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E-thereal
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(for
Aracelis)
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“Altar of Heaven”
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(poems
inspired by Jennifer Compton “For the Talking Statues”
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translate: Marforio in Via del Campidoglio and the
Babuino in Via de Babuino
And variations on Jennifer
Compton’s “Talking Statues”
Russians at the Estonian embassy in Moscow today protested
the removal of a Soviet commemorative statue last night from
downtown Tallinn, Estonia.
© Lynn Strongin
for “Poetry Kit”
Liverpool. U.K. Spring 2007Free of his wheelchair and
tethered only to heart rate and blood pressure monitors,
astrophysicist Stephen Hawking on Thursday fulfilled a dream of
floating weightless on a zero-gravity jet, a step he hopes will
lead to further space adventures.(New York Times. April 27, 2007)
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I.
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I let
them down
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Like
smokestacks lowered to let clouds pass
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Like
grain evaluators toppled
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Like a
shower of falling stars.
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My
family
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By
visiting, because paralyzed
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Immersed
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In
quicksandI could not travel. They rebuffed me. I let them down.
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This,
the test of love:
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I
failed.
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Carry
coals to Newcastle.
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I’ll fly when hell freezes over.
Meantime, statues speak.
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*
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They let
me down
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From
carrying me
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Springing a trampoline, soil pushing earth back
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To my
lifting & carrying them
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Portage
with a smile
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For a
life time.
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More
ether
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More
ozone
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I’d too
have a name like Hawking:
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A girl
gone hawking
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Not
newspapers
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But wind
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Gathered
under my wings
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Not like
those senzatetto
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The
homeless in Rome
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Without
roofs, aerials
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Denied
freedom of speech.
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Yet
cobbler Pasquino wrote fun-poking comments
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Attached
to a rough chunk of marble his his shop.
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His
statue was used as a stepping stone
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In
muddy, cart-rutted medieval streets until 1501.
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*
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So this
body, tethered, which lets me down & lets them down
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Begins
to talk in flight
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To
conduct dialogues
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Above
Italia which loves the handsome, the svelte
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Which
makes art out of
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Poorness
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Like a
grandmother’s cape
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It could
work. It could be elegant
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Flight
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So don’t
say no to me.
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Mother
told my earliest sitters,
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“don’t
say no to my daughter.”
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They
didn’t.
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Only
gravity
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Pulled
me down like mercury
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Till I
built places
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I could
not up to
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Our of
dire need
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Or lease
alive as “lightning” fly.
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2.
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And the loved God so longed to
give God (Jennifer Compton”
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I
would weep for flight
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But
colorless air
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A
destination
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Above,
around,
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Totally
off the atlas
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Defying
radar
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“I
really wanted to go”
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but what
a morning up north for “The History of Art Through the Ages.”
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These
are the ages
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& I’m
not getting thru:
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O leper
of St Giles
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My
brain’s in overdrive
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After
the burn of the funeral
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Dying to
spring up & out again.
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O Altar
of heaven.
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3
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“Death Cab For Cutie sings Crooked Teeth
(Jennifer Compton part# 6)
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I
know these people & will kneel at their feet soon
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Jetlagged
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Watching
tourists carrying valise filled with sorrow:
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Newspapers a year old.
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This is
a replay.
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Silent.
Drowned.
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A
biffo is a shiner:
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A black
eye. Can an angel get one
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Flying
between world & world
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Nothing
appearing on the shoulder?
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I grow
older.
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Do not
look down. Scrap looking down. Madonnas look down. Contrite girl
look down.
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“Enough
is as good as a feast.”
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So is
too little:
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It rings
bells,
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Sirens
on red trucks shrike thru streets:
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I have
hungered all the years
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& not
been invited to the feast.
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4.
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Language Immersion
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Can
drown one, waters lapping over lips like kissing
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Over
chin
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&
skullbone
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the
shape
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lovely
as a statue sinking.
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My
profound fear as a girl
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Was that
life would become paralyzed
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Like me
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Time
stand still
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A beggar halted in my doorway
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Hand stretched out with cup, him blind &
me no money to give or see.
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5.
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“The salt and sugar, the lilt and
swing / of the other” (Jennifer Compton part #8)
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Roma’s
weather is
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Litmus
paper
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Picks up
the mood
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Of the
other
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What
would life be
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Without
salt & sugar?
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Sheets
of paper
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Fly off
like sheets from the washline.
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John
Playford was clever enough to collect the signal
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Of other
music:
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The
Signal
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Everywhere music takes you.
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6.
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Spark Studio
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“It is
not in my heart to be glad”
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I
observe I stand on a place of content.
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I lift
this heart out of y chest
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Reaching
under the vest
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Embroidering with roses
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The flow
of blood
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So apt:
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The
tassel Italian trump
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Ragazzi bare chested boys.
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Hip
hopping.
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The
string
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Of joy
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Plucked
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Lit
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In them
from toe to chin.
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7.
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Air is
tinder
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Is
winter:
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We need
it to burn
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Tinder
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Kindling.
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Hummel
not a real star today but a competitor of Beethoven.
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I no
longer crack blue eggbox open with a spoon
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Things
too green
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I wear
black glasses to the razzle-dazzle of them.
Free of his wheelchair and tethered only to
heart rate and blood pressure monitors, astrophysicist Stephen
Hawking on Thursday fulfilled a dream of floating weightless on a
zero-gravity jet, a step he hopes will lead to further space
adventures.
Unable to talk or move his hands and legs, Hawking can only make
tiny facial expressions using the muscles around his eyes,
eyebrows, cheek and mouth. He uses a computer attached to his
wheelchair to talk for him in
a synthesized voice by choosing words on a computer screen through
an infrared sensor on a headpiece that detects motion in his
cheek.
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