sw00437a-con.versingwithmyself

[ Updated 2007-09-24 ]

Autobio       The Yeats-Auden-Saenz-Mackey Connections


 Last night I got to reflecting:  I am somewhat of an oddball poet,
 a strange poet.  And so I did searches on both.  Under the first
 I found and read an interview of two translators of works by a
 reclusive nocturnal oddball poet who lived out his life in La Paz,
 Bolivia.  His name is Jaime Saenz.  Though not as he was, going 
 back to even before my 27 years working as a motel/hotel night 
 auditor I was a creature of night.  My reclusiveness applies more
 to my inner life than to my day-to-day life, but I have become
 more reclusive in my day-to-day life since my health forced me
 into an early retirement, a circumstance I did not expect and was  
 not planning toward.  There is a chance I may become less of a 
 recluse.  The oddball in me relates to my approach to writing as
 well as to my personality, though I believe the latter is the force
 beneath and within my views of and consequent expressions of
 whoever it is I am.  Unless some other can gather a sense of me
 more clearly than I am able to, I contend I am a chameleon: one
 who does not have a locatable style.  Why?  Because my sub-
 conscious, my hidden brain, my below-ground brain is an ocean
 of possibilities, an ocean which is constantly changed.  And it is
 from what that ocean does with what changes it that I so often
 am motivated.  Rarely am I able to tell in advance what next will
 rise from it.  It has been my way to go with what is presented to
 my conscious brain, however it is structured.  Doing so is filled
 with risks, but I am possessed by a risk-taking personality.  Yes,
 I have made significant errors because of it, but I have also made
 signal advances because of it.  Should I be more rational?  Sure.
 I have at times.
 -
 So where does Yeats fit into this?  Centrally in his belief that we
 who do such making/ make poetry out of our arguments with 
 ourselves.  I definitely do this, and not just in poems I make.
 And where does Auden enter?  Centrally in his:  "How can I
 know what I think until I see what I say" idea.  And Nathaniel
 Mackey?  Two things--both ofwhich I learned from an online
 interview of him by Christopher Funkhouser:  1) his interest in
 math and science during his early years  /  2) his belief writing
 is rooted in the author, and that therefore an author must take
 the risk of not appealing to anyone, must have the faith writings
 of his (of hers) will find their ways to appreciative audiences.

 -

 Here are two sites to see.  If you go to the first one, scroll
 to the bottom of the page and read the information there, 
 and heed it.
 -
 
 (this is the interview about Jaime Saenz)
   -
 
(this is the Funkhouser Mackey interview)


 -

 footnote: recently one of my siblings told me I--when I was
 yet quite young--used to get up on top of the kitchen table
 and attempt to carry on a debate with my dad.  My dad
 would then eat a little faster and go outside.  My sibling,
 meanwhile, would sneak some of the food on my plate. 
 -     



Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00436rtj-codes.sitemap

[ last modified: 2007-06-04 ]

Regarding This Journal              Sprintedon Hollow Updating
 -           
 E14


 Have been updating this Sprintedon Hollow journal the last few days.
 Am not yet finished, but mostly finished.  The sw00254jcctr entry was
 really an rtj entry.  Accordingly, it is      sw00254rtj-shj.codes.center
 now.  My investigating has made clear to me the importance of what
 comes after the en dash.  Therefore, my updates have concentrated
 on that portion of my URL structure.  The "E14" above indicates that
 this is the 14th rtj entry.  The "30may07entry" does not expressly
 reveal/ what type of entry it relates to, nor provide the sequence #
 for the entry; but, at this date, all regular rtj entries use this pattern.
 Admittedly I am experimenting.  No other type of entry will use the
 pattern I am using for rtj entries.  Throughout this journal each type
 of entry will use a pattern specific to it.  I have assigned numbers to
 most of the central links sites.  Instead of using simply "links" after
 an en dash, I am now using, for example, "links.entry5", which is
 the one for the math entries links site.  Am considering placing a 
 list on this page, but today I did just that at   
 Sprintedon Hollow's Journal Links Center.  Whenever I find that a
 further refinement needs to be made, I will make that refinement.  I
 do not/ want/ to be ever making refinements, but things change and
 I must/ change with them.  I have also been removing many tags, as
 I am learning more about what works best in that realm.
 -
 This journal's links center code is the Sprintedon Hollow code.
 It is the code for this journal's core sitemap/index/links entry. 
 It is one of just two which I've allowed to retain the "sw-p".
 "00260jlctr" follow.  Except for the few purposely singular entries
 in this journal, all of S H's entries can be accessed from there.  No
 more than a search on this code is necessary.  If you want to see
 the most recent entries however, link to the Sprintedon Hollow URL.
 In the code shown here the "jlctr" means Journal Links Center.  As
 I have done on this page, each new page will show my journal's
 name, provide a link to my journal's Journal Links Center, and
 display thepage's AOL entry number in its upper right corner.
 Place your cursor over the Journal Links Center link to see its code. 
 -
 -
 
 sitemap information at Wikipedia



Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00435math-colors.hex.rgb.2

Math       Color Names and Digital Reality


 Having seen sites on which multiple variations of gray
 are shown and are given numbers such as gray 7, I
 did some searching this morning and found this site:
 Graphics Magick where grays are assigned percentage
 values, with 0 being black and 100 being white.  When
 a color is given a language name, the digital realities, i.e.,
 mathematical realities, of the systems being used are at
 that moment sublimated by the fictive, the poetical.  To
 name 00ff00 / 0,255,0 green, light green, bright green,
 lime, or my mother's favorite is essentially a pleasantry
 which only minimally describes fact.  Because black
 needs to be "zero" and not "one", and because white
 (for practical reasons) was set at "255", there are 256
 gradations.  Given the red/green/blue primaries, we are
 faced with 256³ (16,777,216) possible colors. I don't know
 about you, but unless someone or some robot has already
 given a language name to each of these, I suggest using
 the rgb numbers.  Since 255,0,0 is the brightest pure red
 and 1,0,0 is the darkest pure red, 255,254,254 is the most
 nearly white red even if it seems gray.  If I tried to give a
 name to each possible color, how long would it take me?   
 If I tried to write a poem about each, how long would that 
 take?  Maybe we should assign each possible color to each  
 of 16,777,216 humans for the purpose of giving each color
 in our pantheon a name.  Maybe 16,777,216 volunteers
 could be found.  What a bouquet!
 -
 Has someone created a fireproof, damage-resistant, energy
 self-sufficient house/ replete with pontoons in case a flood
 races toward it?  That would be a better project.
 -
 Read Kenneth Brecher's remarks in article by Robert Roy Britt
 in the 25 June 2002 issue of Science
 -

-

to go to my colors.hex.rgb entry

~
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00434v-14.poem12

Venturings



 What It Is

    after reflecting on the poem-making 
    of Mark Doty and John Ashbery


 Though there is no silence,
 One must write in the silence,
 Take time in the silence,
 Though there is no time
 One must write in;

 Yet this is how
 The great poem is written,
 Survives itself,
 Patiently/ revealing its being
 Displacing the dark.

 Words into words
 Like rocks into rocks
 Or tired breezes curled into sleep
 Arrive, arise / descend, depart
 Riffs into riffs/ for days into days.






 -----------------------

 links to over 300 literary periodicals


Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00433a-tu4caring

Autobio


 [ The remarks below were originally on the home page
    of a site I once had in Tripod space.               BAJS ]



 A Special Thank You


 It is Wednesday, October 4th, 2000.  
 About 8am I decided to write this and to place it here. 
 Due to the genes I inherited I have never known true
 health, yet I may soon be 60 years old.  Were it not
 for the doctors and other health-care professionals,
 and were it not for researchers and inventors and the
 many companies which make the products that have
 benifitted me and continue to benefit me, and were it
 not for parents who cared and for all like others, I
 would not still be alive.  I owe all these magnificent
 humans a special thank you; nay, owe can go:  To all
 of you without whom I would not yet be/ experiencing
 this holy/ human passage, ugly and beautiful as it is 
 and as I have made it, thank you, thank you, for you 
 truly are the goodness of God.
                                                      Brian Salchert





 
 Retail Pharmacy Rant  -  (I read it.  You should too.)



Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00432a-poets.who.blog

Autobio       Internet poets 



 Will this really be about me?  I am not sure.
 Maybe tomorrow I will know.  Maybe never.
 Fissures mar my spirit.  That I can say.  Yet,
 it is more likely resilience will build in me (if
 the universe allows it to) than the dissolution
 of what is left of who I am.  Let no one feel
 one drop of sadness, for where I am and am
 heading toward/ I freely choose.  Life, even
 without anyone but myself, I shall ever prefer
 to no life.  As it is, the only reason I still am 
 an Earth-alive sappy human/ is: the love of
 other humans.  I have probably had 4 times
 the lives a cat supposedly is able to have.
 Will this really be about me?  I am not sure.
 -
 Someone or some organization ought to
 conduct a census of American poets and
 publish a list thereafter.  Perceived worth
 should not be a consideration.  Only this
 question need be asked: If you believe
 you are a poet, what is your poet name?
 My sense is there are far more of us than
 is generally thought.  I know some would
 not answer my proposed question.  Some
 might even consider it an insult.  Poets who
 are widely known should, perhaps, not even
 be approached.  [ AM 9 24MAY07:  Maybe
 someone in the literary blogosphere is making
 a list. ] 
 -
 -
 [ PM 8:22 24MAY07:  Below is a note from
    the home page I once had on Tripod. ]
 -
 The computer revolution notwithstanding,
 there are millions of humans known only
 by those few humans who know them.
 More to the point, the same can be said
 of millions of humans who have an online
 presence.  I am these days such a human.
 Here I sit, typing this, typing that, as if I
 am writing to billions; but barely even a
 dozen a day read my words.  I am as one
 in a plasma cell at this 11:17 passing PM
 minute, wholly available; yet wholly alone.
 It is a strange universe, it is, it is.  
                                       Good night.
 -
 September 20, 2006  -  Brian Salchert 





 
 American Academy of Poets - Randall Mann on John Ashbery



Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00431a-inthefar.beyond

Autobio            (galaxies and avant-garde poetry)


 Earlier I was in the Archive of Astronomy Picture of the Day
 where I looked at a photo of the Globular Cluster M13.  
 In the explanation/ mention was made of a yet more distant 
 galaxy, a presence which moved me to say to myself interiorly:  
 The existence and persistence of the universe obliterates my
 comprehension.
 -
 I then went to Reginald Shepherd's Blog where I encountered
 a piece on the nature of language.  It was posted on Friday,
 May 18, 2007.  It's entitled: "A Few Words About Language".
 
 Reginald Shepherd's Blog is here.  In one sentence he says: 
 ". . . language is not a discrete entity the way sound and 
 color and shape are: . . ."  I agree.  As T. S. Eliot wrote in
 Burnt Norton: 
 . . . .  Words . . . / . . . / . . . slip, slide, . . . / . . . / 
 Will not stay still. 
 -
 Mr. Shepherd indicates that the purview of the poetic
 avant-garde is that space where language is nearest to
 losing its identity as language, but he does not pursue
 this.  Through examples from my own compositions I
 am going to pursue this, but not tonight.  It is nearing
 11:30, and I have other concerns.
 -
 23MAY07:  I am not in general an avant-garde poet.
 I am, however, in my own way, a poet who believes
 as Stanley Kunitz did: that a poem comes to one as a
 kind of blessing.  Therefore, even though I often do 
 chose a form first (such as the sonnet), I tend to allow
 a poem to develop an interior form.  A poem is an it:
 a made thing.  This its construction, however, does not
 need to be predetermined in its form and content.  This
 its construction can issue from the sense and sound of
 its initial word or meta-word or non-word.  The levels
 of formality and informality to which a poem can rise
 (or descend, if you will) are endless.  Poem-making is
 not an exact science, however intensively a particular
 maker is craft-centered.  To begin with, each maker is
 a being who is constantly changing and being changed
 by da-dot-da-dot, da-dot-da-dot, da-dot-da-dot, rigida,
 rigida, ü ee ee ü ah ah ah.  And, in the riddledon-
 going, a foreign object in one's eye can suddenly flip
 "everything".  So, the so-called content of an object
 made with words always engenders an interior form,
 a form which can rigidly mimic an exterior form/ or
 which can so aggressively counter an exterior form it
 replaces that form with the form inherent in itself, or
 exist in some degree between/ wherein it serves as a
 tone master.
 -
 The following are varyingly avant-garde compositions of mine: 
 -
 See 2007/02/25/sw00237s for "Day Five     blue"    from my Birthday Ribbons set
 -
 See 2007/02/13/sw00207tdp for "As the Desk Lamp Flickers"
 -
 See 2007/05/01/sw00357ut for "E v e n i n g"
 -
 See 2007/04/25/sw00348v for "U"
 -
 See 2007/05/10/sw00385jt for "Incantation" (see near bottom of entry)
 -



Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00430math-colors.hex.rgb

Math       HTML color codes information

 [ last modified: 2007-05-26 ]



 Links to important references relating to this entry appear below.
 =

 Before I begin showing my conclusions, I thank the following:
 -
 MS Explorer, AOL Journals, Colorado State Engineering,
 Keller . com, and Learning Web Design . com  -  

 =
 In the RGB (red/green/blue) HTML color realm, the number
 "17" (as I have long known through my own heuristic math
 delvings, but which I did not fully appreciate until today via
 learning about the uses for the number "16" from the Colorado
 State Engineering site) is key.  The #FFFFFF I placed above
 is the hexadecimal (HEX) code for the color "white" (the top
 cock, as in the adult male domestic chicken) which has the
 equivalent RGB code of 255,255,255.  There are sixteen (16) 
 basic color gradations, if black (#000000) is allowed.  They are
 "F" / "E" / "D" / "C" / "B" / "A" / "9" / "8" / "7" / "6" / "5" / "4" /
 "3" / "2" / "1" / "0"  -  This means that A = 10, B = 11, C = 12,
 D = 13, E = 14, and F = 15.  However, "0" is in termpostion
 (tpo) "1", and therefore "F" is in tpo "16".  This is significant 
 when dealing with color combinations.  "17" is this system's
 rung number.  0/17 = 0.  0 + 17 = 17 and 17/17 = 1, and 1 =
 #111111 in HEX and 017,017,017 in RGB.  Black is black
 and white is white, but every color between these in which the
 six HEX alpha/numeric characters are alike are variants of gray.
 So 000 (0), 017 (17), 034 (34), 051 (51), 068 (68), 085 (85),
 102, 119, 136, 153, 170, 197, 204, 221, 236, and 255 are the
 central sixteen RGB numbers.  16 x 16 = 256.  From this set
 far more colors than are needed can be generated.  One color
 in the w3c core sixteen is silver (#C0C0C0 or 192,192,192).
 What is "C" in HEX is "204" in RGB.  If 204 is divided by 17,
 12 remains.  It happens that 204 - 12 = 192, and C is 12 as
 17 shows.  [ It is 12:55 PM and I am taking a break. ]
 -
 The other w3c colorsare: white, black, one gray (#808080 or 
 128,128.128), red(#FF0000 or 255,0,0), yellow (#FFFF00
 or 255,255,0), blue (#0000FF or 0,0,255), aqua (#00FFFF
 or 0,255,255), lime(#00FF00 or 0,255,0), fuchsia (#FF00FF
 or 255,0,255, navy (#000080 or 0,0,128), maroon (#800000
 or 128,0,0), teal (#008080 or 0,128,128), olive (#808000 or
 128,128,0), green (#008000 or 0,128,0), & purple (#800080
 or 128,0,128).  There are nastinesses herein whose sources I
 am not aware of and whose consequent results I am not able
 to dispute, but I am bringing them to the fore.  I have been an
 AOL member since April 18, 2000; and almost from the first I
 was puzzled by the color system, especially by the color now
 (and possibly then) known as either cyan or aqua.  Still, green
 then was what lime now is, and I'm fairly sure purple then was
 what fuchsia now is.  In light of the aqua/cyan color, these new
 namings seem apt, and I do find no fault with fuchsia, purple,
 or lime; but the color which is labeled green is going to take 
 some getting used to.  What is at stake, if it is at stake, is
 the prism-derived notion of what a primary, secondary, and
 so on color is.
 -
 On to "16" and what I culled from the engineering site.  This
 involves remainders resulting from divisions by "16" and--as
 with "17"--"0" is included.  In this regard, MS Explorer will
 sometimes change the RGB code I have put in.  Reminder:
 16 divides into 256 (not 255) 16 times.  Because divisions
 by 16 extend to four places, .0000 must be used for black.
 1/16 = .0625, 2/16 = .1250, 3/16 = .1875, 4/16 = .2500,
 5/16 = .3125, 6/16 = .3750, 7/16 = .4375, 8/16 = .5000,
 9/16 = .5625, 10/16 = .6250, 11/16 = .6875, 12/16 = .7500,
 13/16 = .8125, 14/16 = .8750, and 15/16 = .9375 and F = 15
 and 15 x 17 = 255.  Why is knowing this valuable?  Here is
 the link to 
 
                      Engineering Colorado State HTML color support
 Read it only/ as its reason for being is to aid the students there.
 On this page is an explanation of how to convert an RGB 
 value to its hexadecimal equivalent.
 -
 The catalyst behind this entry was and yet is my desire to know
 color names for the 216 HTML safe colors.  My immediate ? is:
 What is the name of the #00CCCC HEX color?
 [ 7:17 PM  -  I've decided to make up my own color names. ]
 -
 [ 21MAY07: There will be more to come here. ]
   -
   One pleasant light event was that finally I did find what I'd long 
   been vigorously seeking, but I have chosen not to use it; yet, 
 since the information there is worth pondering:
   *** this e-whip to it ***.
   -
   Also this from the University of
   Rhode Island.
   -
   -

 two other worthwhile sites to visit:
 
 color names at Learning Web Design
 -
 RGB HTML at Keller

 [ 22MAY07: Have been thinking about "green" and/ after concluding
    that midway between 255,0,0 and 0,0,255 is 0,128,0// I went to 
    the Internet Options color area.  I chose to test my conclusion via
    the 204,204,204 bg color I am using.  It changed the bg color but
    because I did not OK the initial OK it moved to the basic colors
    palette IE7 uses.  Suddenly (though it now seems I should have 
    known this) I realized/ the colors palette at AOL Journals is the same
    one, but AOL Journals does not use strict RGB codes.  It uses the
    associated codes w3c uses.  As I now know which of the palette's
    colors is 0,128,0/ I am next going to see how it is coded in AOL J. 
    -
    It is, of course (as I half-suspected): 008000.  Besides, all this is
    already noted above where I presented the core w3c 16 colors  
    along with both codes.  ]

 [  26MAY07:  This morning I found a site where the names given
                     to certain RGB (rgb) colors are more to my liking.
 scroll down
 to see
 -
    Also this morning (with Google's help) I re-learned that with 
    paints and dyes the primary colors are red,blue,yellow.  Try
    a "primary colors rgb" search. ]
-

-

to go to my colors.hex.rgb.2 entry



~
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00429xdspny-math.poetics

Cross-Disciplinary       xdspny


   Magic numbers for the natural number summation sequence are
always even numbers, always relate to two odd or two even nnss
terms, and always are numbers which are equidistant from (at the
midpoint between) nnss terms.  Therefore, if a termposition is a
positive odd whole number (pown), the nnss pair which can be
generated from it will always be odd; likewise, if a temposition is
a positive even whole number (pewn), the nnss pair which can be
generated from it will always be even.  However, because it is
necessary to multiply a given termposition by "two" in order to
discover the greater of the two numbers being summed through
(unless you prefer using division and so use the number being
summed through as your starting point), that number will always 
be a pewn while the lesser paired number being summed through
will always be a pown.  Example: "one" plus "two" equals "three"
wherein the controlling termposition is "one"/ and "one" times "two"
equals the magic nnss number for the odd "one"-"three" nnss pair.
This is the only case where the number being summed through is
also the magic nnss number.  Earlier today I calculated from the
termposition (tpo) "10,011".  The formula for finding the magic
nnss number is: tpo times 2tpo or "10,011" times "20,022" which
results in the product "200,440,242".  "20,022" is the greater of
the two numbers which can be summed through when "10,011" is
the generating tpo, it is NOT the greater of the two nnss terms to
which tpo "10,011" leads.  If the goal is to sum through "20,022"/
then "10,011" will need to be added to "200,440,242"; but if the
goal is to sum through only 20,021"/ then "10,011" wll need to be
subtracted from "200,440,242".  What is my reason for belaboring
this?  In this entry my primary reason is to show that herein exists
a mathematics of absolute determinacy.
-
   I have been reading (randomly) Marjorie Perloff's The Poetics
of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage and at the beginning of the
final chapter (chapter eight, page 288) she writes:

  In Chapter Six of the Poetics, Aristotle lists
          the six constituent parts of tragedy (for him 
          the supreme form of poetry) as mythos (plot),
          ethos (character), dianoia (thought), lexis
          (diction), melopoeia (rhythm and song), and 
          opsis (spectacle).

She then relates these to what has been happening in poetics, citing
the Romantic, Modernist, and now the postmodern (centering on
Performance Poetry).  John Cage and David Antin figure in this.  Even
though I am psychologically a deep-within person, I am not caged
there, and so at times can be quite antic.  Back in my gainfully-
employed days, one co-worker nicknamed me "bad ass" and another 
one nicknamed me "mad man": homo corruptus?  We're not telling.
That the postmodern sensibility is oriented more toward the oral,
aural, vividly visual, the ephemeral event, imagination's interstices,
workings of rather than products of what we call consciousness, the 
oblique outside// seems to me beyond question.  With each passing
instant planet Earth and Homo sapiens (whoever that is / is that)
are more and more rapidly flying toward somewhere undefined.
A moment ago I had a near vertigo feeling which caused my foreign
guys (there apparently is more than one now) alter egos to/ pop in
with: "Vaired he go?" "Vee don't know, and vee don't care.  Maybe
he will/ stay there."  If I had the technological ability, I would/ try to
create dancing colored on-off dots et cetera poems.  For every
venture there's a season, whether with/ or without reason.  Oh yes,
Aristotle.  |  Plot.  That place within which your ashes are buried.  No?
That which holds a tragedy together like the hand of an angry god.
Maybe I should return to this later.  |  Character.  Something I am
but don't have.  No?  A definable representation of a sentient being.
I suspect an insufficiency here.  |  Thought.  Oh really.  No?  That
which is an evidence of intelligence.  Maybe after I read further,
though I somewhat doubt such will matter.  |  Diction.  Yes, that
would be a good idea.  No?  Speaking distinctly/ and audibly.  Seems
safe.  |  Rhythm and song.
            -       
            Sing a song of sixpence:
            A pocket full of why        
            Four and twenty blackbirds
            Ate an apple pie.
            -
No?  Sonority and enchanting language.  Of choruses!  Perhaps, but
certainly not only.  |  Spectacle.  One eyepiece.  No?  A presentation
of grand proportions.  Yes, but not exclusively.  In thesetimes it might
be simply a minimal object imbued with the power to induce intense 
attentiveness.  There will be investigations.         





The Argotist: Perloff interview

The Perloff book was published by 
Princeton University Press   Princeton, New Jersey
Copyright © 1981 by Princeton University Press 



-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00428rtj-ascii.chart

Regarding This Journal                      E13


 [ 2007-05-19: 
    xdspny is a new code - it is for cross-disciplinary ]


 There was a time when I decided to not provide links
to outside sites from entries in this journal.  That time
has passed.  Today I decided I will provide at least 1
link to an outside site in each entry.  In the prior entry
there is one.  I was earlier considering making these
mystery links, but I may not.  I know which one I am
going to provide today, but I have not made a list.  I
will, however, be making a list for my own purposes.

§

I am still changing codes a little.  One I plan to change
later this afternoon is my "m" for math code to "math"
since discovering "pind" for Prayers in December was 
preferable to just "p" for what I needed.

§

So, for those of you who use HTML, today's link is to
a useful ASCII chart. 
You may wish to do as I have: place the link to it in your
favorite sites section.  Speaking of which, sort of, I learned
how to code the section symbol I've twice used in this
entry by referring to that chart.  And those of you who
already know HTML ASCII codes can just sit back and
chuckle.  I am not a tech geek.  This forwards another
point: most of the links I'm likely to provide will be ones
to literary sites. 



Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00427a-tribs

Autobio



Recently something happened at Google I was puzzled by.
Today it happened again.  So I decided to search further.
There is online a poem by another of my classmates at
the Iowa Writers' Workshop.  It is a deep-thought poem
by David Lunde entitled 
Absolute Zero. 




Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00426pind-prayer33

December 31: New Year's Eve 


Year's end.  And mistakes I have made,
of whatever size and strength they have been,
set my inner left ear gurgling
like water boiling deep in a well;
curl inside my stomach wall
a distant ache;
open in the bone of my upper left arm
a space whirling with a damp wind.

Year's end: pulsebeats not for counting:
particular patterns and places of them
layered with knowledge
sometimes hard to peel,
sometimes hard to learn from.

Still, the attempt;
still resolutions without understandings.
Little's changed.

Year's end.  And three crows flap
from a sleeping oak;
and my spirit stands
on a high granite rock,
viewing before, and now, and to come,
and waiting for the vitamin light and mineraled waters
to feed and test
the hidden wisdoms gathered by a heart
at another raucous, another somber
year's end.





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00425pind-prayer32

December 30


If the butterfly had dipped to the
left instead of to the right,
the swallow would have missed it

and the well-dressed man
watching from the clovered knoll
would not have remembered

those irretrievable moments when,
his wit outwitted by a circumstance,
he was stript of his natty pride.





-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00424pind-prayer31

December 29


Magnificence (cities, castles, cathedrals
of imagination) deepens, encourages, inspires.

Magnificence (winds, waters, land shapes
of imagination) deepens, encourages, inspires.

Magnificence (faith, hope, love
in imagination) deepens, encourages, inspires.

Through the nerve routes of human creation,
the nerve routes of nature,
the nerve routes of spirit;
through the air ways of human creation,
the air ways of nature,
the air ways of spirit;
through the blood lines of human creation,
the blood lines of nature,
the blood lines of spirit,

magnificence, magnificence, magnificence.





~
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00423pind-prayer30

December 28


When the guest asked: 
"Have you ever been burned?"
I answered:
"Yes"--
but did not heed him well enough.

So when they talked me into
opening the pool--
those two from     a wedding-party group--
I did not double-lock the drawer.

While I was gone
swift knowledge used
to slide it out,
and all the tens and all the twenties
(one hundred thirty dollars worth)
flew from there.

Foxes, cats; and one dead bunny.


[  2007-05-17  ~ 
   There does exist
   a two-part story
   preceding this story
   which somewhat explains
   the why of this one,
   but it's in a place
   that's double-locked. ]





-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00422pind-prayer29

December 27


In the long night
the long day
resounds--
a rainbow of odors,
a taster's delight of textures,
and ever-changing pulsebeat of remembrances.

When we near an end,
its beginning always returns.

Every moment
involved with every other.
Every space.

Ecology:
of the universe,
of the mind.

The discovery of a cecropia
resplendent in the sun,
the vision of a coasting Snowy Owl.





-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00421pind-prayer28

December 26


Balancing the day that would not balance--
as there were errors in the rooms,
in the restaurant, in the lounge;
errors in the debits and the credits;
errors in the balances picked up--
my attention is disrupted 
by our other Brian,
and my wonder caught by Polaroid
for his album of employees, guests, and patrons
of this Holiday Inn-West Bend.
My attention scribbles off
to vague, unsolvable dreams.

Labor, recreation, relaxation:
fitful though they are:

I give,
and am given.

Down a highway glare with freezing rain
we safely travel home.





-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00420pind-prayer27

Christmas Day: During


And let your gifts be inexpensive
but rich with meaning.

And let your gifts be small
with large souls.

This starship
you inhabit
will reward you.

From your trudging against a blizzard
up an unfamiliar road,
a searcher on a snowmobile
will rescue you.





-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00419pind-prayer26

Christmas Day: Dawn


Hidden from us
by a shell of clouds,
the flashing sun
floats higher and higher
from the Eastern trees.

The mansion's acres
kept sacred
by a steel fence,
its owners' dogs cannot
tear our hands.

Led inward
by imaginings,
the senses
curl 
to sleep.

Her silence
is their prayer.
His watchfulness
their lantern
in the cave.





-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00418pind-prayer25

Christmas Day: Midnight


Father Creator,
In the name of Your Son, Jesus,
whose birth this day we celebrate,
congratulations.

As the margins of oceans with the margins of lands applaud;
as winds with the leaves of trees applaud,
so now my spirit with my flesh applauds.

In one place strings of stars
give voice to this night;
in another place shakings of snow.





-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00417pind-prayer24

   [ As to the following, be skeptical.  Do your own research. ]


December 24: Christmas Eve


Sitting in my parents' living room,
I am attracted to the voice of another:

Do you want to hear a good one?
Before the Second World War
the DuPonts built factories in Germany
which were used by the Nazis
to make bombs directed against our men
and profits for the DuPonts,
factories which were then bombed by our pilots,
an act because of which
the DuPonts sued the United States,
and so profited both ways.  Traitors.

Ill-used money.  Ill-wed power.  The death of men.

Watching my parents' television,
I turn to the voice of Golda Meir.

I can't see how the PLO
can be called a liberation movement.
It's not.
It's a terrorist movement.  * . . . .
How can you argue with people
who want you to die.

In the hands of the greedy the earth's living green
burns to brown:
gills and lungs collapse.





-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00416pind-prayer23

December 23


Soon,
like Jesus of Nazareth,
I
may
be killed
because I am different
and am not afraid
to say so.

   [ 2007-05-16:
   Delete, delete: too paranoid; too confessional.
   Okay.  Proceed.  Examples follow. ]

So you: Black, Red, Brown, Yellow, White.

So you: Atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Moslem, Jew, Christian.

So you: woman, man.

So you.

We are each
of minorities
who must assuage and counter and bear with
the tyrannies of majorities
and each other;
who, though often lost
in the forests of our whims and demands,
must contemplate       the trilliums of hope.





-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00415pind-prayer22

December 22


Having missed today,
I come back to it
from the day after

with just enough faith
to give it a chapel
with a mellow bell.




~
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00414pind-prayer21

December 21


Icy snowflakes
on the windows of our van--

a morning of
glassware branches--

we're wondering
to church.





-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00413pind-prayer20

December 20


Lord, Person Supreme,
forgive me for my forgetfulness

of those I have gamed with
and half-an-hour later no longer known,

and those close acquaintances of a year or more
whose names, if not faces, will not return;

the memory You have given me, good,
is neither always quick nor long;

so, I try to accept it, hoping
that through these words I may/ a tad atone

for its hurtful, embarrassing faults;
and in one small way again bless--

or in more than one way:
like the notes of a moving song,

the sparklings of snow on a pine,
the delicate highs in a fern.





-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00412pind-prayer19

December 19


The Tibetan Book of the Dead,
a version of the Holy Bible,

The Works of Shakespeare,
a translation of Dante's The Divine Comedy,

Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man,
Joseph Campbell's The Masks of God,

J. Bronowski's The Ascent of Man,
Buckminster Fuller's Synergetics,

Isaac Asimov's Guide to Science,
George B. Leonard's The Transformation,

James Joyce's Ulysses,
Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago,

Thorton Wilder's The Eighth Day,
J. H. Plumb's In the Light of History,

Carl Sagan's The Cosmic Connection,
Carl Jung's Man and His Symbols,

Whitman's Leaves of Grass,
Studs Terkel's Working,

Barbara Ward's 5 Ideas that Change the World,
Nancy Wilson Ross's Three Ways of Asian Wisdom,

Alberto Moravia's Man as an End,
C. S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man,

Richard Holmes' Shelley: The Pursuit,
Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition,

Karl Hess's Dear America,
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago,

Northrup Frye's The Educated Imagination,
Edward Dahlberg's Can These Bones Live,

Gregory Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind:

a selection of some the books I own or have borrowed:

a naming of some of the best prayers
I may ever have the sacred delight to somewhat say.





-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00411pind-prayer18

December 18


And what is a prayer anyhow?
What more than the sense
of something new
or something old
newly entered.




~
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00410pind-prayer17

December 17


Today the winds
whine near zero
through the windows
of our homes.

In the abandoned sky
the abandoned nest
in the abandoned tree
sticks like a stone.

Sitting together
we sit apart:
you in your book;
me in my poem.





-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00409pind-prayer16

December 16: for Emily Dickinson


Utopias are impossible,
but do not cease to dream.
The only ways our spirits grow
are mixed of joy and pain.

If I should walk an unkown path
and catch a bramble wrong,
sure I'd curse before I'd laugh--
let thunderstorms hide the sun.

If I were to take a foreign street;
get pummeled, raped, knifed,
I still would strike for the good in me
in my sudden enemy's life.

Fool in this; fool in that;
fool with words, with hearts:
to the purest religion, the purest math,
to the providential stars.




~
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00408pind-prayer15

December 15


In the robin's egg
the philosopher's dreams
lose all shape and substance

and in the fateful tongues of lightnings
whose lashings sting to kill,
all power and direction;

in the resilient fragile wonder
of human prayer
the ripe fruit of forking wood.





-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00407pind-prayer14

[ Other than "The First Sunday of Advent" (which was in 1974),
   my original copy does not mention day names; but it does note
   that 1975 was the year of the December 14 (which was also a
   Sunday) prayer, implying that I penned the remaining prayers
   in 1975.  Even though I cannot prove this, I am accepting it. ] 




December 14: Sunday (1975)


Letters.  Mine.  The copies I have.
If I were to read them over again,
I would be appalled by the uneasiness
with which so many of them were written,
the overblown rhetoric there,
the false pride.

How is it possible
I can consider myself at all
to be half as blessed
as even a Shelley or an Auden
to say nothing of a Shakespeare or a Whitman
when such an abject crowd of letters
exists to denounce me?

Certainly the important critics and editors of this moment
have not praised my poems especially,
if indeed they have chanced to read them;
but how can I expect them to
who himself--?
..................... Letters.  Mine.
Promethean, Hephaestean, ashen.

So also my poems.  Read them.
What delights you, keep.
What disturbs you, consider.
What your best critical intelligence tells you
was poorly made, condemn. 





-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00406pind-prayer13

December 13: Friday


". . . the cold world shall not know."

And so
it ends,
Shelley's
Julian and Maddalo.

And so
it ends,
though this December day,
this year,
is warm;
and I have answered
Father Ed
and Andy Wanto;
and have driven myself and Janice
to the stores.

The important deaths are
inner;
the important deaths
demand the strengths of a
God;
the important deaths
one enters necessarily,
and enters quite
alone.





-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00405pind-prayer12

December 12: Thursday


What items for sale!

How deftly we've learned
to increase our wants
and the world of things,
to break our spirits
with overtease!

"Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock."

Storm-raked willow,
eyes and nose 
by a frozen lagoon;
all else above your ankles
covered with
dense wet snow.

How smartly we expose ourselves,
knowing the pain,
yet also knowing
no one will laugh;
for no one is left
with sense enough
to sense our
senseless game,
to bless us with
centlessness.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00404pind-prayer11

December 11: Wednesday


To supercede is the fantasy
each of us harbors, or had,
building a ship, someway the best;
breaking & building it over again.

But a ship locked with anchors
and never at sea
is a dream-concoction for sure,
a Santa Claus sneer.

So I turn to the myth
of the Child in the hay,
the myth
of the Man at the Pole

with the hope that this word
as it meets with the next
will a little move who I am

as a finished ship
of my spirit and flesh
churning an ocean
like that rooftop sleigh quicker than lightning,
that temple-veil-rending Cross on the hill.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00403pind-prayer10

December 10: Tuesday


Poinsettias, balsams, mistletoe;
quince, bayberry, spruce.

Gold, myrrh, frankincense;
holly, scotch pine, nog.

We banter through malls.

We Christmas-card friends.

Myths and wishes.

Flavors and fragrances.

Don't you remember
the quarter-size snowflakes?

Don't you remember
the fluffed-cotton coins?

Honey-cured hams and baked apples?
Mint gel and lamb?

Somewhere I touch you
and you touch me.

Somewhere we whisper
and laugh.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00402pind-prayer09

December 9: Monday


Flurries--
ideas, images,
that will not take,
will not join together
as I would like,
will not keep
their crystal shapes
in the too-warm air--
all this day
(so far)
erratically
descend,
as, somewhere,
you,

leaving me only
a process
to sense
and pass along
for my
and your
broken dance,
my
and your
renewal.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00401pind-prayer08

December 8: The Immaculate Conception of Our Lady


Ladies?
I know of ladies.
Conceptions?
I know.
Virgins?
Yes.

But this one,
this Mary they call Blessed--
sinless?

I sit near
a fireplace
where an elm log
glows,
arguing with friends,
or before my waiting typewriter,
arguing alone.

And outside,
and inside,
the immaculate conceptions
of snow.

And outside,
and inside,
the immaculate conceptions
of sun.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00400pind-prayer07

December 7: Saturday


The great poems,
great as they are from conception,
often as not do not seem so
and must settle into greatness;

likewise, the great humans.


At the base of a mountain
we may look up, and up:
climbing that mountain,
we begin to know:
by our aches and curses,
we begin;
by the changing views.


Of the experience of falling
through a barn floor
and breaking one's arms;
of the experience of carving
this Nativity statuette;
of the experience of living
a Gandhian life---


the ink from a pen
mates with this paper
and the letters born, the words, the worlds,
are beings into timelessness in time;
and I, I, merely, was given them.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00399pind-prayer06

December 6: St. Nicholas Day


.......If we are going to rhyme,
.......I'm
.......more in favor of
.......a simpler kind of love.

Peering
from behind their father's cart,
eleven-year-old Daniel
and nine-year-old Mark
laugh
when Bishop Nicholas
stumbles
on the cathedral steps.

They want to throw tomatoes at him
but their tomatoes turn hollow
and float into heaven.

They want to tear his robes
but their hands drop from their arms
and become designs: gardens
on Nicholas's clothes.

They want the bishop
to bless them
but the blessings he gives
are his smile / and his presence.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00398pind-prayer05

December 5: Thursday


The wall flickers;
another tear of wax begins.
Even though I am habited in heavy cotton,
dampness soaks my bones.
Through more than eleven days now
snow stars float and whip.

Pray for the strength to last, he said.
Pray for light.


For less than a year
I have journeyed empty into this dark.


In the Manuscript Room
I stare foggily
at the great letter
my hand creates.

I put my/ brush/ aside;
out of my cloth, I ease a knife/ & drive it in.
The snow star my body is
sputters.

I grasp my brush.
Its strokes carry my pain.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00397pind-prayer04

December 4: Wednesday


Our masters have it,
even when they don't:

the right cards handled breezily
or the wrong cards played exquisitely right.

Their talents do not decay.


In the morning through an August elm
their eyes squint with a joy

as a goldfinch threads the cirrus sky
and their bodies bob.

In whatever they do; whatever they say, a god.


If five powers are given them,
they soon have five more.

A cloud turns as the earth turns.
There is no wind.

They make the cards themselves.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00396pind-prayer03

December 3: Tuesday


Lord,
touch me.

Make of my eyes,
sanctuaries;

of my ears,
just & patient confessors;

of my mouth,
a choir;

of my mouth,
an humble entrance;

of my fingers,
lovers, prayers;

of my nose,
a passage for whoelness,
for the rituals of incense;

of my spirit,
a column of fire.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00395pind-prayer02

December 2: Monday


In the distance,
beyond my hearing,
a young wind,
its body scraping a limestone cliff,
screams;

and the animals--

if I remember anything,
I remember falling:

from the year-or-so older browner limb
I was sure would hold me
to the one I avoided;

and I remember stopping:

the slenderer wood
springing           under my knees;

and I remember:

the pile of broken concrete
sprinkled with sticks & glass,
and the weeds;

and my Adam's-apple

heart.





-
Brian A. J. Salchert                 

sw00394pind-prayer01

December 1: The First Sunday of Advent


"All my heart goes out to thee"

as to anyone else
who will so be close to me
equally.

No matter I am distanced from you
by things of this world
or at other moments
these very same things
move me closer to you,
that standing in the frost-bright grass,
camera in hand,
I admire again my chestnut-fendered Sun Bug
or, crouched at the edge of the blacktop drive,
dance to the sparklings
set on a leaf.

Aware of your presence
or not aware,
your presence still pervades;

and the sun which rose one day in October,
its light filtered to a soft pink by clouds,
though different, is yet the same,
and the pink haze in the fiery trees,
and my body, where it passes, and those of others, and yours.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00393pindc-links.entry7

PRAYERS IN DECEMBER   (begun in 1974)



December 1: The First Sunday of Advent
-
December 2: Monday
-
December 3: Tuesday
-
December 4: Wednesday
-
December 5: Thursday
-
December 6: St. Nicholas Day
-
December 7: Saturday
-
December 8: The Immaculate Conception of Our Lady
-
December 9: Monday
-
December 10: Tuesday
-
December 11: Wednesday
-
December 12: Thursday
-
December 13: Friday
-
December 14: Sunday (1975) - see note on entry
-
December 15
-
December 16: for Emily Dickinson
-
December 17
-
December 18
-
December 19
-
December 20
-
December 21
-
December 22
-
December 23
-
December 24: Christmas Eve
-
Chirstmas Day: Midnight
-
Christmas Day: Dawn
-
Christmas Day: During
-
December 26
-
December 27
-
December 28
-
December 29
-
December 30
-
December 31: NewYear's Eve



~
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00392s-sd4.5days

String of Days



12Jan83  Wednesday

In the marrow of consciousness
the universe
turns   tosses
dies     and is constantly born.


13Jan83  Thursday

Water freezes;
so too the flesh
and the flesh's ideas; but
Creator Energy   forever stays warm.


14Jan83  Friday

Discover
imitate
re-create
manifestations of the seething sun.


15Jan83  Saturday

That round & naked open hearth
now awake
twice its width above the pines
shocks shut my curious eyes.


16Jan83  Sunday

The Christmas balloon
gift from Janice
floats where I'd sit
this day I begin my 43rd year.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00391s-sd3.5days

String of Days



07Jan83  Friday

This afternoon, warmth enough.
I wash my hair.
The poetry of America
is much the same.


08Jan83  Saturday

Weather in   weather out
the holy person is
life   light
not blurred   by cold   or clouds.


09Jan83  Sunday

The estuary   the alluvial fan
the fern   the beckoning amphitheater
the open book   the voice
the wild and human gatherer.


10Jan83  Monday

Unless the imagination-empty tree
bears meaning in its presentness,
the beaver's gnawing   scrunches all remembering,
and my deep passions are a fool's dreams.


11Jan83  Tuesday

Beauty of poetry;
truth of philosophy:
yellow sun;
green leaf.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert                 

sw00390s-sd2.6days

String of Days



01Jan83  Saturday

Begin.  Begin.
Who knows toward what.
Yet, begin:
to find out.


02Jan83  Sunday

Variegated shapes of grey
is this day's dome
we & the gulls sail beneath,
scavenging for sustenance.


03Jan83  Monday

And Mike B., momentarily
needing to leave my storytelling
to open the door, quickly instructs:
"Put a bookmark in your mouth."


04Jan83  Tuesday

I think of my dad saying,
after I had rattled to him
my peeves against humanity:
"And the birds sit in the trees."


05Jan83  Wednesday

The damp coolness
numbers my bones.
I'm a knot of discomfort
wishing for sun-warmth to loosen me.


06Jan83  Thursday

But the coldness stays;
strengthens to frost
during the night.
Although inside, I put on my sweater.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert                   

sw00389s-sd1.5days

String of Days



27Dec82  Monday

Where light warms,
blossoms of air
sway, envelop,
mother us.


28Dec82  Tuesday

We softly smile;
dream in them
a string of days
to adorn ourselves with.


29Dec82  Wednesday

And so this morning
the morning's Orange
refreshed   with its juice
the Florida sky.


30Dec82  Thursday

Yet up in Wisconsin
another day
moonlight flashed
off waves of snow.


31Dec82  Friday

Once again   an ending,
a sacred circle closed
as every life experiences
on this world.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00388sc-set5.sd.links

Sets           String of Days                 links                         




sd1: 5 days   December 27-31 1982
-
sd2: 6 days   January 1-6 1983
-
sd3: 5 days   January 7-11 1983
-
sd4: 5 days   January 12-16  1983
-
-                                                
                                                 
[ last modified: 2008-10-16 ]



Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00387a-ego

Autobio



Beyond the Ego


So many these years are trying to
Get
Beyond the ego
And yet the ego
Remains
Remains

I "know" we dont need to
Use the word "ego"
Or the word "id"
Or the word "libido"
Or even the word "subconscious"
And i "know" one could say
i stink  therefore  i am

I "know" the "ego" has dangerous side effects
Inside effects
But i do not see where there is a way to
Escape to a oneness or an
Eternal nothingness
Imbued with wonder  beauty  love
Imbued with an exquisite emptiness
Obliterating "i"

For so long as I
Am able to sense
I am an "I"
A spirited body
An embodied spirit
Such sensing will of necessity
Correlate  integrate  propagate
Each of my continuances
Each of those  whatevers which  individuate me

Were disease or accident to rob me of my
Abilities   to individuate  to discern  to will
Would I then be in a holier condition  though less whole?





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00386a-interim

Autobio



 I am in a driftwood state.  Waves of concerns buffet me.
 Scenes of interests beckon me.  Yesterday a rainbow
 gathered itself in the cloudy east around pm 7:11.  Today
 the quavering air is mostly clear.  I have been reading
 Robin Blaser's The Collected Books of Jack Spicer and
 because of Blaser's "The Practice of Outside" and a 
 review by R. K. Meiners I am convinced I need to read
 Owen Barfield's What Coleridge Thought.  . . . natura
 naturans: the ongoing.  In May of 1970 I wrote a letter
 in which I said:  "Yet, ambiguous creatures of polarities 
 caught up in change, we are constant mysteries."  But I
 also, shortly thereafter, said this:  "Just keeping close to
 Balance, our one Utopia, takes all the awareness we
 can command."  In this I presently feel I was wrong;
 and if this feeling is correct, once I read Barfield's book
 I will know for sure: why, and where.  Concomitant with
 the above was a Rebecca Seiferle E-view of Marvin Bell 
 at www.thedrunkenboat.com wherein he noted he had
 encountered a need to move beyond free verse: to make
 the sentence central, no matter how lengthy.  Then I read
 online an article published in The Cortland Review Dec 2006:
 "A Manifesto On The Contemporary Sonnet: A Personal
 Aesthetics" by Tony Barnstone.  He presented examples of
 techniques for enlivening the traditional sonnet.  One of his
 examples used anaphora.  Does anyone sense a melding
 of traditions?  Does anyone sense a new openness?  I do.
 Though in the latter 1970's I experimented intensively, if
 not extensively, with sonnet-crafting, all I am becoming
 aware of/ of late/ is entering and changing me.  There is
 an online article at Rain Taxi I am being pushed toward.
 I am in a driftwood state, but I am not/ driftwood.



 §



 And what was at Rain Taxi?: a review of Arthur Sze's
 The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998  Copper Canyon Press
 by Tony Barnstone.



 §



 
review of What Coleridge Thought by R. K. Meiners
 -
 
Marvin Bell E-view by Rebecca Seiferle
 -
 
Rain Taxi 1998 fall   review by Tony Barnstone



Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00385jt-b1.e20

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e20



From Love, through Love, to Love: no other way
Will let us well discern our night from day.
We never can know all: because we change.
And if it seems God's truths are shorn away;
That absolutes lie lost beyond your range,
Or never were, I cannot help you, friend,
Irradicate the causes of your mange,
Unless you first desire that ill to end;
Unless God first allows it.  To spend

Ourselves, relentlessly, in search of what
We are, remains our need, as always, but:
This is a Loved-One kingdom, I believe.
We do not have to travel up that rut
Of human evolution to achieve
A knowledge of ourselves and of our goal,
As so/ many must.  Do not, then, deceive
Yourselves or let each passing theory roll
A little more of heaven from your soul.

Retain the faith your God has given you.
And not from fear.  For if our Loved-One's few
Consider their belief, as some would say,
'Creative security'; and do
Not bear the good news and the cross, their faith
Is hollow and of little worth.  My prayers
Are granted substance for those here today,
Therefore, because you are my central cares;
And while I am no priest, my heart repairs

To Loved-One just the same.  This kingdom nears
A time when every good, which now appears
So vibrant, could be poisoned into ash.
The decisions we rest upon, my peers
In spirit, will judge us: will see us splash
Into the lye our enemies prepare--
Within one thousand days--or see us lash
New beams against the dark; and bring our spare
Accomplishments to more, and keep Earth's air

From riddled screams.  We are finite beasts,
Whose sciences can only let their yeasts
React upon the finite universe,
And be at all correct.  Bound knowledge feasts
On bound objects, not boundless ones.  The curse
Of our advances, the saddest aria,
Is that we think we live absurdly, hearsed
In a 'void at the center of things'.  Let this be a
Newborn land.  Let it be named: Urania."



Postem

For Urania is astronomy's Muse,
And to the stars we must incline our views;
But first the selfish child in us must die,
Or from this orb the only lasting news
May be the remnants of a race passed by.
The justice of this universe is such
That beings who refuse to love will fry
in hells of their own making.  Purge the smutch:
Humanicide.  Heal// with the olive crutch.






§






[ Below this note is a phonetic call-to-arms (though it does not need
  to be read that way) entitled: Incantation.  I've often said it was
   from Pageant Wizard's Alchemy, a book which does not exist.
   I think my first version of "Incantation" was written in Gainesville, 
   Florida.  I am not at the moment certain about the date. ]


                    Incantation


                    Terragahn oh tahpolahzoh
                    yah trinkahlou iveederon
                    yo vahdigay yo vahdigay
                    terrez          terrez

                    Octormilou invederee
                    sayhamahrah interritahn
                    see imerow see imerow
                    ahlahg         ahlahg

                    Kristahnsibole iieeamin
                    mitahvrahlah omistifahn
                    gy sahmahrahsh! gy sahmahrahsh!
                    eelay!          eelay!





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00384jt-b1.e19

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e19                            



Against his personage or goodly rule.
I thought my throne a golden-threaded spool
Which so dispersed through Moiland's men of law
Its splendid lengths that not even/ this young Hugh,
Though a fiery genius, would ever claw
The raiments spun from them, would ever peck
The spool itself as if it were a raw,
unwanted cob or corn whose tasseled neck
And head could never really give a speck

Of/ their gold threads to weave to/ anything.
How soon I learned what/ supersedes/ a king.
Saint Ruam was not chosen/ for his grace,
As some wish to believe (and if bards/ sing
It so, they sing a myth), nor for his face,
Which never could suggest a handsome mien;
But rather: to hold the masses in their place.
And I could say such prompted this bright scene,
And turn you all for me and for my queen;

But Hugh DeVry and I have argued long,
And I am tired, yet glad; since what it wrong,
Still, still, is not so much my person as
My throne.  Moilanders!: you think a gong
Has tortured out my senses, or a threat has
Made my courage disappear?  Think not.
Know only that the power of kings must pass,
And better by decrees than by uprooting plot.
So consciences mature/ and egos/ rot;

And humanity thrives: till what was thrust
Upon it by design/ orders/ the dust
It is--from which it came--and each arrives,
In time, to that position where/ each must/
For each/ guide on evolving nature's drives;
Where each must be responsible: not through
Loss of self in learning and labor hives
Or dearth of humor, but in living true
And selfless presents wherever they're due--

Through loss of self in one where self will grow,
Not wither, die.  What we by reason know,
Or in a million years may know, is naught.
The human race stands bound: from head to toe.
Let manics rattle what they feel they ought!
Depressives think their selves destroyed by groups!
We are more than the sum of what we're taught;
More than the lines of those paranoid troops
Which fight for sly commanders, sullen dupes.





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00383jt-b1.e18

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e18                            



Has come.  Great Moiland shall not have a king,
But kings; for while the source of power yet springs
From Justan, people, soon the source of power,
As I have said, will spring from you.  What things
Will then occur, what roses then will flower,
What thorns, shall be/ your responsibilities.
With Aethea volcanic at this hour
And Urop solid once again, and these
Fair stahts uncharged potentialities,

The grave, internal revolution, here
To be officially begun, is fear
Transmuted into acts by which this land
Shall save itself, or die.  And there's no bier
More sad to gaze at or to understand
Than one which holds a nation, because it
Walked on too proudly to extend its hand,
Because it could not change--for lack of wit,
Because its people were divorced from it."

With this, the bold and fiery Hugh again
Moves back/ to take his place among the men
Of/ The House of Princes, while on the ledge,
Where Saul and Parth were watching these/ when
I last looked, only Saul remains/ to wedge
----- human flesh in the Eribon spur,
To speculate; and now, standing/ near the edge
Of the royal platform, Seth, stirring the air
Aimlessly, speaks, sharply questioning:  "Were

We, were we less--these princes and I--
For not seeing, for not understanding why
Our Moiland would profit by change?  Yes;
For the mind of Man progresses, and the eye
Of rule must watch, so the rule may progress,
Not lag/ too far behind.  Our present king,
Good representatives, who will address
You now, is yet/ best for us.  Let ayes ring
For him, as Yuston suggests."  "Aye."  "Your king."

"When, in this Age of Crises, kingdoms fall,
Their bodies burned beyond reclaim, recall,
And mankind suffers for mankind's mistakes,
Our duty's not to weep upon a pall;
But build from/ what is--for our children's sakes.
I thought there was a glory in my throne
Which would not/ be removed: that Justan wakes
And sleeps; and yet is so admired in bone,
In heart, that no man would/ think to groan 





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00382jt-b1.e17

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e17                           



Between two variant forms of rule.
This truly's no conundrum for a fool,
Or group of fools, my princes.  No; this
Land's not/ witless either.  The people who'll
Judge your new decisions will not miss
One jot or one sly underturn, if any
of the latter appear; nor will they kiss
Farewell, I say again, to what these many
Years has served with unchecked ease.  A trehnney

For a xyymme?  You had better show a xyymme
At least."  "Sir Yuston, we never treat time
As refuse or as something to be used
Quite indiscriminately when we climb
Kingdom-ruling faces, though we are bruised
There and often held back from reaching some
Plateau worth all our efforts; nor excuse
Ourselves from reason.  So you have come
Complaining, cautioninng; and with your thumb

Extended downward, would mutilate
Our pride, if nothing else.  Well then, berate.
I'll join you/ for that matter.  Of course
lt will take time before we terminate
This not ungoodly form of rule; but the horse
We bring to you is not a Trojan one
Nor an Ederon stallion, with cruel force
Sequestered in its bowels, but rather one
Which is a real gift--a minor sun!/

In usefulness.  No, Sir Yuston, I'm
not offering a trehnney for a xyymme.
It is a xyymme, and more; yet I agree
With you when you suggest that through that time
Required to change Moiland's government we
be/ led by Justan--the singular sane
arrangement, to be sure.  Actually,
Though you would have me/ more clearly explain
These plans we/ do not intend/ to refrain

From promulgating, since I did conceive
Of them, originally: to leave
That task and pleasure to our king, I feel,
Is more appropriate/ and wise.  Believe
Me, friends, you will not be/ squirrels that squeal
In vain for food.  No longer are you mere
Unthinking animals, whose lot's to reel
Toward wherever a prince directs, to fear
A monarch's whims.  The reckoning year





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00381jt-b1.e16

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e16                            



Of castigating books, memorials.
But Moiland is not Aethea, and gulls
To one, may, to an other, be hawks.
Each has/ its own kernels, its own hulls;
And if, of Ruam, Seth Bedara talks
A thousand times (though there is no need),
Crowds will gather: in yards and streets, on walks;
For they/ will/ have their saints, and not a reed
Or whip or chain could change them.  Indeed,

What is done in deed, and satisfies
Our highest instincts, must realize
Our highest praise.  Today, the Tamarind line
Shall end itself: an act which Ruam's eyes
Would brighten at, as some men's do from wine,
While Rofnoe's would be turned aside and down,
Though he too was a king of heart and spine,
A ruler of imperishable renown;
The fourth of Moiland to receive a crown

Of gratitude.  That observation spire,
Or spire to be, from which we may admire
This region's beauties: from the Durin Sea
To Ranyon, and Fudera's crumbling pyre;
From The Mounds of Tamarind to Grau-Lee,
Where the Durin mountains twine to the shore
And Rofnoe's village, Edenshire, where he
Was born, that tower--.  "No monarchs anymore?!
You mean what you say, DeVry?!  We?!  What for?

Should the squirrels forget to gather meats
And starve?  What nonsense--this, he greets
Us with!  Yes, we did agree to let you,
You--The House of Princes--you elites,
Convene in secret councils to review
Our royal system; but we did not think
Your minds would come to such conclusions.  Do
Explain yourselves/ so we do not all shrink/
From your hopes/ before they're set afloat to sink

Or sail.  And if you do convince us, still,
That we may better understand your will,
I say our Justan, though no longer king,
Should temporarily be our leader, till
Whatever must be done to fuse this thing
You speak of, is completed.  We can
Not be expected to expel the ring
As we loosen our bowels with fibrous bran.
Us'ly a revolution fills the span 





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00380jt-b1.e15

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e15                            



Of their embroiled government should weaken
Instead of being strong, like a beacon
Poorly set, I cannot tell.  But Ruam's
Days are not half myth, that, when we speak on
Them, must baffle; but knowing each one, calms
Concerns immeasurably, and so each did
In seventeen-thirty-two when the balms
Of unctions with oil blessed him home and slid
Those devils down who flicked their tongues amid

The missals/ and twisted round the rosaries;
Who set and nourished Paul of Trent's disease
Eleven years before.  With Ruam's loss,
His knighted subjects were so out of ease
They had a sculptor chisel them a cross
From a ten by five by two marble block,
Which they erected on a mound across
The Eribon where/ thirteen graves now lock
The bones of Tamarind's kings; and on a rock

From Nareb, which they set beyond the arch
To Lorga's Jonathan when whistling March
Curved against the stars, they had the same
Man slice out chips that looked like/ flakes of starch
But fell like/ flakes of steel to place the fame
Of Ruam in its skin, though arguments
As such/ could not make/ better known/ his name
The way--by publishing experiments--
A searcher/ will his.  What represents

Us best are those good acts no one perceives,
Not monuments that rise between the leaves
Of autumn and the leaves of spring, not words
Inscribed in stone.  Though Earth will have its thieves
and givers both remembered, a world girds
Itself for peace or girds itself for war;
And if for peace, it is a quiet world--
A world that has no need for rocks to shore
Its human soil; but such a world's not, nor,


For this blessed planet, likely to be.
And so the Pauls of Trent, the Ruams, we
Recall, to keep our bodies whole--the worse:
To make example of their roguery
And how they left off breathing with a curse;
The better: to inspire our children, us.
Yet worse or better, once beyond his nurse,
A man who will be famed or infamous
Will, well enough, be known, without the truss 





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00379jt-b1.e14

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e14                            



Disorganized inhabitants.  His years
Were so remarkably fulfilled/ his peers,
Before and after, seemed (and would seem)
Like princes on the throne: that when the tears
Of many came in the wake of the dream,
Which really was his ship of death, the heart
Of Moiland tremored to its farthest stream,
Till there was not a major, minor part
Which did not lose in strength, which did not start.

From that crisp day, when fall blazed highest, all
In Moiland sought for ways to reach The Wall
(That marble barrier in Castle D
Behind which every king before Trent's Paul,
And every king thereafter, willed to be)
To visit holy Tamarind's bier,
To be with Nareb's hermit: not where he
Had risen to, but for a while; just near
To where his body lay beyond their fear.

For forty days their king's fair body laid
In grand repose, for not a hair decayed
Nor did a finger darken or turn hard;
But just as when that sainted ruler prayed
Before the vigil cross in Crean's yard,
And no one dared disturb him, his smile
And olive eyes . . . exactly as the guard
Rudolfo swore they were, so all that while
He stayed.  And each new mourner/ who would file/

Against The Wall, as each had sinned, would weep.
Such was the power given Ruam in his sleep.
Such was his Rune's approval, five weeks
And five full days.  By 3 pm the steep
Descent to Durin Square--where Seth still speaks
Of Ruam, as his family is wont,
On each November first--and there, the peaks
Of Sedra's voice, above King Argot's font,
Exploded into memories Moiland's want;

And there, the valleys of his voice, above
Queen Anna's herbs, extending Ruam's love
(His radiant ecumenical verve),
Seeping into hearts the fluid wonder of
A man who had one Master he would serve,
Enriched through rare emotions Moiland's wealth.
Oh whether today, to Parth, these deserve
One like him or have to/ shrink from the stealth
Of someone like Geldarkta: that the health 





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00378jt-b1.e13

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e13                            



Yet Crean, having come in nine-eleven,
His House attained together/ thirty-seven
Rulers into sixteen-twenty-three, when wars
With new invaders spilled its heaven
Next to the Durin Sea, and the swart floors
Of Edward's palace thundered and cracked
As Jonathan of Lorga drove his scores
Against the bones of Moiland; broke and sacked
Leoma.  But the House of Lorga lacked

What Crean's bore in glorious abundance;
And Jonathan, moderate in indulgence
As he was, could only bear his with him:
To that arch which marks his sad convergence
With the clay, to that granite arch of grim
Position, settled, where it is, beneath
Five willows.  How many more, though, swim
Through those seaweed branches to place a wreath
Before his name than cross that battled heath

Between Leoma's last remaining gate
And Crean's gardened monument, so great
In grandeur!  How many praise!  And much
Because the House of Trent, which lived through eight
Mediocre kings, never held such/
As Jonathan.  Then, Ruam Tamarind,
The first, the holy one, leaving his hutch
In the snows of Nareb, and the glass-sharp wind,
Passed by the trumpets where hummingbirds spinned,

Passed by the bees' dark holes; and everyone
In Moiland/ welcomed him: for the last pale son
Of Henry of Trent, torn from his throne, now
Would/ be beheaded; for now the called one
Would be crowned.  Leomans flocked to bow,
Who would not be/ without their king, though kings
Had in two generations shown them how
To hate a royal lineage/ and things
Concerned in any way with monarchs' rings

Or sceptres.  Nareb's hermit was coming--
The famed, unvowed recluse.  And rumming
And strumming, the people feasted for days,
While Tamarind walked--singing, humming--
And on each morning prayed, and offered praise,
At Little holy Osteind's (preserved)
To best prepare himself within/ for ways
So unfamiliar; and learned what served,
What would not serve, ten millions of unnerved, 





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00377jt-b1.e12

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e12                           



Establishments of public speech: The House
Of Ordinaries and The Royal House
Of Princes.  The nearest to the cliff
And furthest north was visioned by the spouse
Of Moiland's first known king, Crean, as if
His name had to be preserved, though his years
Were quickly grayed with fogs of myth
Which, since the Tamarind line began, his peers
Have known reveal untruth, yet keep.  Four tiers,

Nevertheless, acclaim his primacy--
His being first to cross the Norax Sea
And rock the Moi-Rog Ocean with his ships,
His being first to plant the chortled Tree
And let the name of Moiland from his lips
On this then barbarous soil, his being first,
And therefore king, of all these heights and crypts;
His being first to turn from what was cursed,
To leave old Urop at its hardened worst,

Confused beyond a thousand years, to start
A new existence in a wilder part,
But freer, of this earth where men increase,
Or die from weakness in the living art.
And on those tiers, growing shall never cease,
For conifers and flowers, bushes
And deciduous trees, each with its lease
From the Maker on each year's time, pushes
Then toward greenness above the varied mushes

Of liverworts and mosses that have grown
Through every space between the Elcon stone
From which that monument was built: the same
White stone whose absence left this cliff, long known
To hunters from Leoma and to the game
They stalk/ along the Eribon spur, beyond
Its edge; where, after Crean came
With six armed men who were kiddishly fond
Of trampling foreign woods, the spring-formed pond,

Bright Eribon's source, lay ribboned with blood.
So Crean reigned with Di, from cloud to mud,
And never knew what she would raise to him,
And never knew what limestone wall would bud
Near the end of that spur of dastard whim,
At the top of which, as the tale goes,
A band of seven stripped themselves, to swim
In a just-discovered pond below the snows
Of Nareb.  Only Crean's blade arose.





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00376jt-b1.e11

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e11                            



Or Black, or a Bronze sheen; dawn or eve.
Far to the right, a hill where many grieve
Holds to a marble cross (a green-haired fist
Gripping/ a mark of extinction).  Believe
They what they will, their hearts have been kissed
By that symbol; and that burial site
Of two hundred/ years of kings--through a mist
Seen/ by millions of eyes--lighted at night
By the flames from torches, stars, coffins might

In the tightened/ throats of the living, in
The ground; and they do not deny its thin
Intrusions into/ their hungry veins,
That bringer of/ death as food.  Within
Leoma, yet nearest to those plains
Between it and/ The Mounds of Tamarind
Kingdoms cemetary, its Elcon panes
Sputtering blue, the holy Osteind
Lime-white steeple gently allures the sinned-

Against, the sinning, as to its left,
My pageant wizard's shrine, possessed of heft
In equal measure, equally does.  Around
These massive temples a singular reft
Appears, recalling there the raucous sounds
Of soot-marked children, elders wan; for there
The markets, abodes crumble, tumble down,
Their wooden walls rot from their pointless stairs,
Their renters pass dimly from strength or care

While their owners rest pillowed on some hill
Or in a wooded acre by a rill,
Enjoying ordered loveliness--the best
They think they can afford.  They, too, are still.
Why does a mourning dove construct a nest
In such an easy, sloppy manner, while
A robin molds a firm cup in its zest?
Still, robins do not rob, or whisper:  "I'll
Be tops, and care not how my domicile

Was made."  Around Leoma's trunk, old
And new, apartments built against the cold,
Like needles on a ragged evergreen,
Allow the trunk to expel, to hold,
To be.  Four memorials can be seen
Beside the left bank of the Eribon,
Which curves into the Durin Sea between
The starry temples and the cambium
Of Moiland's central town--those mastodon





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00375jt-b1.e10

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e10                            



Piece only--to strategists of war;
To watchers from that fog-and-wind waves' shore:
Dahlias of stone, coral, a rainbow.
One thousand years Leoma's kings, three score,
Have ruled the soldier dying in a slough,
Have danced beyond the fingers of some child
Breaking the stems of flowers, to feel, to know.
And all that time Leoma's grey blocks smiled
Through chalky mouths or lips of ash, piled

In rainless moments with uneven art
By passers-by, who, coming, depart--
Faces, like the ones they quickly drew.
But there are those who pass to leave their hearts,
Not dripping, perhaps, nor iced, yet true,
Always true; who leave them wrapped in things
Majestic, alive; who, like those two
On Elcon cliff, are born to ponderings,
To seeing deeply, clearly, to measurings--

To capturing: from joy to death to fear,
Expressions which pulse eternal in the ear,
Which scintillate forever in the eye,
And like purple clay pottery: never blear;
Which, through an inner and an outer sky,
Please, and bring fulfillment to the sole.
Without such hearts, not ever you nor I
Could live and be half of that lustrous whole
Of humanhood we ought; nor could I shoal

Through those two brothers on The Poets' Seats
One third of their Leoma's deep retreats.
From there: "This intolerable howling
Of the inevitable ages" which sheets
Of song and speech proclaim, this fouling
Of thought by our beggars and our sages
We hear in the chambers of prowling
Or out from the alleys of broken rages,
We feel--whether we/ live in homes/ or cages.

And so they feel.  Up on that jutting, free
From immediate worry, Saul and Parth see,
Like nearly blind eagles, the bolder forms
Of mighty Moiland's capital.  Tree
Melts into tree; men disappear like storms
In the night, leaving their puddles of self
And their freshets--the only norms,
From Elcon's edge, by which those two can shelve,
Can divide their race: into White Alph





Brian A. J. Salchert                    

sw00374jt-b1.e9

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e9                             



"Irony, Rio?  Always a wit star?
What a fancy-frumpled angel you are!
Yet therein rings the glory of our choir:
We are distinctive notes that bar by bar,
In whatever order, delight, inspire;
For being made to harmonize, we do,
Since none of us chose chaos and the fire.
So, Rio, we welcome your silent shoe
And your wonder.  Kai will enlighten you."

"The wooden crown of Justan, it seems, will rest;
But Justan will not, Rio, for a test
Of strength drifts near, and Moiland's towns grow green
For fruit or locusts.  Therefore, we invest
These many human hours as twins/ to screen
Our varied intuitions and to build
From individual insights, strong, keen
Conclusions; for Hugh and Justan, instilled
Against each other, yet have same ends willed."

"Let me move the veil of your wonder more,
Guardian of Geldarkta.  We deplore
Young Hugh's false notions, but his true ones
Flame with wisdom no one can ignore,
Even though the source from which such flaming runs
Be barely more than vaguely understood
By kingdom-ruling peers.  Somehow, new suns
Are better praised by men than known; but should
Knowing come, we shall have done all we could."

Standing by his rightful place, Prince Hugh waits;
His smile disappears.  Before him, the gates
Of ancient Leoma shutter shut,
And Justan turns.  Discussion abates.
Higher up the spur, where lime rocks jut
Along historic Elcon cliff, two men
Relax.  And Hugh could be there with them, but
For today; for from that powdery seat, when
Even all this space held only a wren,

He has surveyed with grateful eyes: air,
Water, earth, fire, until he could not care
Apart from them; for from that porous bench,
When this space heard not even a wren's blare,
He has prayed.  From there: the priest, the wench,
The cobblestone poor, the queen, are the same;
But Leoma, bright city, built by wrench
and blood, displays itself, transfixed flame,
In all its still variety, as a game   





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00373jt-b1.e8

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e8                            



"Perhaps, Oro, perhaps.  I know we are
Forever happy because the Triune Star,
Your God and mine, is always in our view;
But what of Hugh DeVry and those who are
Even less sure than he of what or who--
Or rather, toward whom their search for happiness
Sets their eyes?  Are we not meant to feel, too,
In our own way, the terror in each guess
They make, who guard them--rich or penniless?"

"Good angel of the youthful prince, my friend,
Our splendrous God, whose Being has no end
To the intuition and love of all
Nine choirs, placed us (who gladly bend
Before Him) in that choir which must fall
Within creation's scale closest to these;
And surely, therefore, the sound of their small
Voices attracts us; but do not let is tease
You out of tune, or shake your spirit's keys."

"And so my spirit's off its meted line,
And I am drunk from quaffing thoughts not mine,
And I am nearly out of tune besides.
I'd say I'm three times less; not near so fine
A creature as even God made me.  Brides,
Humans are, since fiery-tongued Juchrislarmem.
They have a special communion.  God resides--
He resides, Oro--flesh and blood, in them:
In some of them.  Let my feelings condemn."

"Kai, I feel you are more bound to hewmz than I
Because your given human, questioning why
As he does of those high absolutes
We love, looks less within the Favoring Eye;
Yet, Kai, while I guide one whose royal boots
(Soon a chosen ruler's boots I expect)
Since that clear day of festive wines and flutes
And Easter water blessings which have wrecked
Hell, wear on chosen feet, much must he correct."

"Oro-Kai, to twin you, though you are not,
Will you ever be apart when my lot
Brings me to you?  What causes your Hugh
And Justan to seem so close your spirits clot
This frequently?  I know there are a few
Among us who profit deeply by such
Intimate unions; but with these two,
What prompts it?  Wherever their spheres touch
They do not love each other overmuch."





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00372jt-b1.e7

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e7                             



From his bed, Prince Hugh unties his cape
And planes it into the air, watching it drape
Itself over the raised arms of a boy.
Laughing, he asks, "Son, what is the shape
Of your intent?  Why would you hide your joy
And burning behind a foreign mass?
Shine on us with force.  Do not be coy.
That cloth is not a cloud which will not pass.
And we are burned already.  Why the grass

Has curled from you for more than half an hour.
Look at us.  Let every dainty flower
Wilt.  Look at us.  We need, we need more sun."
Nearby, some voices ripple, like a shower
When it is winded into waves which run
In easy lashes on a roof; and Hugh
Moves back to sit among the princes, one
Who by his smiles lets each good mood come through.
"Oro, Justan's angel, what shall I do?"

"Sweet angel of the fiery prince, since Love
Creates the hands that then may make the glove
And fleshes His own Son to lift a cross,
Direct yourself to Him, within, above.
As His Son says: In Him there is no loss,
And his bright Spirit will receive your own,
As He does sinners--as gold; not as dross.
Such commerce which by that, Kai, will be flown
Between your spheres, you never could have known."

"Yet, Oro, my commanded mortal speaks
As one with paradox between his cheeks,
Crying against the sun, while wishing more.
Even I am baffled by what he seeks.
Their Mezdras thinks him wise: a likely sore.
Or could it be the heat has withered here
A man with roots too immature to store
The food he really needs to still appear
At his known best, after a dry year?"

"For him, it seems, the year has not been dry,
But wet.  I think their games with reason, Kai,
Still spin your spirit off its meted line.
Your intuition flutters far too high.
Their thoughts are more like milk than scotch or wine.
They are nothing that should intoxicate
An angel.  Look at Justan's mighty spine:
How it curves forward, and he is great
Among men.  Should we be bent so by fate?"





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00371jt-b1.e6

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e6                             



Of eloquence his preconceived expressions
Bear.  For there are right and wrong impressions,
And while our king has been most just, the need
This day is more than even my transgressions
Of authority can satisfy.  Weed
My garden, Ulerus.  Weed my mind.
How shall my lips be shaped?  How shall the seed
Of my desire now germinate, now find
Fulfillment?  Unbeasted citizens, behind

This mouth, roots of deep direction start
To spread, and every word will be a part
Of their beginnings' opposition: leaf,
Stem, flower--a plant so formed by natural art
You will be glad for it.  Today, belief,
Belief in your discretion, names you men
Instead of sheep.  Today your nation's chief
Will lay his crown aside.  Moilanders.  Then,
Moilanders, you may choose him back again

Or you may choose another.  However,
Be alert; for from this time you will never
Have a self-appointed leader, nor will
Traditions hold.  The need to know has severed
Age from age; and while a man may climb a hill
With greater confidence if he knows
And uses each experience until
His flag claims its summit as he goes,
He must exact his steps, and like a rose

Or dandelion: adapt, adapt.  Change,
Change, change.  It has come.  To disarrange?
To make things fall apart?  No.  To unite.
When we stood still, the quiet here seemed strange;
Myth, mystery, the past flooded our sight:
In Seth, those disappearing birds that flew
To the woods, the robes of Justan.  Bright
It was, but dark; and is.  If scientists knew
No other thing: that sight can be untrue,

It were enough.  Justan, you may as well
Talk to your guardian angel about hell.
Myth is dead.  Mystery is undermined.
The past is untenable.  What fell,
People, when certain vaunted scions signed,
Published their thoughts, was not Sol-vitae's heat
Or the Second One's words, but the perched mind,
The eagle-plumed ignorance.  Facts complete.
Be facted."  Then, like one stripping a sheet





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00370jt-b1.e5

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e5                             



Of science; and now you stand in the ranks.
What is your purpose?"  "Luborga, my thanks
To you," Hugh responds.  And then to be
More easily heard, he jogs up a plank
To the royal platform.  "Listen to me.
People of Moiland, listen to me; for
Today your lives shall change; your eyes not see
These plumes and flowing costumes anymore.
People of Moiland, for sixteen years war

And all its machinations have been at rest;
And I have grown.  But soon another test
Of our convictions will be mapped; and then:
Who shall be the Aethean viper's guest?
I--I: and every worthy youth.  Those men
Who clotted in the trenches, who were torn
From strength to wheelchairs are alive again
In us; for though they fell when we were born,
Their ghosts shall make us stand, though rows of corn

And evergreens catch and drink our blood.
Yes, before we laughed, creeping through the mud;
Before we walked--they died: Prince John of Kolle,
Lifting his auburn beard against Otud
At Lake Odango; Mount Nareb's soul,
Karkarmon; Prince Harr himself (bright son
Of Leoma's queen mother, piquant Zal),
Who might have been our king; dark Marion
Of the alligator tangles, who won

Eleven battles; Imara and my
Father, valiant men, who had to lie
In fever near Damorca while Nimain
Defeated their troops.  --House of DeVry.--
Friends, your king this day has nothing to gain
As he did then, and yet I understand
His hesitation.  Mine would be the same.
But, friends, I do not sit in Justan's hand
Like so much clay, because the spear and band

Of holy Tamarind's glories pass;
And the sheep that meekly chewed the grass
And bleated to the shearer at his call
Will find the ancient torch of power has
Been handed on to them.  'Now watch it fall,'
Some shepherds say.  Sheep?  You are not sheep;
But I am standing here for you are all
Untrained and unprepared, and I must keep
Good Justan's wit alive yet wound that sweep





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00369jt-b1.e4

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e4                             



Be patient, fiery prince, our wishes shall
Be act."  Now Luborga (son of Borgadal
The Appellator: so-called because he chose
The name of Moiland's present king when Zal
And Refnoe wore the splendid crowns of those
From holy Tamarind descended), filled
With flint enough to dazzle the sun, posed
Before the multitude, will surely spill
And spark to ash; but the Host-God builds

A cloud from Mezdras's voice to cover him:
"Proud prince, your sight is not one-eighth as dim
As mine, yet I should not be bold as you
Are bold; our king has come.  You think the rim
Needs watching? that perhaps it will rust through,
Or lose its hold on warping boards and snap?
That our culture will evaporate like dew
And rise to wisps in the senseless air, or slap
To earth at once, sink through a dusty gap?

You have attended the councils, have spoken,
Have listened; have not let the keg be broken
By the sledging tongues of knowledge-fearers
And fevered insularians.  What token
Of your wisdom, then, is this, to make us hearers
Still?  How many years I've lived, and would,
Yet would live.  Each moment I press nearer
To this land.  It does not matter that I have stood
For thirty springs in darkness:  I have stood.

And so, prized prince, so have you stood, enough,
Enough.  A wise man has no need to puff
Before the world as if he would inflate
His name thereby, as if such gaseous stuffs
Which at those times his mouth and head can mate
Would not fill as well a polyethylene
Balloon, if bottled for that purpose.  State
Your griefs within.  Do not jar a scene
Among the people.  Do not stand between

Your king (on his last day) and these masses
Who, sadly, only know what passes
Toward their governance after Justan speaks
To them."  "Yes, DeVry, my chum, how crass is
A crow, anyhow?  Or is it you that creaks,
That is a sun-warped barrel? or has the shell
Of his birth still drooping from his top?  Weeks,
Interminable weeks, we have heard you spell,
Phrase, and paragraph your sweet lac et mel





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00368jt-b1.e3

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e3                             



You remember Nimain.  Tell us, tell us
Then, why you try us with wating, and fuss
And fidget like a nervous cat.  Your tongue,
My king, your tongue."  (The hands of Ulerus
Touch him.)  "Isn't that why you've come among
Us in this so-called time of peace?  Have you
Not made us gather for a graver tongue
Than the gurgling of the Eribon?  Do
You not allow this heat to wilt us through

And through for a better reason than fear
Of our great strength?  Seth knows, he knows the year
You should have come has passed.  Why did you wait?
Why do you wait today?  Destroy the spear.
Let us vote.  Already Geldarkta baits
The trap for Nimain.  The old order dies,
My king.  Let us vote.  It is not too late.
Would not my father work against those ties
Which strangle?  You are worthy in our eyes,

Justan.  Throw off the shell.  Forget the scrolls.
The world is safe.  At least these peopled knolls
Will not press in upon you, not this noon.
But should you rest until another, souls
And flesh of darker hue, snakes (when no moon
Glows), may wind across the sea, and hell
Shall have its vengeance: a perfect boon
For sake of sentiment.  Then, king, your shell
Will break upon your throat; your meat will swell

The belly of a venomed thing."  Again
Ulerus, respected servant in
The House of DeVry and valet to the bold
And fiery Hugh, again he touches him;
But the prince had ended.  The masses roll
And jostle like a shaken lake, and words
Whir up, as when ten thousand wings unfold.
Justan, nodding to his attendant lords,
Whispers to blind Mezdras, while Seth shouts words

Of countermand at Hugh DeVry, young prince:
"Well-placed crow, how handily you mince
A carcass.  Yes, Seth knows, he knows the year
Has passed.  Be patient.  Perhaps you need not rinse
Your find with scavenger spittle.  I fear
As you, and so do many others;
But I myself have reprimanded here
Our king's deep caution.  In this, a mother's
Care could not be more.  Breathe, sisters, brothers.  





Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00367jt-b1.e2

                                                                               Book I:   e1
Justan Tamarind: Book I       e2                             



This heard (another's chance to disapprove),
Lady Tarsk taunts Yuana:  "The grove,
My queen.  Now our king must burn it, and bid
Blind Mezdras, judge, to sentence Seth to rove
Forever through Viberian tundras, hid
From human hearing, human sight; for such
Has long seemed near, and many desire to rid
From them him: he who swings the olive crutch;
Would feast-high flush that prophet from his hutch

To Nomän or Soaxian wastes, if they
Wore such a potent crown."  But on this day,
Thoughts of grosser pains darken Justan's face.
And losing in his their cares, whether they
Are low in favor, as of Ham's cursed race,
Or high, as of the gloried Julus line,
The citizens calm, heedless of their place
Or that Sol-vitae's wheeling sears to wine;
Fuse round their king, round Moiland's thirty-nine:

Men (of reasoning bones, emotive flesh,
Selected from the Occi-Oriental mesh
All human time through procreation formed),
Earth treasures most; and who alone can thresh
Her given grains.  For these, when trials had stormed
Across their needful toils and crushed them out,
And left them starving while fat bears slept warmed
In rugged caves: these, who when tossed about
Unceasingly as were their parents, stout

And bold, who searched across another world,
Were cowards not; but knowing that the curled
And fearful insect still deprives itself
Of life for all its foolish feigning, burled
Their wills incessantly to thwart the Elf
Of hooked despairs and foster hope in their
Insatiable minds, transformed stones to wealth,
And suffering to eglantine.  So here,
Luborga and his wife, Rosine, preen; pare,

While, as in Aethea once, he chides her eye:
"Pretty one, I will protect you from the wry
And hard-faced. . . ."  Suddenly, from the tired,
Increasingly restless crowd, Hugh DeVry
(Son of Prince Gilbert DeVry, who expired
Those eighteen years ago in Aethea
When Hugh had lived barely two), his face fired
To rose, cries out:  "Solemn Justan, ah,
My king, you remember Geldarkta,




Brian A. J. Salchert