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1 infant encoil’d inside a worm 2 The Throne of Mary throne of wisdom on which the babe sits he holds a little sign marked EGO 3 Pity a flying horse swoops down a rider scoops the babe up in his arms 4 Eve she gnaws the apple in the serpent’s mouth 5 Behold this Midnight Glory; Worlds, on Worlds. (Edward Young, Night Thoughts)
From Triptych. Copyright © 2007 by Jerome Rothenberg. Reprinted with permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
My name is smaller than it sounds. I work & polish it until a light shines through. I thrust a thorn under my tongue. I drop the little stones behind me. Striding I can feel my height extend up to the rafters. My voice is thin, still thinner is the space between my footsteps & the earth. I do not want you calling me except at the allotted times. I scratch my head because I know it's empty.
3:00 P.M. The green man, more a man than most, took a scissors, cut the sky with it, let a river loose till it became a sea, the way that yellow turns to gold, his scissors tore its blue apart, his lips grown pale with dust, the branches broke & from the west a man rode up, who saw the west in ruins, Pan sat with a zither heaping sadness upon sadness earth upon air until the sun itself was lost, the air as murky as the soul of man he bathes in it he sits inside a molten pool a catherine wheel spins overhead a hundred pinwheels 6:00 P.M. They set the snake loose where the weather
Beginning with olive trees. Shadows. Beginning with roosters. Crystal. Beginning with castanets & almonds. Fishes. This is a homage to Spain. This mists dogs. This silences rubber. This is Saturn. Beginning with yellow. Eclipse. Beginning with needles. Insomnia. Beginning with baskets. The Moon. Who is naked? The imagination (wrote Lorca) is seared. This is a homage to water. Beginning & end.