Issue 30 – 2019 – Nathaniel Tarn

Nathaniel Tarn

 

Two Sets for Brenda Hillman: In Celebration of Her
Three Latest Books

First: Her Eurydice

One

and never end and i shall never sit to see her light of day again, however bleak, however uniform, tho’ it were better to his darkness, oh i should guess, wouldn’t you say? a demon’s wife, waiting for him, between two leaves of rock perhaps, i find myself a’thinking there’ll be no end to darkness, perhaps there is no possible arrival, whole question of there being a return to surface, an ending to dilemma might well be false, product of yet another miss and a misunderstanding: something i may never have heard correctly, birds singing though not knowing language, i find myself believing that it will never happen: my freedom, possibility, no: as someone would say, permission, freely now to look back at what has followed me, embrace it and to live!: that is if “life,” dear O, should still be life and not be hell since life, they say, has become hell – problem then in becoming question whether to crawl poorly like this, under instructions which long ago have become senseless (because instructions there once were, and meaningful you say, if there’s a you i say), or whether to abide by one’s own liberty, turn last, dare and win all, or lose all in one throw, but end the thing someway and as you know by now, i turned, opened my mouth, but cry came at me before my face and not from me, and i have never cried, or sung, or spoken more after that one cry in my face

Two

it is a place beyond as far as you can go, as far as flowers end such as those marigolds then some, as far as grasses after those marigolds beyond the farthest membrance of such flower, deep beyond stone, any objection like to stone, ground level regularity, identity of sand, beyond where earth meets sky, horizon cutting earth from sky and beyond cut, not quite that you are then in utter darkness but rather in an all-enveloping (tho’ crystal clear) mist without female attributes, and light becoming blinding evermore at every step, there pain is sudden steady both as only greatest pain can be, perpetually surprising, shocking, breakneck even and, at this time, clearly, consistently a known, with an unswerving preattention to itself, you could now say, of which much might be still expected were this a matter of motility, here loss coming to be, pain strikes like snake, carrying down oh instantly! one moment it is there – what i am losing, the next is not, it has been there so long, so indestructibly, i’ve grown so used to it, now hearing it, now not, but knowing it there always, waiting for moments when i should have time to hear it, to give it full attention and i could then seize hold of it and do with it as pleasure, as master with a servant, and it with me, likewise

Three

venturing down to sing that other place where i is not supposed to go, nor anyone before an end of stay, of which therefore nothing can more be said because it’s never been described reliably and i do not propose to spoil this plot by calling out right now, let it suffice to record possibility: there is that or are those (take it which way you will my lovely O) of which, of whom, enquiries can be made if it helps you to bear your fate with equanimity: suppose further that it, or they, may have the power to answer, even, perhaps, to grant this or that boon emerging out the questions, or no-no it, but that – in an event (and while yourself must signify your needs in silence clean, absolute, by a transmission’s understanding – a passage of the very marrow of a thought subliminally from those bright needs to that which is most solid, or most bone) these “???” of yours can be dealt with most comprehensibly and without slightest dangers of misreading, you will be given your instructions and be warned

Four

an interlude could follow in the course of which you might be asked to demonstrate some skill or art you are reputed to be mistress of, perhaps you would be called to juggle – with silver spheres, let’s say, or gold – perhaps to dance some stately solo – perhaps to fly, if wings should have begun your fate and birdlyness accomplishment both for endurance and astronomic grace, and you might even ask to sing, to sing all things, even when song is at no premium, when it has sunk to be the lowest of all arts, to sing like him in a case described, i would have heard that ocelot, tiger and lion used to gather around, and deer pace out of forest with them, and a lamb also, while birds thought to come out of sky in all their orders, eagle to hummer, and fish sidled up to their pond lips to be by me, and what about rocks, stones and even sand it will be said, weather both mild and furious – winds, rains, tempests, earthquakes and inundations, a very sky of fullness, also with stars at numberless: were these as well not used to still and gather to be with you when you derived your arts? is it not true that you were able to becalm even the stars’ afflictions – for stars as well can suffer pain – and to quench cosmic tears whenever you so wished? even though you yourself might still be weeping and your own eyes dissolving while a smile returned to all creation else? but you know well to understand that no reply from me was possible to this? no performance else? poor payment for my hosts!

Five

so here i used to be, on an earth’s surface, summoning up from winter’s depths that lover i required in order to complete my soul at face of all creation, and now, i move like moleskin under earth, my body facing forward and slightly upward, seems to me, while my whole spirit laughs, mole’s wings would sweep back if they could and fan this mighty tunnel against drift, while eyes would stare out of their sockets at my head’s back if i could swivel spirit’s skull like an owl manages, but mole it is, in the instructions, and i am nearly-blind, any direction you may pick, wings are a fantasy; i’m not even quite sure about a neck; the ghost must follow on, eyes down, not even asks to see whether i turn around or not, i shall have to decide so soon wherein to place my faith: in my instructions, in my own understanding, a lady moving back to an intolerable new husband, lord of this hell, or buy the help and greeting of a long-lost lover? you’ll easily keep pace within my anguish, would be unbearable, ah would it not, remaining silent for the rest of my existence? and yet, what would then be the use of all my arts if i were not in full possession of them, if customs men would not challenge them every foot, enpassioned for security, if i could not look at them when i wished, examine them under all aspects, with every instrument, with all the means that the most subtle hearing might command, tuning, harmonization, melodeon’s trajectory studied in every aspect ingenuity could devise? alas, remembering pain which brought me down to this extremity i dare not yet make this decision, or even think of making it

Six

burrowing on, a line will never break correctly, tho it might well seem that i am not furthering in any meaning’s way, that a salvation’s form will not develop in my mind, that path will never end and i shall never see his light of day again … tho’ i’d prefer it to this darkness, i always think, a question of identity wouldn’t you say? perchance, i keep on thinking, if life were to transform me, even transgender me, transforming little E into an O, and i could move along an art’s lost present into futures, there would be finals to this darkness? perhaps there is no possible arrival, whole question of there being come-back to any world above – where you’d be surely torn to pieces by the revengeful who would accuse you of no meaning, no discovery – an ending to this thought it might be possible to break their silhouettes retaining meaning and gain your paces on your followers? dilemma might be false, product of yet another twist of mind: something i failed from the beginning to think out thus correctly? i find myself believing it will never happen: freedom, a possibility, no: as someone will say, permission, freely to look back at what may follow me, embrace it, live, so that you know by now, after these thousand years, i turned, opened my mouth or what was left of it, but that cry came at me from before my face and not from me, and i have never cried, or sung, or spoken more after that cry, my whole life since a silence

Second: Her Orfeo

One

he could have wished, on such a very morning, that had her mountain waited for him which – perfectly clearly – it never had, he was in a fullness of grief like never, her air was crisp, new, promise-crammed, just by sitting it would probably have come to him, bright word he would recall, which would confirm renewal, his singing talent he would need to conquer hell, what could however come to something never there? looked out for his Eurydice: out of that question, it was no question: there was no thing that could have been involved, on either side of that relationship, a subject/object deal with which Orfeo – how he adored a name Italian – had been so very blessed, thus world had to go on without him, could not have known of it, a very notion ‘world’ no longer viable, it was not even absent, cut-out, nor devolved, what were these memories of flowers on clear night air, bushes immense, a million flowerets on clear night air, appearing small but were in fact inmensitudinous on this clear night, each with only one night in which to bloom: vast cereus? something he’d seen in something picture book, so childhood ridden, far back as anything could be recalled, those illustrations of a land he would never be able to set out for, let alone reach, yet, here, he could have been in her land all alone to mangle hell, her cereus alone, bringing her in close to his shoulder no other wife could ever weave, if only, on that morning, mountain had waited him, which – perfect clearly – it had never at all not

Two

of all difficulties requiring mastery in that bright life, none greater than an overcoming his desire to die, brightness of life itself creating problems, how could one thus survive when light came in so many colors, textures, temperatures from oh so many different sources and hit one at so many different angles? how was it possible to thus desiderate one thing more than an other, to chose a course of action, to take action at all in re to anything when there was there at hand available such vast variety of light? so on what ground could there be choice, in full despair of this, people would look to die or spend their days in fire’s desire for death, or would but so arrange their time – worst case of the disease – that they achieved a nada, frittering forth their precious time in tropes moving to meaning, approximations of achievement, barely disguised, outright a playing hedonistic, contrasting then what happiness to find down here, absolute uniformity of life such that never could a necessity desire an end but only so to manage his affairs that he would move methodically from one thing to another, one task at hand to next, one duty be performed to outcome’s logic: that duty in relation to a second duty, a third, a fourth, a fifth – and so forth infinitum as one got older, it would be realized that fundamental problems lay in increasing probabilities that life was very empty and death entirely full, and so if one could have been sure that there would be available a very small apartment, even a single room, a few conveniences, a small supply of food weekly delivered at his door, a puppy yet, together with substantial libraries nearby, perhaps a spouse however old, exchange of life for nothing would be massively welcome, but there being no light in death, such a one lack! precluded all such humble possibilities

Three

don’t be mistaken into thinking that there is continuity, in hell, between sleeping and waking – as there is in the normal expectation of finding familiar scapes when we awake at home or knowing whole machinery of dreams when we lie down at night, for down below, every awakening is a death from sleep and every fall asleep a death out of her waking world – we shall see nothing like it one more time when we awake from that forever sleep, an only thing that might be seen as just an element of continuity is in a quality of light, hard light which has its property of bringing out her fortune in rich colors and, above all, of giving maximal intensity to joy, to thingly edges: knife blade, razor, a mountain ridge, slope of a roof, a blossom petal edge, cloud boundary, bird wing when feather meets leaf in a thick-set tree, it is almost as if this light gave extra sharpness to all things, added a virtue to them, made them so more precise – as is its way of sovereign intelligence, oh connoisseurs of light: those who had traveled world in their light days in search of every change of light, affirmed that this light was at a very best of all such lights that they had ever known and that those folks down here were indeed fortunate to have that light bathe them rather than any other, now had this light been living light, it would have been in kind that coming over him, he would remember when, at certain seasons of his year, soon after first field planting, guarding of seed against all birds, south wind would abdicate favoring north and north blowing so steadily it could hardly perceive, cleansing whole areas, bringing with it that always unmistakable, that sharply tinted, almost jealous light from her dead mouths

Four

so that before his hades trip he thought himself obliged to think of how to rid his surface world of its bad genii, having at his command a small white ambulance with seats for one and for one only: drives off toward his genius shitshack oh so ambitiously – for who would dare bother inhabitants protected by deep states on all their sides, and there he grabs chief porker by his ribs, seats him inside that ivory ambulance and takes him to a close asylum there to maintain his stay for life without parole or any benefits, thus was our surface polity deprived of its king porker and parliaments and congresses could then amount to rule without his interference, and so came thoughts arising out of capture and took several sundry moneybags of those deep states, seizing all goods and all possessions while leaving them a minimal, that wage increase per hour his workers cherished – while those same workers enjoyed their yearly holiday in some Russian resort by courtesy of this one other porker at an opposing border of a giant cold, then could all flowers of his Eurydice bloom up again into a stratosphere without a fear of loss of pollinators for these same bugs, living in cloud, biding their time, could parachute below, settle her flower issue – and those so gorgeous landscapes he’d seen at Sicily in prehistoric time could then endure forever, he being first a Greek, and Sicily a colony of Greece — thus set up into empire

Five

his line at liberty loses his line, moving too far loses his voice (he cannot sing), he stares at little boys all in a row when coming out, if ever he comes out, ever emerges from deep brush, he cannot sing, his lyre slides from his hand and groping through such oceanic depths as separate some islands, then landing on a beach, that beach his distant ancestor was wavely, softly, unambitiously mustered along over sweet sands – where such a lovely gathering of girls, all loving girls, waited for him and for his history, thus when his lyre floated out of his hand it chose to live there for all time,
question arising as to what could be named Orfeo, transgendered many times, when he had died in state, question continuing in re his progeny, he being ancestor, divine accreditor to poets deep in all seas and on all lands, a multiplicity, a lemming-like assembly now so large there could not voice be heard above another voice and that dilution of some sovereignty bellowed toward extinction – trees, flowers, grasses bending down out of sunlight, beyond his moon, beyond his reach of stars into an everlasting silence as humans left his stricken planet for other planets, perhaps such kingdoms of his dead inside such other worlds and time to be re-written all at once by whichsoever hades took over paradise, leaving once and for all his lower kingdoms

Six

encountered, in a course of travels, numbers of persons, widely scattered over immensitudes of country, who were not making it in any sense whatever and yet seemed perfectly contented with their lot, most part they lived so rurally, they did not have urban mediocrity’s ability to stun himself with social life, social activity into believing taking part in multitudes of ‘scenes’ was waylaid to success, nor for that matter, did they have townsmen’s opportunity for lightening comparison between own works and those of some acknowledged masters, no: they were rather like those once and future lords of language biding their time provincially obscure in genial patience until children of their own generation’s children should discover them, with one crucial distinction: their folks, when dead, would be forgotten – and t’was already written in some book dead people told him of but could not show him, he singled out and therefore learned from long-abiding ones since they knew oh for sure where they were going, so only ones for him to deal with then were these poor mimics, these apes of art, these strange impressive clowns who, so persuaded they went out everywhere at once thus going nowhere, he, wondering how work of his would conquer hell, found their own faith, hope, charity to themselves and to such very few so infinitely touching, interminable project-hatching with no success in sight, a manifest inadequacy of their results and tenderness with which they gloated over them, he who had written self from his very beginning into legions of failure, thus feeling with them and above them, these poor unnumbered thousands, these were real saints and martyrs if you needed such, perhaps, he thought, these were such only artists

 

 

Nathaniel Tarn is a Franco-Anglo-American Poet with some 40 publications to his name in various disciplines. He is also an editor and a translator (Neruda; Segalen; many young people). As an anthropologist, he specialized in the Highland Maya and Mesoamerica generally and also in the study of Buddhist Institutions and Esoteric Buddhism in Burma. He has also worked in the rest of S.E.Asia and Borneo as well as in China, Japan, Tibet and the Himalayas generally. In a two year publishing career between travels, he created anew the poetry program of Jonathan Cape, London by bringing in Olson, Duncan and Zukofsky inter alia as well as helping to create and edit two series: Cape Editions and the Cape Goliard Press. Tarn lives north of Santa Fe, NM with his wife, poet and printer Janet Rodney, among eighty thousand books; a garden and a considerable number of birds.

 

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