Tempering

Rice that’s fed to the gods must be allowed to sweeten in
a gourd: they like best the foam of its intoxicating ferment.

Oh most golden fruit, unblemished skin of melon or pear: meanwhile
we cook the rinds and boast about their notes of complex ferment.

An offering’s a gift: largesse, windfall, the best willingly
given up. No seed pearls that sour, then soon ferment.

And children sing in any tongue their mouths know how to give
shape to: what joy in that honey, before bitterness or its ferment.

Mornings, more often now, in the winter-bare trees, the birds bring
their small, brightly colored racket: I love that startling ferment.

I’ll lie down in my bed at night and pull you close as a sheet,
to dream of bees buzzing in the hive, their ambering ferment.

 

In response to thus: small stone (265).

Imbolc

(Friday). A full office all this morning, and busy about answering the Commissioners of Parliament to their letter, wherein they desire to borrow two clerks of ours, which we will not grant them.
After dinner into London and bought some books, and a belt, and had my sword new furbished. To the alehouse with Mr. Brigden and W. Symons and drank together. At night home. So after a little music to bed, leaving my people up getting things ready against to-morrow’s dinner.

Ice is an answer
to desire we will
not grant. I don
new fur, den up
against tomorrow’s din.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 1 February 1660/61.

True Meridian

Where I wanted to go, years ago, seemed so far away:
a dream, a fantasy even, in the blue distance.

Not now what might be purchased, what comes with
a ticket, that place of no return in the blue distance.

All that glitters isn’t a rhinestone seam on a fishnet
stocking: the long hallway beckons in the blue distance.

And the hills will be there, but that city to which
you dedicate songs has receded in the blue distance.

This is the way it is for exiles, for poets, for lovers
who want to keep something pure in the blue distance.

For instance: that parapet where you leant as a child
to watch boats in the harbor, in the blue distance.

Spirits distilled from the lowly potato, the unassuming
birch: waters that have traveled from a blue distance.

Have you changed? and how? ask compatriots. What they mean,
really, is: have I also traversed the same blue distance?

On the eve of the lunar year I walked about with a saucer of salt,
a handful of augurs— Talismans to ground me in this blue distance.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Lay of the land.

Inferno

This morning with Mr. Coventry at Whitehall about getting a ship to carry my Lord’s deals to Lynne, and we have chosen the Gift. Thence at noon to my Lord’s, where my Lady not well, so I eat a mouthfull of dinner there, and thence to the Theatre, and there sat in the pit among the company of fine ladys, &c.; and the house was exceeding full, to see Argalus and Parthenia, the first time that it hath been acted: and indeed it is good, though wronged by my over great expectations, as all things else are. Thence to my father’s to see my mother, who is pretty well after her journey from Brampton. She tells me my aunt is pretty well, yet cannot live long. My uncle pretty well too, and she believes would marry again were my aunt dead, which God forbid. So home.

We have chosen the gift of heat
and a pit fine and full.
The first time it is good, though wronged
by my over-great expectations,
as all things are.
I cannot believe in a dead God.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 31 January 1660/61.

Aubade, with no lover departing at dawn

This entry is part 18 of 23 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Winter 2013-14

 

In the crosshatched branches she sees a cardinal’s tufted red flag: and what it suggests is not spring, but how nothing in the neighborhood resembles the watery grid of rice fields, especially when the tips of new shoots emerge like stitches feathered in neat rows. At the corner, school girls gather in the cold, snapping their hair bands, twisting and untwisting their hair into ponytails. From their mouths, little spirals of frost; their quick fingers, their gestures that say they’re not considering things that will get harder with age. Not right now. The clouds are nubbed as a pilled flannel blanket. The bus comes into view: a yellow apostrophe, starting and stopping down the long avenue. Soon it takes them away, and they are not necessarily thinking of mistrust. A stray bird’s cadenza reminds her it is time to review the questions she has asked every day for most of her life.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Living it up

(Fast day). The first time that this day hath been yet observed: and Mr. Mills made a most excellent sermon, upon “Lord forgive us our former iniquities;” speaking excellently of the justice of God in punishing men for the sins of their ancestors.
Home, and John Goods comes, and after dinner I did pay him 30l. for my Lady, and after that Sir W. Pen and I into Moorfields and had a rare walk, it being a most pleasant day, and besides much discourse did please ourselves to see young Davis and Whitton, two of our clerks, going by us in the field, who we observe to take much pleasure together, and I did most often see them at plays together.
Back to the Old James in Bishopsgate Street, where Sir W. Batten and Sir Wm. Rider met him about business of the Trinity House. So I went home, and there understand that my mother is come home well from Brampton, and had a letter from my brother John, a very ingenious one, and he therein begs to have leave to come to town at the Coronacion.
Then to my Lady Batten’s; where my wife and she are lately come back again from being abroad, and seeing of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw hanged and buried at Tyburn. Then I home.

Forgive me the sins of ancestors
good for a rare walk, in pleasant discourse
going by us in the field,
who we often see together
in street and in house
or lately come back again
from being hanged and buried.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 30 January 1660/61.