Poem Beasts
The Thalament (Sea)
Ocena GR. [okeanos?, Oceana? See below.—Ed.] opposite firmament
Promêtheus
ô dios aithêr kai tachupteroi pnoai,
potamôn te pêgai, pontiôn te kumatôn
[90] anêrithmon gelasma, pammêtor te gê,
kai ton panoptên kuklon hêliou kalô.
idesthe m' hoia pros theôn paschô theos.
derchthêth' hoiais aikeiaisin
diaknaiomenos ton murietê
O you bright sky of heaven, you swift-winged breezes, you river-waters, and [90] infinite laughter of the waves of ocean, O universal mother Earth, and you, all-seeing orb of the sun, to you I call! See what I, a god, endure from the gods.
Thou firmament of God, and swift-winged winds,
Ye springs of rivers, and of ocean waves
That smile innumerous! Mother of us all,
O Earth, and Sun's all-seeing eye, behold,
I pray, what I, a god, from gods endure.—Ed.
In the beginning, condensed . . .
you cooled your molten mother.
Now your wave-born children seek beach edge.
Hear shell-eared surfs of far pounding
salt-gasps.
Bottomless-blind to depth terrors
Thalament’s ponderous weight
crushes its own blackness
Pulls full moons down to sink below
fathom’s curve.
This beast is daftly nervous.
Slightest breeze rhymes million-edged brilliants
reflecting alert sailor’s eyes.
This fickle beast prone to wild
twists and slashes chaotic limbs
to sound sky’s full measure.
Brute whipped by scream-winds
twirling swirling curling insane
Thalament again
calmly seeks its own level.
posted 6:54 PM
Poem Beasts
The Tersed (Desert)
Poet’s misspelling of desert backwards
An everchanging beast melts timespace...
Makes ships recede crosspuzzled...
Forwards, Tersed is not the same as backwards.
It wrong spells lost either way.
Due to its hapless directions,
composed of infinite particulars
shifting continuously, seeming tractless,
Tersed goes past
crowd words.
Loneliest of the beasts, Tersed
wants to be alone with its own confusion.
Oriented to midday undulations
heat solving sin things
scatters occidental sages from one hell to another.
Covers all righteous paths.
Call it clear to
hear an evaporated tear.
In Tersed, poets become queerly sounded
mad too
if only for the mirage...
the shimmering voice...
(dedicated to 40 Days by ruth weiss, who
tried to straighten me out on this one.)
posted 4:46 PM
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