{"id":5288,"date":"2015-08-27T19:04:56","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T19:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregglory.com\/wordpress\/?p=5288"},"modified":"2023-07-08T10:19:42","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T10:19:42","slug":"unimagined-things-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/unimagined-things-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Unimagined Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/a><\/p>\n

\"unimagined-things-thumbnail\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Purchase from Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n

By Gregg Glory<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 1990 Gregg G Brown<\/p>\n

published by<\/p>\n

BLAST PRESS<\/p>\n

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\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Unimagined  Things<\/h2>\n
\r\nThe world must change if we but imagine it.\r\nCopernicus squinting traded in his lamps\r\nFor furious mysteries; galileo tossed Aristotle out\r\nFor a swinging stone, back to the turbulent sea of thought\r\nBecause his ghost had no bones. What new paradigm\r\nWill rinse us shining from the misbegotten foam?\r\nUnimagined things grow real, grow real.\r\n\r\nNietzsche knew pale Apollo well, that he\r\nMust step lightly from red Dionysus' side;\r\nMichelangelo's high man and God, that mirrored touch,\r\nPoured the raging heavens into our daily cup.\r\nWhat matter that before unimagined things grow real\r\nThey must first condense in thought? Man's a drunkard\r\nWith his dreams and will piss them to the sod.\r\nUnimagined things grow real, grow real.\r\n\r\nAging wrong and aging right cannot\r\nEndure our scorn or enhance our thought\r\n(Morality's an old, old play, with curtains that must fall)\r\nBut new worlds imagined, that body in the breech.\r\nEinstein knew that his equation unraveled no new sky\r\n---That were indifferent--- but was a chant to change his mind.\r\nUnimagined things grow real, grow real.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Supernatural<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nSay whatever turned round in Plato's skull\r\nOr mounted Mary Magdalene's heart, St Teresa's chest,\r\nPours quickly away; chill vapors dispersed by day.\r\nSay chance is in our substance and makes us free.\r\nSay whatever terror that holds man by the throat\r\nIs shed by accidental antidote. That St John in pan's cavern dwelt.\r\nVast plans that had Caesar's mind for habitation\r\nOr in Hitler's bunker slept, and map by map were built,\r\nWere map by map and town by town disintegrated.\r\nSay chance whirls in what strength or thought threw out.\r\nWho knows but that chance is projected indecision,\r\nPetty habits of the mind grown great, great thoughts grown worse.\r\nWhat do we know of history and fate? Did Venus,\r\nWho knew Adonis' worth, imbibe his dead sperm for bitterness?\r\nWhat in her belly purred? What from the great legs leapt?\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Nativity<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nWas there carnage in that shot\r\nWorld-leveling god begot?\r\nStubborn Christ born in an abandoned lot.\r\nOld cross crows are drubbing in the dust.\r\nCracked heaven the dividing splinter teared,\r\nAll that riotous confusion heard\r\nBefore the roaring droplet seared.\r\n    Old cross crows are drubbing in the dust.\r\n\r\nDid that staring infant's head\r\nDimly unwrapped above the stiff bed\r\nKnow what it engendered?\r\nOld cross crows are drubbing in the dust.\r\nPack-animals' musty blood\r\nFlubbed responsive where they stood,\r\nDeep in the passionless mystery.\r\n    Old cross crows are drubbing in the dust.\r\n\r\nAnd was that woman bleeding there\r\nAs in a tapestry, for the crawling god prepared?\r\nAll generation in a wound condoned.\r\nOld cross crows are drubbing in the dust.\r\nDid that penitential infant shriek\r\nClimbing heaven's empty cheek\r\nDraw ecstatic thunder down?\r\n    Old cross crows are drubbing in the dust.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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In The Cold Dawn<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nBefore the geese upon the water have begun their day,\r\nBefore cold dawn could allay the winter's deep dream of May,\r\nOr any symbolical host fly out of the dark, as it must,\r\nThe thoughtful song, drawn like yarn out of a beggar's breast,\r\nAnd which had illuminated pride, so weak was the world's way,\r\nUnseen ages, like the bird with the silver ball for a soul,\r\nDied dreaming in that beggar's breast, before he could awake from the dust.     \r\n  \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Policy<\/a><\/h2>\n
 <\/span>\r\n       I\r\nWhen Twyla Tharp begins again\r\nHer own sweet body to command,\r\nCharm of personality or face must vanish\r\nInto the reality of pattern.\r\nSoldiers lined up pidgeon-toed\r\nAt the mosque, shot out their enemies' heart.\r\nWhat lies still beating in the cart?\r\nWas there passion in that slaughter?\r\n\r\n       II\r\nThere was a dream of feasting, and we fed on dreams.\r\nInstinct in the sculptor's palsied hand\r\nCreates where it divides, eating to the face of man\r\nAs if stone were so much rotten wood.\r\nAlthough young, it seemed all dignity must be spent\r\nOn sinking love or suborned monument.\r\nWhere was the gamble if the loss lacked reality?\r\nWe were young and solemn and did what we would.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Son of God<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nIf I were the son of God\r\nAnd out of that grand house came\r\nTumbling with lions\r\nOn Heaven's bursting lawn,\r\nAt breakneck dawn I'd race\r\nFrom grave to cradle again\r\nUntil to a moldy house I crept\r\nAnd turn the last clod.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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St Augustine<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\n"A seed of knowing out of our ignorant fruit must drop.\r\nMy pear tree, not Sartre's, rises from the wrong ground,\r\nblossoms and rots in God's green affections;\r\nmemorizing Cicero all afternoon, the lagging speeches,\r\na fist of pebbles in my mouth, shouting at the sea....\r\na carpet-bagging stumper after my sweet fee.\r\nWe threw the golden teardrops uneaten to the hogs---\r\nall boys and wickedness leaping Huck Finn's fence\r\nwhitewashed in north Africa. The orchard door\r\nyawned on darkness as we exited, loaded down\r\nand laughing: reality in the act, not the scenery.\r\nA tentacle of happiness, not nausea, gripped me then\r\ncoiling my black heart in light like an extra aorta,\r\nfibrous and alive and dangling from God's omnipresence."\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Sweet Dancer<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nThe world enlarged from a shell\r\nIs stripped and standing bare,\r\nA grinding dancer on a stage,\r\nViolent with despair\r\nAnd sweet to look upon.\r\n\r\nIs not every lovely thing,\r\nAll gauzy prettiness and hidden force veiled\r\nAnd held from revelation as destruction\r\nBy gyring chance\r\nBy delicate strings?\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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The Blind Man<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nBecause I am blind and walk agape\r\nAnd beat out rough rhythm with my stick\r\nLike the fascination of the sea\r\nI can create, as in Yeats' dream,\r\nMan in the soul of God\r\nAnd batter out a place \r\nAmong twilit immensities\r\nTo dwell in that contempt,\r\nGiving bitterness a face.\r\n    Stick, stick, stick, stick.\r\n\r\nBecause I am a blind old man\r\nAnd came blindly howling hence\r\nTo fumble with a stick, I demand,\r\nPassion of my decrepitude unsung,\r\nA gallery where bright heroes hung\r\nStand each for that passion\r\nThat pitched them to their deaths;\r\nAnd I demand it built\r\nBehind the eye and in the heart\r\nOf God and his burning son;\r\nAll glory in the uneaten bud.\r\n    Stick, stick, stick, stick.\r\n\r\nI have heard on the walks and ways\r\nThat give my confession to a stone\r\nThat some with bitter inward breaths\r\nAnd some in necessity of fashion\r\nLive slave to what words have wrung\r\nOut of man's contemptible mash\r\nAnd nail to each star each part,\r\nAs if misery made flesh were all.\r\n    Stick, stick, stick, stick.\r\n\r\nI can see because I am blind\r\nHow each tiresome human vine\r\nIn eyeless arrogance of its kind\r\nSprouts like a worm in its own food,\r\nDivine soul all lumped with mud.\r\nEach blind root heaves its back to the sun\r\nIn perilous ignorance of its own blood.\r\n    Stick, stick, stick, stick.\r\n\r\nAlthough I am blind and cannot see\r\nBleak wreckage of the dark tide,\r\nRank human ecstasies and defeats,\r\nI know what mysteries abide\r\nAnd carve these rude words upon my stick:\r\nWe must feed what we beget;\r\nImagination shall provide\r\nSome unsought froth as yet, rank spillage\r\nOf the glittering sublime.\r\n    Stick, stick, stick, stick.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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A Bitten Rind<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nBecause I am old and refuse my death\r\nI have been bitter and I've been kind;\r\nSkeletal bitterness my enmities shook,\r\nKindness flowed from head to foot.\r\nBut of all those wind-gaunt faces\r\nI have worn as if strapped in the traces\r\nI most adore the look\r\nOf an old withered apple, its withdrawn glance,\r\nAll sweetness concentrated\r\nTo an unrelenting taste:\r\n    An old bitten rind, bitten rind.\r\n\r\nBut because I am bitter\r\nAnd dislike the taste\r\nOf joys overblown in any wind\r\nI have come to sing in the waste\r\nOf an old bitten rind:\r\n"Bitten rind, bitten time,\r\nUnder stars or under sky\r\nThe right emotion of a dirty crook\r\nHas nobleness to bless or curse,\r\nConfirm or rescind the pledge\r\nMade by our bodies as they lie\r\nUnder this dirty hedge."\r\n    An old bitten rind, bitten rind.\r\n\r\nHaving tasted thus\r\nThe fruit of an obscure look\r\nOr the sharp meaning of a song\r\nUnder dull words in a book\r\nI laugh at all awhile\r\nAnd I myself forsake;\r\nFor nothing's worth the riddle\r\nAnd no man's worth his wake,\r\nI stole a blind man's fiddle\r\nAnd sing what I forsake.\r\n    An old bitten rind, bitten rind.\r\n\r\nI have nothing but am a queen:\r\nMonstrosities sworn must heel\r\nForced by a hand unseen\r\nAs dog to its master's whistle wheels.\r\nAnd although I am a great queen\r\nWith stars on my fingers for rings\r\nAnd although I dance like a drunk\r\nAnd with the seen and unseen wink\r\nI am driven by passion to sing:\r\n    An old bitten rind, bitten rind.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Matter Of State<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nWe have many problems,\r\nBoth violence and drouth;\r\nPlagues upon our people,\r\nPlagues stuffed in our mouths.\r\nDemocracy abandons men\r\nThat lack remembrance;\r\nBehind us another mountain\r\nCrowds a fresh sky.\r\nDay in, day out,\r\nAll the businessmen are stout.\r\n\r\nPoliticians of utopia\r\nFrom every gutter shout:\r\n'Join hands against the common slope\r\nA better world will out.'\r\nThe strong man has his answer\r\nTo the dream of a perfect state:\r\n'Strike him without swerving,\r\nLay him out upon the slates!'\r\nDay in, day out,\r\nAll the businessmen are stout.\r\n\r\nArjuna on the streetcorner\r\nSipping at his smoke\r\nKnows the daily death of friends,\r\nKnows it for no hoax.\r\nWhat of all that rant and hiss\r\nWill strike him as sense?\r\nWhat blue Krishna whisper\r\nHe died before for this?\r\nDay in, day out,\r\nAll the business men are stout.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Dark Voice<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nWe've been shooting strangers\r\nOver waters and the wild;\r\nBut conscience is forgotten\r\nIn the tearing wind.\r\nWe stood up in battlements of dust\r\nTo cut down what would live:\r\n"Worms and tyrants all must die---"\r\nNothing was as pleasure is.\r\n    Said a dark voice hid in the bush.\r\n\r\nThe mob is filled with insane joy,\r\nThe banners in the street\r\nHang from pole and lamppost\r\nHang ripe like butchered meat.\r\nWhat happiness or bliss is there\r\nIn conversing with a face\r\nUncle Sam has painted blank\r\nFor every circumstance?\r\n    Said a dark voice hid in the bush.\r\n\r\nIn a folded tent there's room\r\nFor filching treachery;\r\nStanding near, the slaughter done\r\nWe'll collect an oiled fee.\r\nDead men lie face down in bed,\r\nA hole in every spine;\r\nHow goes the empire's rate\r\nWhen we to cowardice decline?\r\n    Said a dark voice hid in the bush.\r\n\r\nWhat if great washington lived,\r\nThat stern face breathing near,\r\nWhat thoughtless sentence then\r\nTransform to pleas our cheers?\r\nNothing was as pleasure is,\r\nAnd God's a neglected child;\r\nWe've been shooting strangers\r\nOver waters in the wild.\r\n    Said a dark voice hid in the bush.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Lee Atwater, RNC<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\n"Wheeled cradled, blank-faced and blue-brained\r\nto the hospital chapel, I watch the ivory pastor's hands\r\ntrace shadow rabbits in the air under the florescent cross\r\nand list my sins in silence as he drones redemption;\r\nmaybe St. Peter will greet me in heaven with a new guitar.\r\nSomething babbles into static as my stroked-out arm relaxes...\r\nA tumor dripping ink now fills my mind, a black bud\r\nswelling to blood-blossom, ready to costume me in blood---\r\nStalking back from the guillotine like a 50s zombie\r\nblitzed on my first part in the Bs, I wake\r\nsocketed in the nMR chamber like a bullet\r\nwaiting for the green light to flit my diagnosis\r\non the big screen, the chart a map of Europe.\r\nI lay enlarged; drugged and irradiated like a fallen fruit.\r\nI still laugh when I hear a democrat's ill.\r\nI was worse: my perennial, emboldened\r\nhumor ramping like a bull, I crooned Dukakis is bald<\/em>\r\nfrom my black marshall stacks for the innocent fetuses\r\nat the Republican convention, dating Miss America still....\r\nI'm sorry I kicked his Greek hynee. Sorry for all that."\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Statement<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nNot the politician in his coterie\r\nSurmounting an elaborate chair---\r\nA simple, elegant glass\r\nChoked in his unconscious fist,\r\nNor revolutionary lunatic\r\nStanding tip-toe on the quay\r\nTo out-face the beating sea\r\n(And has not the courage\r\nTo stand half at ease)\r\nHas a fanatic eye\r\nOr golden stomach enough\r\nTo sweat out the divine\r\nNight after night, or lick\r\nFrom all this tragic human stuff\r\nSome shrinking taste\r\nOf the glittering sublime.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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After the War<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nThe cardinal his scarlet vigil keeps\r\nThat had no sin but singing;\r\nHow much more should we march in grief\r\nThat have said and done such things?\r\n\r\nThe azalea extends its wild branch\r\nAgainst a wild sky; nearby\r\nSome libertarian pamphlet flaps\r\nIgnored by some more sodden door.\r\n\r\nA child is singing in the bright march air\r\nSome tune his father sung---\r\nAbstracted with the politics\r\nOf that disastrous, forgotten war.\r\n\r\n"The soldier will soon be waking\r\nThat fed on dreams before;\r\nA man kills a man that killed;\r\nAll happens as before."\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Bee  and Cup<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nAn azalea climbed up\r\nInto a silver cup,\r\nAnd blossoming died\r\nWhile the bee had sup.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Blacksmith<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nToiling in dawn's orange forge\r\nI hammer at the gorge\r\nOf silent kings and laughless queens.\r\nThey come to me for pretty things,\r\nPretty things;\r\nI have imagination's means.\r\n\r\nBut the farther that I thrust\r\nThat art I cannot trust\r\nInto the aching spirit's pyre\r\nThe more my hand is burnt and hurt\r\nBy earthly fires.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Contemporaries<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nThey study at a school\r\nWhere waves are crest on crest,\r\nThe fish half in the air\r\nAs if the highest were the best.\r\n\r\nBut every brooding oyster knows\r\nAnd every whale that spouts\r\nThat although their high heaven glows\r\nIts because the water has run out.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Solomon in Confusion<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nVirtuous beggars into cold dawn swarm\r\nTo chill their heated flanks.\r\nHow do I know that they were warm?\r\nThey had no stitch of clothing on.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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So I Might Suffer<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\n  So I might suffer without fail the vengeance of leaves\r\nCrumbling, vein by vein, to the docks of autumn's dust\r\n               And burn again in a rasping year\r\n                          My fled blood\r\n                      Both woke and broke\r\n              Flood and voice over the sea-turning town.\r\nSo that the wail of the crickets might knock and enter\r\n              Each sad shadow passage of the pulse\r\n                              I woke\r\n  Burning in the shining rivers that skip out of sight.\r\n\r\nIn the helping hurt of the one-armed weather\r\n              Flinging hailstones and adders\r\n         Down the ocean-thieving tunnel of the sky\r\n                       Against this head\r\n                  I swore all summer dumb\r\nWhile the ministering crickets in the booming grass\r\n   Chanted phylums of my blood about to be said\r\n               And I stood in the summer's drum\r\n                         Surrounded\r\n               By the roaring going of the year.\r\n\r\nIgnorant of thistlery we walked in our mystery\r\n         Arm in arm like the burning boughs\r\nFriends against death in the summer's long breath,\r\n          And like the sun we sauntered\r\n                 Drunk and wandered\r\n      Through the closed book of the heart;\r\nAnd I was sky and sunlight in the chapters of the grass.\r\n                 And understanding\r\n                      I sang:\r\n   Oceans in acorns my strumming mermaids are.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Dead<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nWhat has life's bitter disappointment brought\r\nLaid in a narrow, breathless bed?\r\nShall we curse all our drunken, muddy lot\r\nLain with long bones of the dead?\r\n\r\nAt the end of a rifle or parting stream\r\nPursued by a pursuing dream\r\nMan wakes up to find his enemies again,\r\nThe end of dreams, and all friends dead.\r\n\r\nWhat stays hid in the marrow there,\r\nThrust deep underground?\r\nThings purposed in the unpurposed air\r\nDie when those men are dead.\r\n\r\nWhether father or brother still pursue\r\nTheir work, or others' work, I do not know;\r\nI read it on a narrow, upright stone\r\nCast by the long bones of the dead.\r\n\r\nFathers sacrifice long-loving sons\r\nTo a nameless, breathless bed;\r\nStand we under an island sun\r\nOr lie with long bones of the dead?\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Crisis<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nI desire to cast desire away,\r\nHaving all that blamed respect\r\nDue my old age, hurled burning away\r\nUntil I into the naked grass have crept.\r\n\r\nI recall how some sage hermit spoke,\r\nUnder his mountain drift lodged alone,\r\nOf how all changing waters must\r\nWhirl up to the stone.\r\n\r\nBut I am wrecked by discourse\r\nOf the sacred and profane;\r\nAll love draws back to its source,\r\nDry enmities remain.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Those Images<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nStand again at the old well-lip\r\nAs one half-sleeping might\r\nAnd drop a stone among those images\r\nThat lay hid in the night.\r\nWhen still a boy at the water's edge\r\nCold with terror at the dark,\r\nThe light was like a fish's hide\r\nThat floated back to me.\r\nAnd drop a stone among those images\r\nThat lay hid in the night.\r\n\r\nWhat has escaped the breath\r\nIn hated words or curses, now rescind\r\nAnd let an older beneficence begin;\r\nCall that harshness in.\r\nWhen driven to that edge of speech\r\nThe tongue half out of the head\r\nRecall what purpose pleased you best\r\nWhen time had not yet begun.\r\nAnd drop a stone among those images\r\nThat lay hid in the night.\r\n\r\nAt gasping dawn a boy again\r\nSwears all breaking light's a game\r\nAnd climbs before the mounting sky\r\nTo catch a dreaming fish\r\nWhile the water's high.\r\nSo sound out the plummet-depth\r\nWith some stray rock or cocked ear do it\r\nOr hearth-stone out of pocket;\r\nBut drop a stone among those images\r\nThat lay hid in the night.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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The Secret Rose<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nDeep dew fallen on the secret rose;<\/em>\r\nClosed eyes open that cry again.<\/em>\r\nNothing here to bind the heart close;<\/em>\r\nNo bloom can I cut for the mist of pain.<\/em>\r\n\r\nCushioned grass beneath me, the pine my cloak,\r\nThe wind a whispering skirt;\r\nThe water waits emptily for an empty boat,\r\nThe naked road for a coach as a shirt.\r\n\r\nA little girl is singing\r\nIn the waiting evening:\r\n"I ride a grand coach\r\nWith red lacquered sides;\r\n\r\nWithout shoe or broach\r\nMy love on a dark horse sighs.\r\n"Where are true lovers' hearts\r\nBound and wound?\r\n\r\nBeneath the cypress, on West Mound,\r\nBeneath the brooding ground."\r\nCold blue a candle flames,\r\nStraining its frail light;\r\nOn the West Mound, rain\r\nForced by the wind in the night. \r\n\r\nDeep dew fallen on the secret rose;<\/em>\r\nClosed eyes open that cry again.<\/em>\r\nNothing here to bind the heart close;<\/em>\r\nNo bloom can I cut for the mist of pain.<\/em>\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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Causation<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nWhat ache first calls us from rest,\r\nBids us rise and dress\r\nAs if all were solemn consequence?\r\nThe mind that ages in its fears,\r\nGrows tired, rants and tears,\r\nAs if every thought were sense?\r\n\r\nUntil heart and soul and all\r\nAre beaten out of gold,\r\nNo dying triumph's made.\r\nUntil eye and mind first sprout\r\nGolden tenderness, there is nothing out\r\nThat cannot fade.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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No Longer Young<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nNow that she is no longer young\r\nThere is less of her\r\nIn the measures of the birds;\r\nThe partridges give voice\r\nLess sweetly, and the rose\r\nGrips more blackly the earth\r\nNow that she is no longer young.\r\n\r\nNow that she is no longer young\r\nDo new ships and unfinished men walk lost,\r\nThe crippled dog mew at its wounds,\r\nAnd the sun go sick to bed each night?\r\nDoes her pleading face fade away\r\nFrom its passion like this age\r\nNow that she is no longer young?\r\n\r\nI do not know because I am blind\r\nTo crudities of the compass point\r\nOr the minor perihelions of the sun.\r\nEnzymes of their medicines cannot chart\r\nThe chemic regions of her skies;\r\nThe needle on the encephalograph\r\nShakes no glory from her eye.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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In Zero Air<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nIn zero air\r\nBy the jaguars caged in their griefs\r\nAnd landrovers digging up bones in the park,\r\nDirt salts the dime-hole of her going.\r\n\r\nBy liquid cats,\r\nEmptied of minutes and prayers in the waking zoo,\r\nBoth half animal and man in my shambling frame\r\nI pace to praise the honored hour of her death.\r\n\r\nHer grave grows hair\r\nAnd gravel marks the shadow where I walk,\r\nFreezing among moonbeams, while the icicles' stalks\r\nRise from eye to eye in the blizzard's blast.\r\n\r\nNow how unsound\r\nBy the gold-honoured straws of dawn unbound\r\nAnd looped from the walking category of sorrow\r\nBy a drake's water-shilled beak do I stand and cry?\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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He Fears Growing Old<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nWhen my voice is a troubled cup\r\nWho'll know my face?\r\nMy wounds then sew up\r\nMy scolding done?\r\n\r\nWhat lover listen\r\nTo what I say?\r\nClean bones glisten\r\nUnder rank decay. \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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He Grows Old<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nI've watched the swan withdraw\r\nTo the sky's timid zone;\r\nAnd out of that sweet ether\r\nFashion a dying call.\r\n\r\nI know not whether,\r\nMy time being sprung,\r\nI shall endure together\r\nTo sing that last song.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
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The Gifts’ Attendance<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nThese gifts' attendance now allay\r\nAnd renew these broken eyes with day.\r\nWhat picture in the mind can make me rail,\r\nNow so out of love to overwhelm?\r\nCan one so old still declaim and rage,\r\nLet passion's mask drop or burn a stage?\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
Without Benefit Of Virgil<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nThere, amid the wrong middle of this wood,\r\nWhere God himself must stand and choose\r\nOr find himself unable, caught between good and good,\r\nSweet songs that rise from the geese in the dawn\r\nAnd travel without a quaver in the air\r\nUntil they alight on some rich man's crowded lawn\r\nOr empty lot abandoned by all but the wind's stir\r\nSome ancient, contemptuous king or passionate\r\nPoverty-stricken man cries out his heart\r\nAnd lays his head bare in the miserable dust\r\nIn eternal revelation of his time-bound character\r\nBefore the bawdy wind can close the gate.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
The Scolding Moon<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nHe cried to the sun to be no more\r\nA part of his burning misery.\r\nHe cried to the brooding owl "No more\r\nShake down your bony glance, your fingering looks\r\nThat alter my heart's procession and my blood's course."\r\nAnd he cried to the moon, the scolding moon,\r\n"No more the tripwire of my conscience be\r\nThreading your silver circuit through eternity;\r\nClimb down, climb down from your bald perch:\r\nCome taste the blood shreds on the ground."\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
Stone Muse<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nNow I am old\r\nIn body and bone\r\nMy stone muse sings\r\nProud and alone.\r\n\r\nBut when I was young\r\nMy muses stood\r\nMedusa-struck\r\nAnd drained of blood.\r\n\r\nNeither face nor body danced\r\nOn the barren grass\r\nOf the white seashore,\r\nAll their stony terror glued in a glance.\r\n\r\nAll that I had planned\r\nAnd placed apart\r\nIn the sacred mysteries of the heart\r\nSunk like a stone in the lost sea.\r\n\r\nAll the beautiful pride of her speech\r\nThat had seemed, so far above death was it flung,\r\nThe haughty original of chance\r\nClosed in dark colloquy and muddied breath.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
Daedalus<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nPatched out of forgotten things\r\nOld clothes and old stories and old grey rugs\r\nI have sewn my sable wings\r\nAnd soar where solemn things are bugs.\r\nBut perhaps where blood falls\r\nFrom the human heart\r\nAnd wall gives on to wall\r\nIs the right altitude for art.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
The Climbing Rose<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nThe climbing rose upon the tree\r\nIs symbol enough for me;\r\nThat chaliced eye weeping blood,\r\nProponent of diviner love.\r\nAll the glory my old age needs\r\nA fisher-girl provides.\r\n\r\nWhat care I if angels, angels shove?\r\nLove's a lump of sodden clay.\r\nI am content with what I can catch\r\nAnd let the others pass.\r\nOld hearts and broken kettles sigh,\r\nLove's a sodden lump of clay.\r\n\r\nWhat care I for the spite of time\r\nThat makes the humble bite their tongues\r\nOr loftier spirits trudge\r\nThrough burning lime?\r\nThe climbing rose upon the tree\r\nIs symbol enough for me.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
His Heart<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nAnd there was one\r\nHad taken up a song\r\nCould not put it down again,\r\nHis heart had been harrowed\r\nSo deeply and so long.\r\n\r\nAnd there was one\r\nHad a fine frenzy in his eye\r\nAnd leapt from blazing hillock to hillock\r\nIn his mind, his imagination striding\r\nDionysian, above the plains.\r\n\r\nAnd was there one\r\nRenewed all anguish in a thought\r\nOr with his burning blood made all the causes stop?\r\nHis heart had meditated silence\r\nSo deeply and so long.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
The Silence<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nOn undemanding ground\r\nShot through with hollow sounds\r\nBird or bullet make\r\nOr some other keen cry, I take\r\nThis man for model, though in truth\r\nA small man of the town; and although\r\nHis grandfather was a thief\r\nAnd his father worse than that,\r\nI respect his grief, for what else can I\r\nThat wander in the clay?\r\n\r\nThere was a man had died\r\nFrozen to the mountainside\r\nAnd, nothing in his climbing pack\r\nAnd less upon his withered back,\r\nHe ascended the wintry peak\r\nSang a rich bar tune and died.\r\nIt was out of pride\r\nThe old man had died.\r\nHe gripped a flute, knew God's great lie,\r\nAnd had a clarity in the eye.\r\n\r\nAnd at the last, a damned wretched gaiety\r\nSuffused his frame.\r\nMountain echo upon echo\r\nHollowed out his fame;\r\nDying, trying once again\r\nTo empty himself of troubles by the score--\r\n"This joy of death\r\nStops the breath."\r\nIn the trees, excited laughter;\r\nAnd after, the silence.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
Henry James<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\n"Capacious imagination's faces fete my famishing,\r\ntake tea from a voice, a ghostly pour of steam\r\nrising and soliloquizing, misting the thirsty features\r\ndrowned in their own pool of too-deep selfknowing.\r\nUnhandsome Hawthorne, with a vibrant lie\r\nand victorian necktie, I guess my susurrations linger\r\nover trashed vowels, marked harmonies giving\r\nmy fine Irene her double edge of softness;\r\nhow, sometimes, the right face can mean salvation!\r\nHowled down at the Imperial for my tea-tragedy last night,\r\ntoo cinnamon-delicate for the masses' meat,\r\nI know how our bodies will meld before our minds vanish....\r\nDriving like a marathoner out of London into the foggy future,\r\nthe lifted Dover cliffs swelling the meridian\r\nand loving my new auto's purring reach into the nebulous,\r\nI watch for constellations past the turning wheel while\r\nthe shaky rearview mirror gives an intruding look."\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
In All This Abiding Blue<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nThe sky is blue.\r\nThe blue man in the blue sky is blue.\r\nThere will never be a stop to the monotony\r\nIn all this abiding blue.\r\n\r\nThe undulations in Uruguay\r\nAffect the meditations\r\nOf Mrs Rhinoceros\r\nEating her ferina in highest fashion.\r\n\r\nMacabre puppets of Anaxamander\r\nHanging lank in the spindled air\r\nInterrupt the impecunious questionings\r\nOf Peter asleep among the dorm's susurrations.\r\n\r\nDripping dreams of doubters on the rocks,\r\nTheir drub drub drub in blackest drams,\r\nFalling among rocks\r\nScatters cats in Tulsa, Oklahoma.\r\n\r\nAnd never in Atlantic city\r\nO Never in Atlantic city\r\nWill there ever be a stop to the monotony\r\nIn all this abiding blue.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
Thief of Glory<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nJefferson and washington, and all those famous men\r\nThat out of obscurity came, and were on enlightenment bent\r\nAs on some perfect woman's face, and had such holy measures\r\nIn their drums, out of what dark hole began?\r\nWhere had all that purposeless glory come?\r\nO, man's a thief of glory, and steals it from himself.\r\n\r\nPast turbulent lands and frenzied watercourse\r\nMan finds but broken solitude, finds his own soul hidden there,\r\nGasps at his luck, summons all his wayward heart to swear\r\nTo keep it sacred; and then, lonely with his own audacity,\r\nPerjures himself in the first company he meets.\r\nO, man's a thief of glory, and steals it from himself.\r\n\r\nCaravaggio's painted flank that struck God in a horse\r\nShimmering, floating there, radiant sky made flesh\r\nAbove the tumbled saint who crawled in dust away\r\nAnd in that abject departure made his prayer.\r\nWhat besides his human hand had put it there?\r\nO, man's a thief of glory, and steals it from himself.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
Four Paradigms<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nPerfumed Lavosier sniffed\r\nA new world in, sighed a new one out.\r\n\r\nCaravaggio's rearing horse proclaimed\r\nModern divinity.\r\n\r\nPeter Seller's gardener lost\r\nCompounded man and holy host.\r\n\r\nThe Giant in the cradle\r\nSome sweet sanctity retains.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
Fine Things<\/a><\/h2>\n
\r\nSome with horse-gestures and spiritual breath,\r\nA fine noble neck that will not bend;\r\nA fiery eye; talk that did not fade.\r\nAlteration upon alteration given\r\nNo approving stamp, but in the house fine things \r\nAre kept. All is done as was done before.\r\n\r\nThose few by right of rank\r\nBy every right that nature knows,\r\nThat contain such ancestry and grace,\r\nNoble pause in speech and haughty face\r\nThat in manor-house or tenement the tradition's kept;\r\nAll remembered gaiety and high shows.\r\n\r\nEnmities mended that would wreck the worst;\r\nBeautiful things; beautiful books among the plates;\r\nA bell that calls the spirit home.\r\nAll words a ritual word or look, or some\r\nAction presaged in story or high song.\r\nAll is done as was done before.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
<\/a>In the Night<\/h2>\n
\r\nSome say heaven is a rest,\r\nBright clouds can close out light;\r\nBut I differ with that crowd\r\nAnd contend my midnight's best.\r\nAll men are dust and must pluck their theme\r\nFrom passing circumstance---\r\nAll that agony but a dying dream\r\nUnless it make a farmhand dance.\r\n\r\nThe dervish and his spinning lash,\r\nHis tongue twisted in trance,\r\nRepeats his antic rant before\r\nGod's whirling face.\r\nLoveliness unbridled bore\r\nNo such look as that;\r\nWhen heaven claps its bony wings\r\nIndividuation is forgot.\r\n\r\nBut unpopulated heaven,\r\nBare sky among blank fronds,\r\nFloods my rebel keel from even---\r\nSudden with intemperate blood.\r\nRobbed of vision I can feel\r\nNo palpable delight,\r\nBut stark hands that catch at escaping heels\r\nClasping in the night.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
<\/a>Once Manservant and Now No King<\/h2>\n
\r\nOnce manservant and now no king\r\nSince she the served and sweeping blast\r\nHas hurdled death's ribbed gates again, slipped past\r\nThe soft portals opening and entered\r\nThe severed countries of the twanging grass.\r\n\r\nAll ants and minotaurs, and each graved thing\r\nIs of its wicked pulse ice emperor\r\nUnder green stars flying backwards and the foreshortened blast\r\nOf horse-headed winds that neigh each eye shut\r\nLoping its crooked trot to dark.\r\n\r\nOnce queen in the skyey seconds of my breath\r\nWith no pale maids attending, and now\r\nA girl with a hollow where her breasts had been\r\nI crawl into the hours of my grief, and lie\r\nIn the rose lacquer of her lying-down breath.\r\n\r\nOnce haunted god by the ramshackle barn\r\nCaved in centuries of twilight and worsted rust\r\nI rummage the windings of this moment's moss\r\nBite the sands of our last hidden kiss\r\nAnd breathe all ways at once your lost breath.\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
  Purchase from Amazon By Gregg Glory Copyright \u00a9 1990 Gregg G Brown published by BLAST PRESS   Unimagined Things The world must change if we but imagine it. Copernicus squinting traded in his lamps For furious mysteries; galileo tossed Aristotle out For a swinging stone, back to the turbulent sea of thought Because his […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[197],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unimagined-things","category-197-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5288","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=5288"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7320,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5288\/revisions\/7320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}