Of the Roses-Horses on the Cliffs

 

What of Ariadne's golden thread?
How often did it—whether in thought
or in fact, itself a bold and brazen act—
lead a stranger along its winding path
and ever deeper into grave-like death?

And why would Ariadne then herself crack
and split into two—instead of the one—
into the troubadours' Eleanor
and the meek and pliant,
dove-like gentle Rosemund?

And Theseus? Wasn't he the first
to switch the sails from white to black,
just as he swapped between two sisters,
even though each—and in her own way—
carried the rider who was also both:
both love and death—and each
an entwined snaking thread
along the line of poetry and fate?

And wasn't Rosemund herself
such a bower's mare—
made of hros or horse

and mund, protection and guard,
until scholars changed her
into rosa munda, pure rose,
or into rosa mundi—
all the way back

to Phaedrus' two horses,
one black, the other white?
But why should one need
to repaint those roses
hanging on the seaside crag,

and keep one's sails inverted—
female reds and royal purples
into whites and blues and golds,
akin to the silk of kissing graze
as it navigates by the lover's nave?

What Could the Russian Soul and Love Ever Mean to Czech Anticommunists And Anti-Russian Liberals?

 

From time to time, once in a while,

in Café Slavia we would sit—
Rudolf Matys—and only now
I came to see, to know—

all that time my companion was
both Matys, hence Matthew,
“Gift of God,” and Rudolf,
that is to say, a “Famous Wolf,”

a strange and distant kin
to an Adolf, once a visitation
from the West in my dream
near Arkansas’ Little Rock.

And among other things
he asked, “How is Mr. Křovíčko,”
meaning George W. Bush
(for in Czech bush is křoví,
a křovíčko is little bush,
and křoví evokes

something, someone
who is hiding—skrývá—
“behind bushes”—
which could be
even a wolf himself.

Wine watered our talk.

And we even talked of Onegin,
and, to Rudolf, neither he
nor Pushkin meant too much,
except that Holan tried to mock
Pushkin’s rhyming scheme
but then let it be—

and all that novel’s talk
of Russian soul and love
Rudolf cleaned up
in one little detached coda

about what he missed:

instead of just sending
Onegin away from her lap
with a note of proud,
yet aching love,

Tatiana should have
used a clue Pushkin himself
offered out for sale—

when he wrote that, in his gaze,
a woman’s foot, especially if
in public under a table’s cloth,
beats each Diana’s breast
and any Flora’s cheeks
(Onegin I.XXXII):

so why shouldn’t—or didn’t—
the lady, as a men’s and poetry’s
good student, learn how to bob
and move Onegin, that well-bred devil,
with nothing—but the meter
of her toes?

From a Platonist's Sojourn in America's Aroostook County

 

The mind is manners,

and manners are the mind,

and this is the jingle

that clinks and chimes—

 

But what of the old sly hag

who ran with a robbers' band

and spun, to pass the night,

a tale from the Golden Ass

 

for a poor kidnapped lass?

It takes a god, a monster

stunning in disguise,

a snake hid in the dark,

 

and a woman's mortal soul,

"wonderfully merged,"

to make a Voluptas—

a wonderchild of want.

 

Is this why ladies "with a class"

would order or invent a shaggy faun—

to strip down qualms and hang

their morals out to dry

for the hour that lets them act?

 

"Oh, Eros," having leafed

through Auden's Penguin Reader,

a studious girl might sigh,

"he's surely the one who brought

 

a sense of reflection into my life.

Nonne amor caput rerum omnium est?

May Cupid never perish,

so I'll always find him by!"

 

So hearing this, I listen

and start to suspect why,

in fauns and their tails,

they found a needed tonic—

 

for, as they say, "neither

should we fear love

nor take such gifts for granted."

But only those who read extra

 

could cite Socrates—I mean,

that Banquet woman, Diotima:

"Do not then insist that what is not fair

is of necessity foul,

 

or what is not good evil;

or infer that because love is not fair

and good he is therefore foul and evil;

for he is in a mean between them" (Plato 201d–204c).

 

And just as fast, one hand

behind their backs, the students

of Maine's fields and woods

would gladly wrap it up:

 

"Love is never white or black!

Still, 'nothing can be had

without a price' (Epictetus):

with brutes we pay for mores,

 

with devils, in lips of vows.

And though morals are a must,

fauns—the devils—are more fun,

even if characters wane

 

like candles in the wind

when all's a thing of lust.

But wouldn't Plato too

summon a bit of touch

 

'with a sense of distance'?"

Of Spines Spurring Love's Thistles and Thorns

 

Into those old paintings

parasoled ladies kept on

landing—argent egret

whiffed by mere breath.

 

Not unlike two fingers met

underneath a passing tab

in perplexed flash,

in umbra of a hat,

 

the face just might have

ensouled the sun—

geysered through the eyes.

 

Off pairs and carriages

those parachutes away—

if down becomes above.