In the Dome of the Ostrov Park

In Ostrov in the park

(as no one even there

would think of another,

the one by the hospital

where people are born

and people die

and where a girl

or a woman already

is bathing partially

raised on elbows

naked in the fountain

as a statue looking

vaguely north—

unto the mountains:

who is coming

through her dream

 

as a light unearthed

and chiseled like her

from a buried ore

into Orphic beauty?

Is it he—or is it she?

With words kinds,

with chancing tender

or with a ribboned flower?)

just memories of beads

of seconds and old my pacing

and inside those drops of dew

that chimes and tinkles

in the webbing of the boughs

in the ever slowly snailing trees

there are of their own old fountains

only in rains softly dripping memories.

And yet it’s also here with a dash

and whisper of the Renaissance

and baroque—still in this air

and fogs that come so early

in the mornings spun and flowing

where poetry keeps her secrets silent

and builds up in those lonely walkers

even now her arcs and her architecture—

the good old encoded Renaissance

and baroque, however faint or frayed

or tattered by winds and showers

from the West and unseen oceans,

drifts and nods with the prow

of her barque free to hitch or enter

in measured hearts and rhythms

and dawdling and own doodling motion,

dotting back beauty’s vanished points

and old vanishing perspectives

with her geometry delicate and sacred

and a genius loci with the wand of “Let it be.”

For good parks are and remain always

a house, a temple, a rest of Goddess,

art in wonder and its Muse or maze

swirling in spires green and trees of spirals,

in which she dwells like a dream

eternal—inside mortals’ profound sleep,

when the scene and shade is being pierced

to be raised and rhymed—with her inspired.

And, yes, there used to be her pavilion,

a papillon with folded wings and pollen

which springs and flowers put—

on their face and noses of the lovers,

that little chapel stood off to the east—

on an embankment called Snail Hill.

There the path would lead in winding circles

like a Venus in her own labyrinth,

like a gently gracious painter dancing

to draw her rose above for a dallying

and daze of your eye turned and languid—

and up and closer inside—to her altar

on which souls are forged, conceived

uttered, revived, joined or altered.

It is in the parks and in such gardens

where Love and Goddess are closer

to their nature, own form and element,

the Platonic idea held and suspended

with a Paraclete’s or Praxiteles’ finger  

like a skirt on nude Aphrodite of Knidos

when it moved aside and ceased to exist.

It is in the parks and in such gardens

where Love and Goddess are out—

even if in hints and echoes only—

fresh and new and out of hiding

once more—and better incarnated

and for another communion ordained

and in feasts of senses ornated—

like notes with keys rightly spot on

pressed and played and found.

For every dress and every stroll

can be in such a garden

a tap of breathing carnation,

a live jasmine, human Flora

whose local gentle statue

also lasted here most

just by that petite chateau

around a corner from the north.

That park is and will be a poem

that cracks one’s silence

with relish and delight

disclosed and yet clothed

in the sun and foliage

of the season’s young

and foolish age—

to live and to be born

and also bare

a bit of pearl,

a chant, a Tuscan—

a genuine, Bohemian

Chianti just when

it’s right and ripe.

For it is written

that’s is the poet

who sees and taxes

any aced elation,

faultless madness,

whether tucked

or guarded

here on a path

in this olden town

ringed by mountains

or caught in passing

in a throb of pacing

that turns the air

into pulse

and sound

and meaning.

For it is written

that these—these too

will the poet tax

and fine and charge

with love’s rhythm

and her versing rhyme

and will turn them

into holy olibanum

or her perfume—

burning incense,

armed anointment

and a word, a ward,

of living incarnation.