Bohemian Ode to Perennial Damascus

 

At times, if not quite often,

what is old, nay, ancient,

is growing, moving slow.

So deep down—and high

its quiet well and roots do go.

 

So do ancient, timeless loves

and much knowing songs

and so does Damascus of Syria,

the oldest town on earth perhaps.

And if Hades has its Lethe,

 

Cocytus, Acheron, and Styx,

the River of Uninterrupted,

Undying Remembering,

would then have to flow

across the greatest Aeons

 

in this Well-Watered Land

of Damascus, the Mother

of All Cities of This World.

There in the sea of sands

and the scorching light,

 

homes tap souls’ refreshed,

bracing and cooling springs,

ever constant, ever nearby,

just as they do with wisdom

folded in the fan of silent shade.

 

And just as human dwellings show

what people think of Gods and souls

and beauty, either within or around,

then these Damascene houses note

that they are flowers made of stone

 

and temples where noise must cease

and yield a solemn hush with which

one can take and lift and live and taste

a thought turning into its avian verse

to grace and luminate one’s awed face.

 

There in the heart of such temple-homes

are atria bequeathed by the Romans,

the Persians, or the Phoenicians too—

to tell that the soul at its most divine

is always and always has been—inside

 

a site of profound peace and serene ease,

geometry and a garden of life that’s true

and intimate as only some legendary love

can be when two become for one another

already on earth a pair of justified well wings.

 

As in such a love so in such an ancient place,

the stem and spindle of the world itself give

them their spine, constancy, and consonance

and their sense and charm and continuation—

as there is the point where the eternal itself abides.

 

Thus Damascus’ tale is always timeless as it is

old and as old and timeless as it’s always fresh—

one of the oldest songs of the soul for us on earth,

teaching like its sacred atria that one is worth

what one has inside as much as to what she’s open to.

De oraculis oculorum tuorum

 

With Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins

In D minor, BWV 1043—Largo ma non tanto

 

The plectrum—electrum that joins

the silver and its shade and tremor

that widens and gives in to a way

and the gold—the splendid shower  

 

of your rapt, unbroken, intent gaze—

dips me once more in a melody

the motif of which used to flee

and escape us below like Aesculapius

 

from that cave—spēlaion—that turns

the Raven or the sun from white to black,

and yet, in that world sunken underground,

a shimmering glint of memory on the walls

 

still stayed and played some of its lyrics old

from up high—echoes trickling erratically down

from the sphere of those greater lives and loves

in which the celestial retained faithfully abides.

 

And there—ever remembered and thus evoked

and thus returned, Aesculapius, the Apollonic

healer, would still descend, both learning more

and teaching us below the modes—the melodies

 

that sinuously wreathe and undulate the kindling

of the souls with bends and turns to lead us out

through that labyrinth like a master’s virtuoso hand

that finds and shows beauty folded even in the stone.

 

There that son of Apollo and poetry that educates,

elucidates, and educes out from sleep the soul

are now coming from the ends of your adored eyes,

giving a sense musical even to this space and time

 

and filled—like us, Apollo’s daughters and his sons—

with that very same Aesculapian, recuperative art

that creeps and steals its chosen souls from death

and Hell—with its immortal tip—penetrating touch.

 

Of God and love be music, let my soul be in that love

and in its know—and let our soul be that musician.

A musician conversant and intimate with that Muse.

A musician of that love and poetry forth surging font

 

when a mere verse, a strophe, a passage become—

like your speaking eyes—a way—an open gate

to where reigns this divine nature and true art—

in each other rejoined—rejoiced—recognized.

 

Riding through Vermont

 

The long meadows grew

sunshine early autumn gold

melted gently with the breeze,

and the roads sunk and sang

in quiet, languid drowsiness.

 

And the Adirondacks,

the Green Mountains,

and the gleaming lake,

again in the shades of blue,

wove the horizons as new,

 

laced in their timeless clasp

and vows of love to last—

one another each would woo.

And there on the way below

the canopy of colored trees

 

on the road quaint and thin—

a gossamer of Summer Indian

made to catch and play and plunk

light’s beams on its single string,

a random beauty guardant smile

 

there strummed and larked about,

splashing into eyes bewitching art,

its ancient spell—Artemisian charm,

cast to remember that September by—

spurring its rider-preys into poem’s sounds.