Poem LXXIV: Loop

Bad dream

like moon in

pig water


bad water

like moon in

pig dream

Poem LXXIII: Sophokles, Ajax (646-647)

(from a speech of Ajax, shortly before he commits suicide)

in quite all matters vast and measureless time

brings obscure and unexpected things about


while everything obvious

it plunges into doubt

Further to last

Dear Readers,
The 'Sacrifice Memo' is still humming, somewhat deeply. Reluctant to disturb. New poem when intensity subsides a little.
TC

Poem LXXII: Sacrifice Memo

Know that there were several types

of sacrifice (thusia)

practiced by the Greeks

facts concerning which, who knows,

may pertain to you.

Very many are the permutations

so I shall mention only a few

1. thusia with or without hiera (vegetables and cakes)—meat and blood eaten, and any unburnt hiera

2. thusia with trapeza—everything eaten: meat, blood, vegetable offerings

3. thusia with trapezomata—deposition of raw meat for divinity: everything eaten

4. haimakourai—offerings of blood made to the dead

5. sphagai—the victim’s throat is cut, blood drained into sphageion; alternately blood is poured onto altar, or, if the rite is piacular, over the worshippers; nothing is eaten

6. protoma, i.e.,‘front part cut off’—leaving you with the head and face of a decapitated animal, or, Ps. Plu. Fluv. 21.4, of a boar with human head

7. enateuein—to have the ninth part removed for a sacrifice

8. holocaust—blood and meat destroyed, nothing is eaten

9. leukopareïdodiamésis—cutting the white throat of your daughter over a fire at Aulis; nothing is eaten, everybody dies

with apologies to Gunnel Ekroth

Poem LXXI: A flickering torch

Polydeukes?

have you seen Lukaithos anywhere

here among the dead?

I saw him last in the company of Enarsphoros

and lightning-fast Thebros

deadly

wearing his war-helmet

with Euteikhes and Lord Arion

most powerful among demigods

now I don't see any of them

and no one answers me

Polydeukes?

the afterlife as far as I can see is

endless dots
and outward-facing brackets

as far as the eye can see

Poem LXX: Translations

there is hardly a version that you could call
the original of a text
any more than a martyr's bones are still possessed
of the saint's sovereign ecstasy

yet these are both translated

another major form occurs
when genes are expressed
first the transcription,
the transfer of information, preexisting, to a template,
then its translation
into protein molecule

scientists have shown that this is happening all the time
in the brains of rats and monkeys

so that's how everything
comes into being: all nature does
is transcribe, transfer
 translate

example:
LOGOS = saying, speaking, speech, mode of speaking
eloquence, discourse
conversation, talk
word, expression
assertion
principle, maxim
proverb
promise
order, command
proposal
condition, agreement
stipulation, decision
pretext
fable, news, story, report, legend
prose-writing, history, book, essay, oration
affair, incident
thought, reason, reckoning, computation, reflection, deliberation, account, consideration, opinion
cause, end
argument, demonstration
meaning, value
proportion
Christ

Poem LXIX: Pregnant Moon over Walnut

the girls have been tearing their hair out for days

Argos has been keeping a close watch
on their moods
mindful of their discharge

the chickens have no clue
what is going on
I must say their ignorance
is a most pure and miraculous thing

whatever is about to happen
they will have no part of it

what Dandelion has to say
who knows?
even the Catbus holds back
from intruding on his grief

Poem LXVIII: Atomic Razor

I will never forget the day

I threw an atomic razor
as we must call it

into Maggie's brain

however I am not the one who threw it

but ancient Greek itself

without even trying
I was the conduit

when it happened 

no one could tell

whether she was laughing

or
 the other thing

but this was the sentence:

δημιουργὸς τῆς πόλεως καλείσθω οὗτος ὃς ἂν δικαίως τοὺς νόμους τοῖς πολί̄ταις τιθῇ.

"Let that one be called the work-meister of the city, he who justly establishes laws for the citizens."


whether it is the word 'demiourgos'
(on the translation 'work-meister
I always insist--but that is my folly)
   or the noble sentiment expressed
   or the grammar itself
that hurls atomic razors
into a mind like hers
no lowly magister
no wizened grammaticus in hall
can ever say

but can only rejoice
to have been present on that day

curi/on      a)to/mikon

Poem LXVII: To the Asteroid 2014 JO25

Between today and tomorrow
come hider love to mee
wreck your peanut-shaped head
into my temple
end your long chaotic orbit here
in my breast
quickly lest they name you for
some dodgy Gallic
wood-deity
unknown even to the Gauls

come 2014 JO25 let us
while we are yet alive
meet blithely
with one obliterating kiss

because, o heavens! my beauty is almost gone
and my body am crawling with skeeze

April 19, 2017

Poem LXVI: After the revolution

Milton can execute in 2 lines
what it takes me all day to butcher

Poem LXV: Paschal rabies

the easter bunny is a rancid bunny
i can't believe
he's still around
so crowded with disease
is his
gigantic carcass
that he spreads panic
and sorrow
wherever he goes

and yet he still walks
unpunished
a mindless white atrocity
in a costume of consequence-free
immortality

yes i am wigging
out--my anger and confusion swell
and mutate
assuming an all too familiar toxicity

i need to get a grip
i need a egg
preferably the color of fire
to house my ire
my senses overcome by vinegar
and sulfur
once again
that nightmare
has gone underground
he has slipped away

one day i will find him
and I will make him pay

Poem LXIV: On to Europa

enceladus will tilt its head
toward death
and cassini will drop
right into the vast, chaotic busom
of saturn

so will it be for us all
to die thereafter
perfectly as possible

and slip into the microbial dreams
of that populous orbit

all that hydrogen
all down in the intense inane--
perhaps we'll be reborn
as a feral child!

Then it's on to Europa.

Poem LXIII: Now it is very late

Now it is very late
past the time when
we could get things done

nobody knows
what goes on
or what to do
at an hour like this

i tell you
it is an alien time
an alien darkness

but this is us
this is our tenebrae
it will last all night

Poem LXII: For the President: my notes on Heinrich Blücher's Heraclitus lecture

"Today I wish to speak of Heraclitus of Ephesus and I am trembling."

 Heinrich Blücher

His fellow Greeks, his fellow citizens of Ephesus

did not merely put him to death--

they killed him thus:

drove him into the temple of Diana.

    No one could murder him in that district

    but neither could anyone bring him food

so he starved

in the perfect knowledge

that Homer was wrong about everything.

 MYTHOS    > LOGOS

a cold-blooded logos 

 ironclad law of necessity--the philosopher

must regard the world without belief

That is, let fire persuade you
or not,

 it will burn you

and everything is made of fire.

One can't pray to this logos: that would be nonsense

one can only follow it

 straight

to the temple

 of Diana

"He created, like the philosophers that preceded him, a view of the cosmos as a well ordered universe, but in such a way that there was not a bit of consistency in it,

and his fellow Greeks just hated that view."

What then?


Logic makes only sense; logic has no meaning.



Therefore we must play.

taken at the lecture
Heraclitus and the Metaphysical Tradition
delivered May 10, 1967
Bard College

Poem LXI: Journey to Enceladus

visible in the moon’s icy crust
fountains erupt through fractures

so skating down the gasmosphere
we complete our high-speed pass
through the chemical-rich plumes of Enceladus

note: when you're flipping hard
through zero gravity
to avoid utter disorientation
the
mother of
all
explosive
farts
deployed correctively

is a corrective

devoutly to be wished

Poem LX: Violet

Today we sold Violet
to some
 strangers
from Virginia

it all happened really fast

and
 to tell the truth
I'm still pretty raw about it

Poem LIX: Don't waste your spit

What is all this ruckus?
What kinds of choral dances are these?
What SUPERBIA has infected the Dionysiad with this
polycacophonous clatter?

Bromios, brother mine, it is necessary for me
to be in motion
going up the mountains
to be with the Nereids
and sing with them their dappled
swan-like song.

The Pierides have established the song as king.

So keep creating your noisy tumult
and make your din
with your encroaching flutes
and uncoordinated steps
and  drunken
doorway-scuffles

but sooner or later
you are going to have to answer some serious questions
about what's been happening
to poetry

Poem LVIII: No return

there's no return my friend from reading these dicta
as there is none from writing them--to speak truly
unreading rubbing out alike remain hopeless

so forward then to fields of seasoned heart-bombing

Poem LVII: Siesta Peligrosa

Hanging out under the porch today
with Argos and
the Catbus
it was
rekaxiubg
At first

But it soon turned
really political
and
on Catbus's part at least
violent and agonizingly
poognhaut

But it wAs
rekaxiubg
for a
while there

Poem LVI: Oracular Issues and Concerns

I.

UPSILON MAY NOT BE ELIDED

EXCEPT IN THE ORACLE QUOTED BY HERODOTUS

AT 7.220.

P. Maas (trans. H. L-J., Oxford, 1962)

...but only because “the synizesis is intolerable."

H. Richards, Cl. Rev. xix. 345.

II.

SYNIZESIS, a sound-change or metaplasm

III.

If it is synizesis.

IV.

When the Spartans asked the oracle about this war when it broke out, the Pythia had foretold that either Lacedaemon would be destroyed by the barbarians or their king would be killed. She gave them this answer in hexameter verses running as follows:

“For you, inhabitants of wide-wayed Sparta,
Either your great and glorious city must be wasted by Persian men,
Or if not that, then the bound of Lacedaemon must mourn a dead king, from Heracles' line.
The might of bulls or lions will not restrain him with opposing strength; for he has the might of Zeus.
I declare that he will not be restrained until he utterly tears apart one of these.”

English translation by A. D. Godley. (Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.)

Poem LV: No hurry

Halt maimed defective foot--misshapen halt scazon--

come rest your anceps here--your next-to-last effort

put off--I like your damaged slow and weird wounded

syllabic dance--Palmyra? Hear me out peg-leg

Zenobia can wait--my friend, there’s no hurry.

Poem LIV: OK to ask for help

ITSOK2AXE4HELP !

I know life sucks right now

and I know, first-hand, it 

sucks to suck

    but hear the sympathetic voice

       of the ancient poet--again it is Hipponax:

HERMES! Dog-strangler! Or, in the Lydian dialect, ‘Dog-squelcher,’

--or CANDAULAS, if you prefer—whatever

O friend of thieves

come down 

and get me out of this

!

Poem LIII: Palinode, or recantation

after Stesichoros

What  did I say? Did I say that?
If I did I must have been
out of my mind

Here I'll set the record straight
for all to hear

You are not made of fire
but flesh and bone
and when one tries think of you
your face comes easily to mind

you neither went to, nor returned from, any town
anywhere in Asia Minor

you work in a grocery store



now
will you kindly undo these straps

Poem LII: From the Scazonate of Hipponax

Choliambs, or Scazons, Hipponax
wounded iambs
halting limping iambs
maimed
imperfect
defective
but not necessarily enraged
but possibly enraged


"Keep going, monster, all the long way to Smyrna.
Pass through Lydia and past the tomb of Attales,
the grave of king Gyges and the stele of Megastrys,
the funereal monument of Atys, and King of Attalyda,
and turn your belly to the sinking sun."


the translation is Barnstone's
where I can find a free pdf of Diehl I know not
at this hour
but I found one of Bergk, Theodorus,Poetae Lyrici Graeci, Lipsiae 1843
Sumptu-Reichenbachiorum-fratrum


but for 'monster'

Bergk reads 'friend'

Poem LI: Sapphic ghost

i don't
know any girls named
Gongula

Poem L: Slender, see-through georgic

worked hard on the farm today
interacting with goats chickens
rabbits
bugs

leaf-meal
wood-rot
and red-veined
venomous
plants

and shadows, ghosts

Poem XLIX: War must be war

It may interest you, Mr. President, to know

that Yevtushenko

is dead.

Yevtushenko, who in the years after Stalin

“took on totalitarian leaders

ideological zealots

and timid bureaucrats.”

He wrote of the heirs of Stalin.

“Stalin was far-sighted," he wrote,

"adept in the art

of political warfare he left

many heirs behind on this globe.”

“The cocks are crowing by the sea

brandishing their wings over the Crimea”

which is how poets alert younger poets

that the future us already on fire

and it’s not something

they bother saying

if it isn’t true--

at the same time, that is how Yevtushenko would say

even though you

are intolerably young

you shouldn’t sit too quietly

your poetry may be bad

but that’s okay: in the arena of love

and that of conflict

the poet is right

to try everything.

It would be all too easy to make today’s poem

a poem which betrays

certain skillful emergency tactics

though such days, in which we must play our part, may come

 days such as were planted

when Mayakovsky fired that metal

seed into his heart

--today it will suffice

in Yevtushenko’s memory

to politely remind

a globe crawling with goons

itching for a ten-fold Babii Yar,

crawling with hairballs and pea-heads

with hyperactive speech-patterns,

and jittery protégées

so fond of danger:

"Poetry

                is no chapel of peace.

Poetry

                is savage war.

It has its own manoeuvres of deception.

War

                must be war.

A poet

                is a soldier

and, when he’s right,

he’s right to try all things

                when going through smoke and fire."

 Which where there is, there always is.

4/1/2017