A Tribute to Carolee Schneemann (1939 – 2019)

for Clayton Eshleman

 

I was young, I mean I was new at being old.

Stones are always welcoming— they parted

long ago to let us in.  A cool cave

not a hundred miles away.  Dark within of course

but I had lights of several sorts, some easy

to the conventional hand.  I was a tyro

on the earth, a brief newcomer, my speech

ringed a little with elsewhere— Somerset? Judaea?

The first friend I met down there was Philippe Soupault,

he wore a little wooden cross around his neck.

I kissed it reverently for new Time’s sake.

He was leading a parcel of pilgrims

towards a special rock where St. John

had left a drawing, ocher and lamp black on the shore

as he passed by so long ago.  Every year

Philippe Soupault told me he leads his neo-Christians to the place

and each spends a day or two before it

figuring out the meaning of what the Saint had in mind

as his holy hands defiled the silent stone with text.

Or was it text? No one was an authority

on what just happens in your head when you look.

There is no weather to wash the signs away.

I went on my way above, always a little timid,

but fear gives a sharper edge to things,

just like desire.  I stopped for lunch at a café,

all shiny metal and polished marble, service slow,

food delicious— a soup with kale and raspberries

built out around tender meat.  Leeks.

The bread of under earth is dense and chewy,

perfect for the man it was my business to become.

 

CANTO II

 

A big blonde showed up as I walked, pretty,

taller by an inch than me, a big girl in flower dress,

appearing as they always do, unexpected, seemed to know

each other, walked beside me telling of her plans

none of which included me.  “The Earth is full of me” she said.

She needed the bathroom and I left her there,

calm goodbye.  A lingering glance.

It seems I had to go the go alone.

And it is best that way, tu sais, a boy

of so many winters looking for springtime

down here where flowers come from.

Now there is a kind of mist that lives down here,

drifts through the sketchy trees (haven’t

done the leaf work yet) and empty streets,

a mist like the ones I love up here with all of you,

spring mist, river dense, water swirling

or drifting soft through just such empty trees

as those below.  I walked gladly through

the humid kisses of it on my skin,

what little I dared bare.  For nakedness 

is rare below the ground, it needs the sun

to summon it.  Down there they pray in clothes.

 

 

 

CANTO III

 

I saw a light ahead, I mean a light not my own.

And sound — it carries well beneath the ground—

as of revelers ahead, music even

but of a kind I did not know—

sounds happy up ahead.  I am scared

of simple joyfulness but gritted my teeth

and stumbled onward, picking up little chunks

of garnet as I pass— my native gemstone,

sidewalks of New York— red stones never fail.

“Your trouble,” she said, “is being rational.”

Not the blonde this time, a woman’s voice,

contralto of the cave, but where was she

while her voice was leaning on my cheek?

“The rational,” she went on, “cannot experience,

or not much.  Can’t feel the dissonance

sweet in actual things, all image and no meaning.”

Who are you, I asked, but meant to say Where?

“Never mind.  You matter to me, I mother you

like a daughter, help you breathe when you are old,

teach you language when you’re young enough.

Without language there could be no lies—

and where would the likes of you be then?”

 

 

 

CANTO IV

Deviants are everywhere to be found—

I must be one of them, so many road signs

and whispers try to set me straight, the path,

the path!  Who are these voices

that know me underneath the ground?

I decided to brave the music and plunge ahead—

I came upon a campground with a county fair

all glows and gleams and bottled sunlight.

Men were all in cages while  the animals

prowled around, some of them on leashes

led by women, others just guessing their ground.

I feared being captured so I knelt down to pray,

not sure of what god is in charge of such a place

so I prayed to my own faith and hoped for the best.

Nobody saw me, they all were giddy with music

(high horns? desperate bassoons,  tin drums?)

filling the beast troughs with wine, the women

drank too, but none for the boys in the cages,

tongues hanging out, boasting of sports victories,

balls thrown, caught, kicked, hidden, consumed—

such evil things to do to perfect spheres.

Poor men!  I am one but am still free, who knows

what heaven says to us us who count our deeds,

think them worthy.  Non homo ssum sed vermis,

King David is said to have said though not in Latin,

creep on the ground all the way to the stars.

 

 

 

CANTO V

But who are these voices that tell me what to do,

tell me what im thinking, tell me who I am

and where I’m going, and why do I only hear them

when I’m  deep down in sleep or underground?

Women and animals and the occasional dead bard,

whistle wisdoms, starlight stratagems?  The rock

relies.  Trust granite, remember New Hampshire

where you learned to walk below the surface

clutching at last to the mother rock.  Lust

lives down there too but that comes later,

when the pelicans have swallowed all the fish

and cherubim sing Thomas Tallis in the trees,

you know when—and it was that voice again

disguising itself as music.  Have you ever noticed

how human voices in ordinary conversation

from far off can sound like instruments,

clarinets, say, or cellos?  Which one are you?

Have you noticed you’re the only sinner here?

 

 

 

 

CANTO VI

Lordy lordy as we used to say, to sin by music!

Without the bushwa grandeur of the opera house,

the jostled beer spray of the midnight rave,

just ordinary hum hum hum alone to sound

like Strauss or Mahler maybe if you’re good.

Good sin!  Babylonian banquets of pure imagery!

Semaphore signals by abandoned tracks,

Orpheus autographed the standing stones,

girls gliding through arpeggios, seals bark.

dolphins nudging drowning poets safe ashore,

all the stories you tried not to hear, school stuff,

billingsgate of the obvious, chanticleer alarmed,

fox in the pantry, ants on the moon, the bull fight

still going on, the mincing picador, lute in flames,

the chemistry set you didn’t get for Christmas,,

 all the dead Saracens reproaching the Cross,

domes over Transubstantiation, music pure,

music simple, music is what happens in the head.

 

 

 

CANTO VII

Could it be so easy I asked and almost fell

against a damp wall all smudged with something,

oil of lavender?  moose milk?  I know so little

about things though things are all I know,

all I love.  Bring me things I cry to the morning

and noon sings full of substances, domains

without dimension that still cast shadows,

a shadow is how you know a thing’s a thing,

not just more music.  Bread and cheese,

zeppelins coming over the horizon, white

cane of a blind man, a boulder in the backyard

claiming to be there before the Flood, who knows,

things are mighty in their understanding, things

celebrate human ignorance, giggle at us, I too

have been smirked at by a pebble.  Even so

I came down here, willingly, stepping barefoot

out of dream, in the hour of the basking shark

on the day of the unknown twins, onto the glacis

of my mighty castle, Here I am, I cried, available

to wisdom and vulnerable to truth. Only then

did I realize I was deep nelow the earth, happy,

frightened as usual, wondering what comes next.

 

 

 

 

CANTO VIII

 

Or was it something just real that I heard

walking in the dark road north it seemed

as from a Russian station, home, could it

have been actual music made by humans?

And where is home anyway when you’re under ground?

Everywhere, all around.  Passed a little cavelet bright,

a poet’s birthday party clamorous inside,

French noises, vowel harmonies as from the East.

I lost my compass long ago and had to walk by prejudice.

And something told me I was nearly there.

I stopped inside to add my greetings

but this time I left my body just outside the door

so I could float unseen amongst them, blessing

them as I wafted through their words

O onyx labyrinth in which the beast is born

I heard the birthday girl declaim to mild applause

but I was thrilled somehow and blessed her more.

 

 

 

CANTO IX

 

Have you never weaned of the wandering hours,

the ordinary day-night raga we all learn to play?

Getting nowhere fast we used to say, thrombosis

of trombones, helter-skelter vibraphones

a few shy kisses in the bushes and good night?

Then you’ll grasp how just me felt,

Why was I anywhere, and who were you?

I mean anybody matters, who? who?

Lonely lover’s dismal owl— but I was Love

itself himself herself, aren’t I, who else

wanders through every rock and lives under everything?

Why else would I be here but to love—

know, touch, teach, worship, give—

synonymous of the godly work we learn in dream.

Lef t the party early, wanted to be in my body again.

 

 

 

 

CANTO X

 

Now set the stage for my departure.

I’ve spent my whole life walking home

—that’s why down here is so easy,

no lions, few wolves, a bear or two,

and headlights passing all night long.

Anyone could be my friend, my father

come to pick me up from school.  Stop

any car and ask the occupant his DNA,

who was on the throne when he was born

or she if by chance she is your mother.

O short breath of the departing dream,

that tiger-striped noise in the chest, hula dancers in sight,

swoon of under, come to rest, sit down.

But there are no park benches down below,

no ottomans or love seats or davenports,

it’s rock or nothing and you take your pick.

All right, Virgil, I slip down here to rest,

having seen it all and understood none of it

and so can still be happy, sort of, brass

pipes in shiny bathrooms, the clink of silver

in ancestral homes, a ring-neck pheasant

I loved by the Cloisters, years boxed

in decades, a seal coat in the closet,

everything is here again and I am done.

Those were the names on the contract he bade me sign,

he said it was a poem, I said it was half his,

he said Don’t worry, sign it with someone else’s name.

Staghorn pen in my fingers as I woke.

I don’t get much older but my body does

and waking just left me where I was—

underground and over it the same astrology,

gastronomy, we dine on shadows and never really die.

My body was older when I crept back in,

been sitting too long, knees stiff, sinews dormant,

I grunting rose.  Back on the path, a witness,

on jury duty for the whole of earth—

Everything is evidence and the judge seems to be asleep.

Walk, walk, safe as baseball, safe as sugar,

walk, little bone bag, walk.  I heard a whistle

close, close, it turned out to be my breath.

 

CANTO XI

 

There is no moon here, and the sun shines up from the ground

I mean the ground I walk on, not the ground

above me where you are walking now.

Coaxing first leaves on the willow trees

along a stream so far ahead I can’t

hear its purling even in my dreams.

For in this sleep or dream there is sleeping too.

I stared down at the sun so long

my skin grew darker and warmer,

I felt it was consuming the light itself.

I fell to my knees and started praying.

praying was an old friend never quite forgotten,

I prayed to the soft earth I knelt on, that’s it,

I thought, Pray  to what you stand on – that’s

what she meant, I realized. But who was she?

So many voices all the same, and all differences

are just music?  She was the mother tongue

that never lies. And the bird of heaven upward fell.

 

                           …9 – 11 April 2019

Robert Kelly reads poem for Robert Duncan, from a reading at Naropa in July 1992