FIVE POEMS
ANDREW WYETH ENTERS HEAVEN, II
--for
Nick S.
Let there be light
not for the sake
of light itself
earth and stone
as light catchers
dissolving flesh
melting landscapes
oxidized in blood
but for those light
has ceased to touch
the sun adrift
in a fever dream
a battlefield
seen through
a gray window
by a bald man
with yellow eyes—
Let there be light
not for the sake
of light itself
the created world
as light-catcher
let light call forth
the dead
as stones
in our orchards
breakers
along our shore
as waves
breaking against
our nakedness
on a summer day
as what commands
light because
it wounds us
with its brilliance
WHISTLER’S BLUE/ A NOCTURNE
If a man appears alone
on a bridge
on a snowy evening
walking toward
a series of lights
in a row of windows
he doesn’t necessarily
have a future
or a past he is simply
a point on a grid
part of a composition
that tells us
what it is
while implying it is
more than it says
we follow him
into the night
because of the blue
we want to know
from whence
he’s come and where
he’s going
because the blue
envelops
everything but is
thin as air
because it’s everywhere
like the nerves
of an acrobat
in pain
and we can hear it
asking us
to shed our skins
and follow
TRIPTYCH
1 – Entering The Musée
D'orsay
Augustine says:
I see myself seeing
or not seeing
but not what another sees
or does not
though the same thing stands
before us both
as if proof of the eternal
were encrypted
in the process of how
we know what we know
and thereby traceable
to a single source (God
or DNA) but does not
tell us why the stone age
images on the cave walls
of Lascaux will inevitably
be recomposed into
“Lush Life” by Billy Strayhorn
2 – On The Walls Of
The Musée D’orsay
Eakins’ wife Clara
her haunted
blue-eyes stare off to the left
at Carrier's
wife and
five daughters
(painted in 1893)
blots
of ectoplasm
in the dark
of their
four-square world
floating away from
Jean
Delville's
L’ECOLE DE PLATON
composed
around a central figure
bearded like Christ
in a garden of pastel flowers
addressing naked youths
and semi-draped
hermaphrodites arm-in-arm
beyond the reach of
Corman's
CAIN
in which the outcast
and
his family
wearing animal skins
pull a litter of dead prey
across an endless desert
hunters whose primitive
condition does not save them
from
the fear of what
they don't understand
on their way
to Gustave Doré's
ENIGMA
a winged angel
gazing at
a
maidenly Sphinx
above the smoking ruins
of a city
3 – Leaving The Musée
D'orsay
I understand
the Museum as a record
of that which is uniquely seen
by one
in what
is
common to all
each of us a world
that is born and dies
references
the sum
of every birth
and death...
even so
my morning-star
is not
your morning-star
and neither exists
as an object
in space
ROSEMARINE: A LOVE SONG
Dark palms
blow
against
a blackening
sky
sea-grapes
in the
shadows
waves
blown back
are
dappled gray
manes
where
light hides
under the
gull’s wing
flashes
briefly
in flinty
moonbeams
as they
strike
the beach
setting
breakers
on fire
licking spaces
in the
rock-wall
in search
of salt air
a healing
breath
the heart
in its
bat-wing
lair
I walk the
beach
your name
unspoken
on my lips
to whom I
must
speak
to you my dear
who fill me over
the distance with
all the years
we’ve lain
together
consciousness
becoming
conscious of itself
and thank you
for this the story
of our lives
WALKING THE DOG
1 - late summer
last day of August
low humidity
cool shade
warm sun
currents at dusk
I navigate the block
with Harry off leash
Florence on her porch
who once told me
she moved to Glens Falls
at 83 to be near
her daughter
calls my shepherd
a handsome boy
guesses his weight
at 122 lbs
recalls her late Dobie
another heavy-weight
What a gentle guy!
then discloses
her first son learned to walk
holding on to that
big dog’s balls
she is relieved to have shared
this intimacy and I
even more
to walk on nudging
Harry
who sniffs at
everything
half blind
but otherwise
alert hears
my urgent
request to pick up
the pace
a teen aged girl
w/ purple hair
pedals past
smiles
when I catch her eye
then is gone leaving behind
a purple after-glow
steadier than usual
rounding the last corner on
neuropathic feet
for once
no wobble
in my gait
I can’t imagine being
happier than
at this moment
in sight of home
back straight
one foot
in front of
the other
as if holding on
to a big Doberman’s
testicles
2 - February, in tempranillo veritas
High on Spanish wine
on a chill night
past suburban porches
careful to avoid invisible
patches of black ice
wearing the wrong shoes
smooth soles
I am a not so goat like man
at seventy-four
walking
my aging shepherd
Harry
my wife
still beautiful
home in bed
stars above
snowflakes about to fall
think myself to have been
the best good
bad boy
the best bad
good boy
possible
plans to steal
a slice of the fruit cake
from the freezer
heat it for 5
seconds
in the nuclear warmth
of the new age
of which I am
a part
a living piece
of graffiti such as
haunts the walls
of Rome
Kilroy was here!
adopt it as my own
sum of parts more
than whole
making it all the way
around the block
without a fall
conclude
with certainty
Heisenberg’s uncertainty
Delta pro delta
x z h
equals Eckhart’s
declaration
I see God
through the same
eye He sees me…
3 – Early
April
bare limbs
just greening
taxonomy
starkly
visible
implicate
echo
of leaves
porches at
night
harboring
shadows
we walk
my old
shepherd Harry
behind me
half deaf
eyes cloudy
led by his
nose
stops
to sniff
roots and dirt
surfaces
rich
in history
so
complete he can
taste it on
his
tongue
voices
from back
yards
open
windows
gather and
dissolve
under
a street
lamp
I wonder
at the
interface
of music
and numbers
pi chasing
infinity
Debussy
folding
the Golden
Ratio
into La
Mer
intervals
we create
unheard
Harry
shambling
beside me
through
the night
I tell him
it doesn’t
matter
stars above us
have died
long ago
and lie
buried in
light
years
illusion
experienced
as fact
often more
profound
than fact
as
experience
everything
I see
cries out
I AM
*****
Paul Pines grew up in Brooklyn near Ebbets Field and passed the early 60s on
the Lower East Side of New York. He shipped out as a merchant seaman, spending
part of 65/66 in Vietnam, then opened his Bowery jazz club, The Tin
Palace, the setting for his
novel The Tin Angel (Morrow, 1983). A second novel, Redemption, (Editions du Rocher, 1997), explores the Guatemalan Mayan genocide of the
80's. My Brother’s Madness, (Curbstone Press, 2007) probes the nature of delusion. His actively imagined memoir, Trolling
with the Fisher King, is recently released from Chiron Publications.
He has published thirteen books of poetry, most recently, Message
from the Memoirist (Dos Madres, 2015) and Charlotte Songs (Marsh
Hawk, 2016). His fourteenth
collection, Gathering Sparks, will be out in the fall. He is the editor of Juan Gelman’s
selected poems Dark Times/ Filled with Light (Open Letters
Press, 2012). Poems set by composer Daniel Asia appear on the Summit
label, and opposite Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, in Asia’s 5th Symphony.
Pines has conducted workshops for the National
Writers Voice and lectured for the National Endowment for the
Humanities. Paul Pines lives in Glens Falls, New York, where he is a
psychotherapist in private practice and hosts the Lake George Jazz Weekend.
Website: paulpines.com
