Words do not always arrive

Words do not always arrive

in the form of words

Sometimes the lips

decipher the writing

Sometimes unforeseen

words burst forth

from ancient heads evoking

archaic images undeciphered

It’s like light

enters the dark forest

and for a moment

the sleeping body awakes

In a clear soft shaft of light [normalized version]

In a clear soft shaft of light
standing alone
  on the flower hill—

(Has Time come over the hill
 w/ bird-song & tree-song
 & day-song & night-song ?

     Has Time
with little bell tolls
     told you
whose footsteps (obscured
by clouds) might be traced
homeward again
among flowers
now here, how far,
     so near, now —
in a clear soft shaft of light
standing alone?)

  — by the wind
     on the little green hill
in the leaves blown

his heart beating,
     his glad hands heeding

the lost world now
again his own

     w/ marvelous under-
standing

In a clear soft shaft of light [concrete version]

In a

clear s

  haft o

  f ligh

  t stan

  ding a

lone

on the flower hill—

+ + + + + + + + + + + +

+ + + + + + + + + + + + +

(Has Time come over the hill

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

w/ bird-song

& tree-song

& day-song

& night-song

?

Has Time

with little

bell tolls

told you

+

whose footsteps

(obscured by clouds)

might be traced

+

homeward again

among flowers

+

now here,

how far,

so near,

now —

+

in a

clear

soft shaft

of

light

standing

alone?)

— by the wind

on the little green

hill

in the leaves blown

his heart

beating,

his glad hands

heeding

the lost world

now again

his own

w/ marvelous

under-

standing

Myths are History (3): from Charles Olson, "Poetry and Truth, Lecture I"

"I happen,
as a poet, to be interested in
creation as a structure —
which is
cosmology.

I got to it in a series of visions
or dream
similar to other men.

Cosmology is a spiritual condition
many people have already known
in other ways —

to get around on the other side
of the nature of any thing
we can now call our experience —
and not something subjective,
but common."

Myths are History (2): from Charles Olson, "Poetry and Truth, Lecture I"

"Coming back
to that question of a poet’s images
and his coming into possession of them,
leading him
to something that we too
familiarly know as
mythology . . .
                     
                        mythology
has never been anything but
the turning point

that leads eventually
or possibly to

cosmology

to the question
—how do you, how
as a person, not only
as a poet, does one live
one’s own image,
rather than use it
simply
for writing— ?"

Myths are History (1): from Charles Olson, "Maximus, from Dogtown-I" (excerpt)

"like Ocean
which is 9 times around
earth and sea (Heaven is 9 times
around earth and sea folding and folding
earth and sea in its backward it
wraps and wraps the consistency
[. . . ]
On that edge or place
inverted from Ocean starts
another place
Tartaros in which all
who have been by the statutory
thrown down or overthrown, are
kept watch on Night and Day
(Night’s house is right over
their heads, in which one door
Day goes out when her mother
comes in and neither
are ever together at the same time
‘at home’ — Hell is just over
their heads
and so is the ‘way-up,’ Bifrost
(Styx’s house and Iris the messenger
[ . . . ]
this marvelous ladder the
color of all colors
. . .
and a great part of her melted
as tin does from the heat of him blasted
where Zeus had tossed him

and then in the bitterness of his anger Zeus
tossed him into Tartaros

the previous time when all the land had seethed
and Ocean’s streams and the sea
had boiled —
[. . .]"

Among the Ruins

1.

“It was then
in the clear morning,
our young voices finding
first sounds of joy,
first sounds of grief —”

     “. . . your hand holding mine
      we walked together in the garden,
      innocent but knew it not —”

“. . . we heard terror and delight,
your hand in my hand was afraid.
I tried to learn
new innocence
in your eyes,
but they became
frightened
of mine —”

     “. . . and in the wide
      cool wave of the shade
      I learned new joy
      alas that
      leads the footstep astray— ”


2.

Into a cloud walking
into the sun
forgive me that we become one.

Forgive the love I cherish,
forgive the things that perish
along the way.

Slowly goes the holy
into the unholy .


Into a cloud walking
into the sun
together sharing the secret union
we become one.

And slowly the unholy
becomes holy .

Now no more hide new eyes
come together from paradise
in the high middle noon
of this life.

[ . . . ]