\r\nAshes cover the coals.\r\n\r\nUnliving bodies lie heaved to the brink;\r\nHeavy-bellied gulls stare about.\r\n\r\n\"Out of all slaughter, the one\r\nGlobe sundered by a gash\r\nFar past the antique wit\r\nOf Solomon to sew,\r\nThat black day may come\r\nAnd may yet come\r\nWhen no high death can save\r\nA rare daughter or extraordinary son\r\nFrom rash disaster\r\nWhen we've to destruction come.\"\r\n\r\nWhispered low the drunken man\r\nNear where slept the hind.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
A Barren Moon<\/h2>\n
\r\nMoving among the moon-drained hills\r\nRemembering the dead,\r\nLover to ghostly lover cried:\r\n'Whenever I see a sweet man's body\r\nGreat pain within me dies.\r\n\r\n'Enough of such rough comforting\r\nDrives out much suffering,\r\nClapped in a ruinous grave,'\r\nCried that distracted woman\r\nUnder a rude, red moon.\r\n\r\n'All night having grown unnatural\r\nWe drop to the distended ground\r\nAnd there beneath a man-shaped tree\r\nSick with sweet labor of sighs\r\nI cradle nothing between my thighs.'\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Poverty of Motherhood<\/h2>\n
\r\nRaised from the proveless dust\r\nLike a shrouded bird into the sight\r\nAnd set tumbling with the rest,\r\nI daily give wet suck to one\r\nThat is a barbing brat\r\nTangled in my skirts;\r\n\r\nI'll not bother to raise him right\r\nLost in the indifferent dust\r\nUnder sky as bruised as that\r\nTumultuous spot that got him;\r\nBut I daily give him suck\r\nBecause he's the nearer dirt.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Hysterical Girl<\/h2>\n
\r\nNothing was there to see,\r\nA girl half-starved ranting at the sea\r\nWhere the soulless moonlight pins\r\nHeart terrified in agony of sin.\r\n\r\nRepeated syllables teach her mouth to pray\r\nIn abstract hatred of the everyday\r\nIndigence of things, dull pain of a table\r\nSat at too long or in too deep thought.\r\n\r\nAnd now she casts her moonblind eye\r\nUpon cracked hills the sea derides\r\nWith desperate complexities of sound,\r\nLashing furious meanings at the departed ground.\r\n\r\nIt was not her singing sent\r\nDrowning blanche mermaids to the tent\r\nOf the solid man who mastered them in thought\r\nBut found their floundering forms were soiled;\r\n\r\nNor commanded, in sapphitic fury of a dream\r\nDrained among grey stones in lurid streams,\r\nThe empty apparition of the departed moon\r\nFail and vanish, and hide its scorn.\r\n\r\nNo one living saw her there,\r\nRapturous between null sea and thoughtless air\r\nAs she, thin-waisted, blind, hypnotized\r\nBlank waves of the sea, stark desires of the skies.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Among the Stables<\/h2>\n
\r\nPitching in a hay-cart\r\nHow many discarded sighs\r\nMust beat upon my breath\r\nBefore you unclench a thigh?\r\n     A singing boy will solace us;\r\n     I paid him twelve and eight.\r\n\r\nExhausted by post-mortem\r\nDuties to the state\r\nI watch a great bay's racing mind\r\nRehearse its fury at the gate.\r\n     And a careless boy is singing,\r\n     Singing past the garden gate.\r\n\r\nWe shall hear him straining there,\r\nThat collar shattered, the thick heart rent.         [spent.]\r\nSwallows ordered in at dark\r\nWill keep the mares content.\r\n     A singing boy will solace us;\r\n     I paid him twelve and eight.\r\n\r\nStars fill the drinking trough\r\nWhile frantic moon invents a cloud---\r\nEnigmatic, passing out of sight,\r\nAnd the night cries out loud.\r\n     And a careless boy is singing,\r\n     Singing past the garden gate.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
What Joy Departs?<\/h2>\n
\r\nWhat joy departs the heaving night\r\nWhen we stretch out upon the stone\r\nIn momentary bliss;\r\nLaid like sticks and together bound\r\nIndifferent to hurt,\r\nWhat love remains?\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Thorn Tree<\/h2>\n
\r\nO I had all of them\r\nThat had all of me,\r\nA drop of sweat that stung my eye\r\nUnder the old thorn tree;\r\nYet some dark trembling in the blood\r\nRecalls what troubles me.\r\n\r\nBloated moon escaped the limbs,\r\nNight-bird to night-bird called;\r\nUnknown arms at midnight lift\r\nBody and limb appalled\r\nInto the light-terrifying Heavens.\r\nWhatever it was it was not God.\r\n\r\nMany men have come again\r\nBeneath the twisted thorn;\r\nNow they but seem as light as breath,\r\nAnd love's not worth a stone,\r\nFor there's a greater glory\r\nShrieking in my bones.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
New Age<\/h2>\n
\r\nAll watch blindly because all are blind,\r\nMixing in a bitter ditch, while hands and eyes\r\nBolt new brains on a body tamed\r\nOut of all unnatural instinct at last\r\nUntil all stand, skin to skin, with all who stand\r\nEcstatic round one plate, honey-filled,\r\nLike some dark-bodied community of bees.\r\n\r\nLike some dark-bodied community of bees\r\nAll turn to that one vast image hung\r\nForever sweet in an abstract sky:\r\nRiotous selflove perfected to a stone\r\nUntil no man is shaken with a hate,\r\nOr cold eventuality of death---\r\nAdam and Eve out of one stone struck.\r\n\r\nAdam and Eve out of one stone struck;\r\nInterrupted churn of heads, or worse,\r\nConfused there, welded in the air, as if once\r\nFury of the sexual onslaught begun,\r\nNo deliberate loveliness\r\nCould its purpose or pleasure deride:\r\nAll watch blindly because all are blind.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
After the Bacchanal<\/h2>\n
\r\nSmoky midnight torches slowly enwound\r\nA wine-heavy head; my old eyes\r\nIn ominous moonlight upon a photograph confound\r\nSome ancient satyr's head drowsing in its beard;\r\nFabulous syllables out of the bitter heart rise;\r\nEmbittered fables of the Emperor instruct\r\nOceanic ache of sex and blood\r\nWhat's most noble in the bone.\r\n\r\nOut of those lamp-lit or flame-lit mouths\r\nFlickering vaguely there, flash thousands,\r\nUpside down or upright in the air,\r\nBattered abstract complexities of flesh;\r\nDark turmoil of flesh begetting flesh.\r\nBut all mind needs image to be complete:\r\nRage-minded Timon thrashing riches at a stone,\r\nOr that huckster Richard abandoned to a throne.\r\n\r\nSelf-invented, or tossing thought of age,\r\nCast-out circles of the flames reveal\r\nA single man upon a stage, all Lear\r\nIn his proud lineaments thunderstruck:\r\nConfusion of a mind unable to set a scene\r\nAmong a multitude of scenes,\r\nDramatic images that repeat\r\nTumult of living body stylized to a theme.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
That Place<\/h2>\n
\r\nIs it like a light\r\nThat dissolves an empty street,\r\nThat place where dancer meets with dancer\r\nWhirling like a top\r\nAnd does not ask for music\r\nSo long as dancing never stop?\r\n\r\nOr is it more like some\r\nTime that revolves when the skies\r\nAre overthrown, and dark comes\r\nRavening the tomb\r\nOr heavier delirium\r\nThat body lays on eyes?\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
Realist at Atlantic Highlands<\/h2>\n
\r\nEmpty eyes emptier of thought\r\nReturned to turn upon the upturned stone\r\nThat still fell although it stood.\r\nAnd the river empty a little after, alone.\r\n\r\nThe hollow space of the wave determines\r\nThe shape of space a wave may take,\r\nFilling itself, suspending itself until it break\r\nIn predestined syllables upon the fragrant rock.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
The Wind That Lashes Everything at Once<\/h2>\n
\r\nThe wind that lashes everything at once\r\nCame lashing at the lutanist on evening's hump\r\n\r\nDisturbing chords, flinging river pebbles at his back\r\nHunched to deeper strains emerging near his hands\r\n\r\nIn a wind which is a wind and not a motion\r\nOf elemental ardors making speeches.\r\n\r\nThe lutanist deposited hid lute, like so much trash,\r\nIn dusky golds, till gild and gild congealed,\r\n\r\nShrank, subtracted from each other as they became\r\nA part of the haloed wish for a universal whole\r\n\r\nWhere lute and lutanist and avenging dusk are plucked\r\nTo one hue, convincing, not permanent, but arranged for, vented,\r\n\r\nIn the wind which is a wind and not a motion\r\nLashing everything at once.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
End<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“He who dies shall live.” Gregg G Brown Copyright \u00a9 1988 An Annunciation Drowned in the puling cradle emptiness has lit, In empty action of a tragedian’s strut Hollow on a stage, a struggle in the sheets Tosses some watery image up, toiling to be born. What rose, with stolen bone or shafted ear, Lash-astonished, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[310],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-burning-byzantium","category-310-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7413,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5254\/revisions\/7413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}