Amsterdam Journal: Sarphatistraat 7/7

7/7 1996 Amsterdam, Sarphatistraat

Ah, what I've always dreamed about, a balcony with full morning sun. Sunday morning, little traffic. A sea of rucksacks and well-wheeled luggage clatters over the cobblestones like the hooves of cart horses. The next wave of tourists from Japan has arrived. 

I'm house/cat-sitting at Dave Hansen's flat, a few doors down from Adam and Eve Avenue on the F17 tram line, a low-budget hotel, of course. 

First sunny day in Amsterdam. What to do?

Somewhere someone is whistling a Nat King Cole song, a full deep-throated whistle. Okay to listen to outdoors that is. Not like Herman Berlant's thin reedy trill that drives me crazy within seconds. On my own, shall I wander through this wonderland alone? Play Misty for Me becomes my instructions for the day. After a shower, I find the sun has nearly abandoned me again.

I was awaken by cramps at 7 AM, not enough sleep. I worked on a letter to Waldo Rojas in Spanish most of the night. It takes so long to write a letter in a language not my own, when I have to look up every fifth word for spelling.

Herman commented about a woman who learned in several languages by having lovers from different countries.Yes, well, one is motivated in a different way than in school. 

As I mended my flowered dress, I got my first phone call from a Welsh poet Paul Evans, wanting to go out for coffee at the Café Winkler at 2 PM. I'm going mad from sirens and trams, the incessant city noises are so irritating. Sarphatistraat, at the intersection of three different tramlines is noisy. And the woodpigeons are eating the cat food. 

At Charles McGeehan's house, it was quiet, but living in that chaos was more than I could bear. I am glad to be out of that place.

Sunshine to the east, Stornes clouds to the west. Seagulls over the Amstel River portend a storm, or so they say. Paul tells me that gull is a Cornish word. His lilt is so different than the Irish, but definitely related. He didn't grow up speaking Welsh and so he's not got all the cadence. 

A sudden squall turns the wheel of the day into night.

Poetry International article, Audacious tongues

AUDACIOUS TONGUES: THE HEART OF TRANSLATION

Poetry is what gets lost in translation
—Robert Frost
As you die/ you meet the light/ of before creation
—Bert Schierbeek

“Sometimes poetry is literally a matter of life and death,” said Martin Mooij, founder and shy godfather of Poetry International in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. A central focus of the 27-year-old literary organization is to liberate poets incarcerated by oppressive governments due to his or her literary work. The annual Poetry International Award “to distinguish an imprisoned poet, was established in 1979 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Poetry International,” said Mooij.

At the 1996 festival, exiled South African writer and political prisoner Breyten Breytenbach, who received the Poetry International Award in 1981, was also the recipient of this year’s translation Vertaalproject where world-class poets participating in the festival translate a selected poet during the annual two-week event. Breytenbach is the only poet to receive both honors.

 Like many of the poets chosen for the Poetry International Award, Breytenbach lives in exile, borderless, without a country, having only his mother tongue to sustain the roots of his art and culture. We began our translation workshop honoring those imprisoned poets—Breytenbach painting the name of the latest recipient of the 18th Poetry International Award, Iraqi poet, Adnam Abbas Salman al-Sayegh, on the Poetry Wall mural on the corner of Niewe Binnenweg and Gaffelstraat in Rotterdam. It is hoped he’ll be released from prison to collect his award.

Executive director Mooij explained, “The Poetry International Award began as a fluke. I'd published some Turkish children's books, and I mentioned the name of an imprisoned poet, Nevzat Çelik.” Mooij said he was merely wondering aloud what had happened to the Turkish poet. Surveying Kruisplein from the squat, modern post-war De Doelen building in Rotterdam, Mooij explained, “The editor promised to write to a government official, and in 1987. . . the poet was set free!”

Mooij continued, “We cooperate closely with PEN International, and the Index on Censorship.” Without the political pressure and media exposure wielded under the auspices of the Poetry International Award, the voices of world-class poets might not be with us today—

Two poems by Lo Ch'ing 羅青

GOING HOME

Too late
to catch the last bus...

If you must go,
ride your shoes home.

I'll pedal the evening wind
to follow you.

          (tr. Maureen Hurley with Lo Ch'ing 羅青)


CROSSWORD

One jet fighter
a single dove
bisecting the sky
draws
an invisible cross

     (tr. Maureen Hurley with Lo Ch’ing)

EERSTE LIG (AUBADE, I)

EERSTE LIG (AUBADE, I)
   —a fake translation of Breyten Breytenbach's poem, from the Afrikaans
 
Dawn light strokes the sky of the sea
chasing shadows from our heads
urgent dreams, bright, restless
against the lingering slumber
of your body next to mine. 

The uneasy origin of poet’s work
trapped within the childish speech
wants to reinvent the world
where flight was not lost to the struggle of defeat
Our mouths open, tonguing
the fleeting warmth of your throat

How certain love seemed in the morning
I held the fading eye of your body
against that deeper sleep

But you threw open the balcony windows
the blind angel trampled
the circle of light

scattering mirrored words
on the new song of the wind

visual translation from the Afrikaans

OPEN POETRY WINSTON KINGDOM

WINSTON KINGDOM
&
OPEN POETRY

by JACEK NICHS
present:
Monday, 21 June I996. 22.00 hours
(from Poetry International, Rotterdam):

POETRY FILMS & VIDEOS
FROM THE WORLD’S LARGEST COLLECTION
HERMAN BERLANDT (USA)
Editor-in-chief of Mother Earth International Poetry Journal, San Francisco

+ POETRY READING BY
MAUREEN HURLEY (USA)
co-editor
concept: Charles McGeehan

Monday, 02 July1[996. 22. 00 hours
&
HERB WHARTON (AUSTRALIA)
a prominent Aboriginal writer, essayist and poet

"One of the most important Black texts..a creative work of
significance... enthralling "
(Mudrooroo about ’Unbranded', a novel published in 1992)

"Herb Wharton - a voice and presence in Australia "
{Seamus Heaney about 'Cattle Camp ', a novel published in 1993)

concept: Scott Rollins

OPEN POETRY WINSTON KINGDOM
EVERY MONDAY 22.00 HOURS
THE MEETING POINT FOR STREAMS & CURRENTS
IN INTERNATIONAL POETRY

open microphone + free entry
Warmoesstraat 127
Amsterdam

Waldo Rojas-Serrano (drawing)

Bert Schierbeek Memorial

As you die
you meet the light
of before creation

—Bert Schierbeek

Where to begin, at the beginning with a commemorative book to Bert Schierbeek. In the beginning was light, at the crematorium, the poets of the world paid homage to the fallen hero. We, the tribe, were 500 poets strong, but down one poet, we were 499 poets, we were both deluded and undiluted by light. Bert would've liked that pun.

Charles McGeehan, and I stood with the Dutch poets, wild-maned Jan Wolkers, a painter, Willem van Toorn and Simon Vinkenoog. I was well-sandwitched between corpulent Belgian poet, Hugo Claus, and Martin Mooij, who founded Poetry International in 1970.

Festival director, Martin Mooij, had invited Herman Berlandt and I to Poetry International. Herman founded Mother Earth Journal,; Uniting the world Through Poetry, an offshoot of San Francisco's National Poetry Week festival, which he also founded. (No, not Emma Goldman's anarchist rag, but the poems themselves are anarchists, focusing on the current political and ecological global crisis we're in.)

A musician played Route 66 on the trombone, it was a Beat poet homage moment. A woman placed poems on his coffin. We paraded past Bert one last time, someone left roses, we left a copy of Mother Earth Journal with Bert's poems in it. Bert was very supportive of our journal. When the crematorium doors opened, the furnaces roared like lions. We sent Bert, liberated from life, into the flames, the furnaces roared with joy.

We sent Bert off with words that burned like the stars; his coffin was a fiery arc in search of a new art form. We blanketed it with flowers and poems to offer Bert safe passage in order to meet the light that was born before creation. 

As we wept, Remco Campert read a final poem to Bert:

BERT 

So fragile
his legs
in his trousers
his chest
in his shirt
his hands bruised
from the work
of death
yet suddenly
a glimpse of a wink
never say die
let somebody else
say it
not Schierbeek.

     —(tr. Linde Voûte)

So much as happened in the past 24 hours, I hardly know where to begin. I did not expect to step off the plane to attend a funeral in Amsterdam. Joke (Yoka) Gerritsen of Poetry International told us last night during dinner. Schierbeek, a co-founder of the COBRA movement, died on June 9, right before the festival began. I knew Bert was sick—our host, Charles McGeehan had told us, but we fully expected to see him again. Upright.

Charles McGeehan, is Bert's brother-in-law, and translator; Charles' ex-wife was the sister of Bert's second wife, Margrait, who was killed in a car crash. Charles met us at Station Central, and we drove to the funeral.

I've met so many interesting people –Maija (I don't know her last name), whose brother is a famous actor, and whose father was a famous painter, I liked her so much on sight, I was sure she was both an artist and actor, but she has a studio for photographers, she is a makeup artist. Her art is other people's faces. She lives in Amsterdam, we will visit later, she said.

The reception was at the De Bezige Bij (Busy Bee) publishers. Poet and prolific columnist who writes for a daily newspaper, de Volkskrant, Rutger Copeland said he kept looking at me all through the service, trying to place me. I'm flattered that he was trying to figure out who I was. He probably saw me at Poetry International during previous years. Rutger was one of the famous Dutch poets my friend, and translator, Vins van Neerven, had told me about. 

Dutch poet Judith Herzog, who is a bit of a recluse was there (on previous visits, Vins wanted me to meet her but she kept brushing me off), along with Remco Campert, and one of the grand old Dutch poets, Dutch-American poet and doctor, Leo Vroman, and Toon Telegen—so many faces from Poetry International, on such a sad occasion. At the death of a poet, and such a beloved one.

I met the wife of the vice president of De Bezige Bij publishers, she was interested in our Mother Earth poetry project at, and the children's work I do. I will send her my Dutch translations of This Body is to Ask, perhaps I'll get it republished after all. 

The Holland connections are strong. I've had more cultural stimulation in 24 hours than I've had in the past two years in California.

Sipho Sepala was very pleased to get our magazine. He wanted an entire collector's set, he kept saying, I will learn much from these. Thank you. Thank you while hugging me. And so from one poet to another, the tradition of samizdat is alive and well.

Last night, Leo Vroman and I talked about the nature of physics poetry and the need for accuracy. Leo is a biochemist and hematology researcher, as well as an artist. Hematologists know of him because of a discovery named after him, called the Vroman Effect, which has to do with the attraction of blood proteins, he explained.

Leo was my dinner partner. We shared drawings. Herman and I were suffering from severe jet lag, as were American poet Barbara Goldberg, a translator, and Israeli poet, Moshe Dor from Tel Aviv. We were all practically sleeping on our dinner plates, so I drew in my journal in order to keep awake. Leo joined me.

We all went walking after dinner along the canals looking at the lights reflected thinking of Bert Schierbeek, thinking of how we let him go into the light, into the darkness and into the light. Welcome to Holland.

13 June 1996 Rotterdam, Poetry International
Quite a star-studded event.

See my article:
Poetry International AUDACIOUS TONGUES: THE HEART OF TRANSLATION

rev. from journal notes 11/2/2015

Writing the Arc

My neighbor, Sonny is adrift in a hostile sea. I've not been to bed this night, I heard him come home long after the bars have closed. He's probably sipping peach schnapps from the bottle. He may be one of the best mouth harp musicians around, but the blues have got him in a headlock, and the only way out is down and out.

I had hardly graced the covers the night before, but sleep Insists upon its due. But I resist, wanting the fullest experience I can muster. I write long past the midnight oil hour.

And I rejoice in the fact that the words come unbidden – after so long, a silence, my art was weighing me down. The piece is finally done, but I worked on it some more, and I'm pleased with much of it.

It's an odd admixture of science, the flood, and the personal essay (love gone wrong), in the form of short prose poems: Building an Arc in the Dark of the Year. Every time I think I'm done with it, it comes back and insists upon another piece. Its had me in a headlock for six months, now.

I turned in a previous iteration of the manuscript to Jane Love for the Copperfield's Literary Magazine, along with some india ink artwork. This is the first official letting go, turning the manuscript loose. It's also the beginning of healing. I do feel vindicated, and relieved to receive the gift of such a powerful piece of writing—that came from a relationship that went so terribly wrong.

They say writing is the best revenge, indeed. Maybe writing the Arc saved me. But I miss Nathan, Sonny's young son. We healed each other, and the broken father was jealous of our uncomplicated love.

June 13, 1996

Somewhere over Greenland

We fly from the night, the earth's shadow is like a visor sequined with stars. Venus and sunset lingering in the west until west becomes north, and north becomes east, and the indigo crest of night escapes to the south. We are flying north towards the light, Venus on the penumbra, a watchful eye of God.

The land gives way to ice flows as we crossed the polar sea, ice packs like rotifers in a pond soup, the echo of indigo back from the sky, circles each ice flow like a wedding ring, the marriage of sky and sea. Floating islands. No anchor.

Crossing the pool, I realize I'm in the land of the midnight sun, the colors astound the eye: vermilion on maroon, and something darker than dried blood.

That place in the sky were light and dark intersect, particle or wave? A subdued rainbow, magenta and lavender hue painted on the mountains, a pale infinity without definition of time or form.

Polar ice is loosened from the matrix. Rosiated dawn, a blushing lace gown. I keep thinking of all the time zones we've crossed, our plane is an arrow dividing light and  time. 

Land again. Was that Baffin Island? We are in the land of eternal snow, crusted slabs of granite in a swirling sea of ice.

From the air, Tahoe was a skullcup of indigo wine held up to the thirsty sky, Mono Lake in a granite goblet. The earth falling away on all sides, as if by surprise.

I was just in Grand Rapids in September, I recognized it from the air, and though the approach was new, my eyes were hungry for the details of geography, dendritic patterns, the seasonal lakes alive again after decades of thirst.

We are in the air hurtling towards dawn at 33,000 feet, at 615 mph or is it kilometers per hour? Flying half the speed of the earth's rotation, the icy sea dissolves into clouds, and the repeated patterns delight the eye. 

I don't know where we are, but now the sea is free of ice flows, small icebergs, like fishing boats, or castles, are headed south for the summer, headed forward toward their own demise. 

June 12 - 13th 1996, midair over the polar circle headed towards Amsterdam.

Going away BBQ

I decided to throw a barbecue of sorts as my going away present to Steve and George. I started out by having dinner with Steve, and George. Then Paul came home and joined us, and Mark (who is Mark?) joined us too. Only Alastair and Sonny were missing from the home gang. Then Trygve pulled up on his motorcycle. Wow. Full house. Yeah, I liked the odds. I was holding court with five men, and Edwin had called today. My planets must be in lust.

Trygve and I went for a bike ride to the vineyards at Mark West Creek. Piper Sonoma, or Mark West Vineyards, some of those grapes go to DeLoach as well. Anyway, it was a chardonnay field. We parked the bike, after having ditched the helmets, we were riding free among the vines. Delicious chill of summer night against my skin. Here I am at 43 and a half, riding through the vineyards in the dark without helmet, without headlights, on a vintage Triumph, and having naughty bits.

Trygve dropped me off at the doorstep and I went over to visit Steve. I'd had a bit of wine. Wild Hog Pinot Noir and Foxhollow Cabernet, both good 1991 vintages. The Wild Hog was a light wine, with the Foxhollow being a robust fruity wine. It was one of those wonderful gossipy summer nights that makes California a special place to live.

I am no man's woman, and so I enjoy them all on one level or another, getting what I need from each man, not flirting, not acting coy, just being exactly who I am. No games no pretense. On my terms.

Then, on June 12 I'm off to Amsterdam.

Dream: Waldo Rojas

I never did write down that dream of the businessman type lover who inhabits my dreams as of late. I don't know who he is. But I remember his face so clearly. He's a bit pudgy with glasses, a short man in a suit, in his mid 50s. An unlikely lover body type, but I love him unreservedly and I have loved him before. 

I think the dream man was Chilean poet Waldo Rojas Serrano, whom I would later meet that summer, on the solstice, at Poetry International, and we would both "recognize" each other. A strange Celtic thing, but then, he's an O'Brien.

Goodbye for now (Edwin)

Thursday Edwin called to say goodbye, leveling with me, the inner knowledge that he struggling with these past two years, is that he's in the lower depths, striving to be reborn. He knows he's broken, and needs to heal. 

We covered a lot of ground and a half an hour. He was being utterly honest and open with me, saying things that needed to be said 15 years ago. And for the first time, he knew why I had left him, and acknowledged that he slid from woman to woman to woman, never really knowing what love was, and of his terrible need to hold on. 

He wasn't telling me to wait for him, he was saying, I'm not home, and I am unable to love at this point in time. I told him why I had left him, because he didn't believe me, he didn't love me per se. I was merely another pawn on the chessboard filed under the label of woman. 

I knew we were in trouble when I had found out that he hadn't taken time out to grieve for the death of his stillborn child at the end of his previous relationship, before coming to me. It was as if he had read my observations, and was reciting them backwards from my notebooks verbatim. Better now than never.

Closure on the chapter of my life. It sounded suspiciously like we were trading vows on a potential future. I said what I wanted in a relationship, and that I didn't want to live alone, but I wanted my alone time to be broody, and to produce art.

He had a hard time being so honest and not to make promises. He said he wasn't ready and he had to do it alone, for a change. He's the Knight rescuer type, saving damsels in distress. Only I don't need any rescuing. 

I asked him if he was afraid of my rage, and he said, A little. It's been a long time since I've used it as if it were a tool. We talked about art in the process of manifesting will, his extraordinary will and mine too, acknowledging each other's strengths and faults, as it were. We bared ourselves to ourselves.

He said, I'm very fond of you, several times. He praises my strength, my will, and the life I've made for myself, even through all those silent years, those 12 years. 

He brought up the lavender letter that I had sent to him in England in 1987 or was it '88? When I was still with John Oliver Simon, saying I had some regrets, his marriage bearing fruit years later. 

He said he had to do it alone, that he couldn't use women as he had in the past. He said he definitely wanted to continue to see me, to take hikes, to go to dinner etc., to keep me in his life. Though under what capacity, is unclear. No rush, no pressure.

I'd asked him if he'd bring me home on July 31 when I return from Holland, but it's the same day he sends his girls back to Tucson. He wants me to meet them. He said the last girlfriend didn't like children.

He came to me defenseless, a broken man. The towering ego trampled into the ground and I saw what I loved in him 15 years ago. And in my empathy, I wanted to draw him closer. Yet instead of pushing him away like damaged goods, like I did before. 

The auto wreck he had the last time he came to visit, a symbol of what his life had become. It said: warning damaged goods. He was still sliding from one relationship to another, with no breathings space in between, and I kept thinking how wrong it was, and I was at the other end of the spectrum. Why did I need to take so much time to heal, when it seems no one else did. We were two extremes of the same coin.

Stood Up

As it turned out, Edwin Drummond stood me up once again, first at the wedding and then again last weekend. He called last week to say he'd be up, and would I like a visit? I told him that I was beginning to feel badly, this was the third time he had canceled out on me. With no phone call, nor apology. 

Well, he did finally come Friday night, fourth time's a charm? We had a late supper and then he told me a tale of marital discord. His divorce was affecting all walks of his life. 

His ex-wife Leah's father had assaulted him last year when he came to pick up his two daughters who were nine and 5 1/2 years of age, hitting him on the side of the head with the bicycle tire and rim and the upshot was, he nearly died from head injury complications, and is now embroiled in a legal suit. He lost his job teaching at a private school and now has and enormous hospital bill to pay off. 

The girls' grandfather is an ex-CIA Republican from Arizona, so Edwin is facing a tough opponent. He is trying to block Edwin from seeing his own children. This strife has taken an enormous toll on Edwin, both physically and emotionally.

I could see that Edwin was depressed, as that was the only way I could explain away his odd behavior, and not calling me. Or wanting to see me. Then the no-shows. I too, get that way myself. Pull my snail horns in.

But I told him it made me feel badly, that I was beginning to take it personally. He promised it would never happen again. Turns out he thought I had his number and where he would be staying at Steve's in Berkeley, and he thought I would give him a call if I was really into seeing him. I said, But I don't have your phone number. In a situation like that I would never call. 

Steve's wedding was different I knew and liked Steve and Carol, and I would've loved to have been there. He said the wedding made him so depressed, harkening back to his own failed marriage, conjuring up too many painful memories. 

Like I said, I had already put two into together and it did not equate Prozac. I knew the symptoms. And when I reached him via phone a week after the wedding, his voice was dead flat. He abruptly said, Can I call you back later? And hung up before I could answer. Some serious warning signs there, but I have a compassion for him, and I'm touched knowing that I'm still within his thoughts, as a relationship from the past to salvage. 

In other words, I suspect that he never really fully got over my breaking it off 12 years ago. But I was being smothered. It was in 1982, I think, when we first met. I was still in love with Lee Perron, and even though we long since broken up, I still carried the torch for Lee, because I had a boyfriend, Lee and I became closer. Lee considered himself safe. Ironically. I don't think I loved any man the way I loved Lee, but he couldn't handle it.

When we broke it off, Edwin got vindictive and began to show up at Garbo's Open Mic in Guerneville, though he lived in San Francisco, just to read spiteful poems about me to publicly humiliate me. I, who had done nothing wrong, or dishonorable, was mortified. Lee took me in his arms, cradling me from the wrath of this man who claimed to have loved me, who wanted to marry me, then shamed me, thus driving me away from him forever, or, so I thought. 

Then in 1993, we found ourselves working on a project, writing grants. Climb for world peace in the Bay Area. We targeted three peaks, Mt. Diablo, Mt Tam, and Mt. St. Helena, for a simultaneous climb, linking them with laser beams, and transmitting poetry readings via cellphones and Mac laptops. The climbing teams were behind it. We were way ahead of the times, both conceptually and technologically, but there wasn't that kind of support from funders. The recession didn't help either.

We spent quite some time together working on the grant, but I was chilly and distant, and sexually I wanted nothing to do with him. He complied with my wishes, commenting that we were like an old married couple, sleeping together, barely touching.

I thought of my anger towards him. Ten years is a long time to hold a grudge. I was angry with him for something more fundamental than him running off into the arms of one woman to another, both before me, and after me (Leah), and after Leah, without taking any time to center himself. They were the symptoms. Ironic for a world class rock climber to be so emotionally off-center.

This time Edwin came to me armed with nothing more than hope, his arms were full of fruit, bread, chocolate, flowers, and wine. I'd forgotten about his excessively generous side. Does he give because he's empty?

This time I could sense there weren't the warm sheets of yet another cast-off relationship trailing about him. And when we did finally make love, it was an admixture of familiar and new, the body remembers quite well and so it wasn't fraught with the discomfort of the new and novel. Yes, everything still worked, though he's around 50, he's never had any trouble in that department. But when he was 36, we had to be cautious as he was long. Something that my friend Boschka took rapacious delight in.

There was lots of catching up to do. He confessed that had a relationship right after his last visit with me, how could I tell? I knew that if I had turned him away, he would just seek another woman. Heat seeking missile. Well, she didn't like children, and it fell apart. 

He hadn't been with a woman in quite some time, and without my asking, I could sense it. We shared our AIDS test information (the new sexual passport) after we had made love, but we trusted each other enough to know that it was okay. I said I had barely been with anyone since my father had died in 1994, a few isolated skirmishes with Jim Byrd, with very long intervals in between. And a visit from Sean Kilty and a couple of visits from Trygve.

Trygve, out of the blue, pulled up on his motorcycle an hour before Edwin was supposed to arrive. I knew Edwin would be late. Trygve threw me down on the unmade bed as I was trying to clean the cabin. I must be putting out pheromones. Or starring in a porn movie.

Trygve said he was going to hang around and bad vibe Edwin. I was feeling a bit frantic by then and shrieked, You have no rights! And he said, I hope he doesn't come back for two or three more years. It really was quite funny. Trygve finally leaves on his motorcycle. 

As I run past George to take a quick shower, he snickers, and asks, The wrong one? I laugh at my escapades and how it must look on the outside—it's either all or nothing. 

In today's mail, a card arrives Rousseau's Tiger.
My teeth are chattering, the storm is frightening.
Renewing, thank you, dear friend.
I am yours too in the storm and in the aftermath.
Love always, Edwin

It was mailed yesterday from Oakland. Is he still here? Do I call saying I'm feeling a bit peckish?

One funny moment was when I leapt onto the bed, saying, Good bed, strong bed, then realized that he had made that very bed for me. He had made my bed and I had been lying in it ever since. Yikes! Is there some still some mysterious homing pigeon link? 

My common sense warns me to beware – he seems to ignite catastrophe, or at least he's living in the middle of hell, and has been for quite some time. I don't know the extent of his depression, whether it's long-term, or chronic. 

At least he's gotten his immigration papers in order. Last time he was afraid of being deported back to the council flats of North Wolverhampton. And now he's in debt. On the other hand, he's a real survivor, tenaciously clings to his daughters, despite tremendous odds. 

He's a generous man, and a good provider. As he was leaving, he clung to me and I whispered words of comfort to him, telling him to cling to the islands of happiness and joy, to expand them, to make them grow. He knew I had been there, in the depths of depression with my parents deaths, and that I too had to pull myself out of hell. I told him no one but himself could help him out of that darkness. He wept and my compassion becomes a temporary island of refuge. 

Wherever you are, Edwin, I wish you well. Godspeed.

Journal entry, 5/29-6/12/96 bbq long v.

5/29 my high school classmate, and sometimes boyfriend, Trygve Tryggestad came over on the 19th and we went for a long motorcycle ride on Willow Road, a dirt road that connects Coleman Valley Road to Highway 116 at Bridgeport, near the river mouth. It's a special secret road that I haven't been on in years.

I figured Trygve wouldn't show up again because I freaked him out last time wanting more than this mutual masturbation thing. And he so afraid of AIDS, so he says or is it also his way of non-commitment? Your Honor, I’m innocent, I didn't actually fuck her. Then, there’s the girlfriend.

I figure I wasn't all that interested in sex, but on a sunlit hillside meadow far from civilization, shades of spring, it seemed the right thing to do to roll in the grass. Hooray hooray, it’s 1 May. Outdoor sex begins today. We had a good day but I needed to work, and didn't succeed. I was so tired.

We went out to Goat Rock and Bodega Head. Each smell was sharp like a door opening into another world. New mown grass, fresh cow plops, amorous skunks, apple orchard in bloom, the odor after rain. Petrichor. One is so much closer to nature on a motorcycle. As we traversed the ditches and potholes, I realized it was somewhat like riding a horse, something that I missed terribly.

5/29 fragment from the Edwin Drummond piece, Stood Up

Trygve, out of the blue, came over an hour before Edwin was supposed to arrive, but I knew Edwin would be late. Trygve threw me down on the unmade bed as I was trying to clean the cabin for Edwin's arrival.

I was a little slow getting started and finished. Anyway Trygve got off quickly and there there are some advantages to walking off, but he thinks he needs me to get off too. Because I excite him when I touch myself. I must be putting out pheromones. Or starring in a porn movie. I was so horny in the morning I already got myself off. I, who can go for weeks and months on end without any interest whatsoever. Scary.

I am the wanton woman. I was too freaked to come again, and Trygve was laying around with his pants lost somewhere in the rubble of clean laundry, telling me how he much loved me. Yeah, lust wears many hats.

And when I said an old boyfriend was coming to visit, he wormed it out of me, he started saying he was going to hang around and bad vibe him. And I was feeling a bit frantic by then and I shrieked, You have no rights! And he said, I hope he doesn't come back for two or three more years, when I told Tryg the last time I had seen Edwin. It really was quite funny. Trygve finally leaves on his motorcycle. I needed a drink.

I barrel out of the cabin. My neighbor George snickers, and asks, The wrong one? as I run past him to take a quick shower. I laugh at my escapades and how it must look on the outside it's either all or nothing. 

6/4 I decided to throw a barbecue of sorts for as a going away present, as it were, to Steve and George. I will really miss these guys. I started out by having dinner with Steve, and George, then Paul came home and joined us, and Mark? joined us too. Then Trygve pulled up on his motorcycle. Wow. Full house. Yeah, I liked the odds. I was holding court with five men, and Edwin had called today. My planets must be in lust.

Trygve and I went for a bike ride to the vineyards at Mark West Creek. Piper Sonoma, or Mark West Vineyards, some of those grapes go to DeLoach as well. Anyway, it was a chardonnay field. We parked the bike and after having ditched the helmets, we were riding free and crawling among the vines. Delicious chill of summer nights against my skin. Trygve taking my breasts in his mouth, the hard green fruit on the vine like tiny nipples, with the promise of what was to come. 

Somehow, outside I don't mind this no muss no fuss, zip up and we're ready to truck. Here I am at 43 and a half, riding through the vineyards in the dark without a bra or knickers, sans helmet, without headlights on a vintage Triumph, and having naughty bits. 

Trygve dropped me off at the doorstep and I went over to visit Steve. I'd had a bit of wine. Wild Hog Pinot Noir and Foxhollow Cabernet, both 1991 vintages. The Wild Hog was a light wine, with the Foxhollow being a robust fruity wine. It was one of those wonderful gossipy summer nights that makes California a special place to live. 

I am no man's woman, and so I enjoy them all on one level or another, getting what I need from each man, not flirting, not acting coy, just being exactly who I am. No games no pretense.

June 12 I'm off to Amsterdam. A new adventure awaits.

An Uneasy Truce: family

My publisher asked if I loved life, for he was held at gunpoint, & he questioned where all that passion came from. I’m not sure which passion he was referring to, living, or the taking of a life. The question came on the eve of my uncle Bill’s death, his funeral was on the day I left for Russia, I didn’t cancel my tickets, I wrongly assumed I was exempt from grief because he was an enemy. He once tried to sell my grandmother's house and land behind her back “for her own good” because she was “getting on, and I was growing up too wild.” 

My uncle Bill made her cry, bullying her with that first-born energy. My grandmother was a strong woman but a son is next to God in an Irish family. In a white-hot rage, I attacked my uncle, pummeling him with my small fists, a skinny 12-year-old who once wanted him dead. I felt nothing when I heard the news of his lung cancer. Now he’s dead, and I was surprised to find myself in a fog, suffering from grief because I discovered that blood is indeed like the cliché—thicker than reason or emotion—no matter how disfunctional the family. I will learn this lesson again when my parents die.

I’ve never been held at gunpoint, other than at a roadblock deep in the Guatemalan jungle—with no witnesses. Does that count? We were lucky to escape with our lives. I have never been held at gunpoint, but I watched the campesinos sleep with studied indifference as the soldiers practiced kickboxing with Uzis slung over their shoulders. I did count how many. 

Back home in the safety of America, I will have nightmares about snipers. In Peru, we came upon the body of a lawyer dumped in front of the Chorillos tunnel in Lima—his crime, he was a brilliant lawyer for the other side. I cannot shake the larger images of war from my mind, it wasn't my own life I was worried about, but the perpetual genocides committed by both factions in the name of liberty—for whom?

I am the grand-daughter of a revolutionary but I keep an uneasy truce with those roots. My grandfather, while working for the San Francisco city jail, shipped suitcases of guns to Ireland during the Rebellion, he knew Parnell and the executed Liam Mellows first hand. We have photos of him and Mellows in the field below our house in Forest Knolls. Did he know Michael Collins? Probably. My mother’s cousin is named after him.

My grandfather and my grand-uncles met in safe basements, filed serial numbers off the guns confiscated by the police force, and shipped them to a contact in New York. To Liverpool, and then onto Cork. A grand-uncle missed one serial number in the muzzle, and the shipment was traced back to my grandfather. When the feds tried to intimidate my grandfather into a confession, he said, just try and prove it, for he knew his law. Some vow there will never be peace in Ireland until the fifth field is no longer in British bondage. My aunt Jane helped airlift Irish kids out of Belfast so they could experience a normal life, if only for a summer.

My grandfather was a thorn in the side of the English. When the Germans fought the British in WW1, he was an acting German Consulate for San Francisco. We don’t know the details, he was a closed-mouthed man. When India struggled for independence, he was involved. When Indians were not allowed to own land, bought Fresno farmlands for them. 

A grateful Jahn Singh (Singh means lion) sent us crates of oranges and raisins every Christmas. My grandfather must’ve sent guns to India too. I came across an engraved invitation from the Indian Consulate dated 1945, inviting my family to the Independence celebration in San Francisco. A thank you letter from (James) Seamus Mooney, an infamous political prisoner of the ’30s who was held responsible for the death of a longshoreman during a union riot (I was surprised to hear a lawyer, speaking of ethics, refer back to the Mooney case). 

My grandfather took the city on, suing them and winning the landmark case (he was his own lawyer, having “read” the law, the Bar didn’t exist) when they discriminated against him, passing him up for promotion to High Sherriff in favor of someone else. My family emigrated to America after the Famine, so, we know no other passion, other than to survive.

My second cousin, a mathematician, was whisked off right out of high school to Chicago, to White Oak, Tennesee, to Alamagordo, then to a PO Box address in New Mexico. When she died of cancer, the story came out.  They said Manhattan Project. Fermi Institute. In Santa Fe, I stood at the bridge where the Rosenbergs were captured, and shivered in the sunlight, Born during this age of Light, I have no choice but to weave the stories. Nor could I stop crying at Los Alamos—what we've done in the name of an idea. Remember the Bay of Pigs? The scars go deep, and I cannot stop writing about it. Bearing witness—it is this writing I cannot get published because it's too dark.

Yes, I am uneasy about the new Russia, as I am about the new Latin America. Now that we've had our cake, we (who really do see the other side of the coin) have the audacity to tell them they can't have it—when we've set up the wish list of ultimate attainment to begin with. I know we can't convince the Olegs of the world—they are incapable of seeing out of the trench of their miserable lives, and there's something in the Slavic character, that will continue to hold them there—the root word “slave” speaks volumes and needs no interpretation. 

 

What traits I admired in Oleg while we were in the Ukraine quickly evaporated on American soil. Oleg's limited vision and inability to look inward for root causes is a microcosm of the whole; have we deluded ourselves into thinking that the ideals of communism (vs. anti-capitalism) or another system could overcome some basic human traits? He seem to think America owed him something, he could sit back and take life easy.

No matter the country, it's the same old story—war between the sexes, only I'm no one's footstool. I love life because I love my art—and every man seems to want that space for himself. And having been the victim of men's desire, I know first-hand of death, having nearly died because of the babies I gave back. I was the product of a divorce; I saw my mother go crazy (and the suicide attempts that followed), an aunt and drunken husband & co. where violence and poverty was second nature to breathing—to know better than to leave myself at the mercy of society as a single mother. I've been the psych wards from the inside and have no intention of becoming an inmate.

I love life because I know how easy it is to abdicate—the way my 17-year-old cousin did at 4 a.m. in downtown Santa Rosa on a Harley at full throttle. Maybe drugs were involved. I don't know. But when he died , I was there with him in my dreams—and I never wanted to wake up to hear the news. I dreamed the darkness, the fog, and the red light of my cousin's death—only we're not supposed to remember these things during our waking hours. My mother banging on the door to wake me with the news, but I refused to waken, because waking was worse than the nightmare. There are things I tell no one, but it comes out in my poetry; sometimes I worry about there being too much death in my work, but I am a witness.

Perhaps that’s why I teach poetry in the schools. I search for the bright ones—and despair when whole classes show nary a shining star. I sometimes wonder why I bother, the work is so exausting, but ultimately I have faith. The brilliant gift of a 2nd grader, Trevor Yeats (great-grand-nephew to William Butler Yeats) sustains me:

This body is to ask
this question of the mind:
Is the sun to shine on the day of my death?
Is the hole in the universe to stay as big?
Tell me, tell me, where is the answer?

Where is the answer to lie in today’s hands?
This is the breath, to breathe this air.

Trevor Yeats
2nd grade,
Higham Family School
Santa Rosa, Ca

© 1996 revised 2000 Maureen Hurley

Up a hill, and down a mountain

I've consumed more than a half bottle of Gamay Beausoleil, I mean Beaujolais, a light 1994 Forestville wine, while watching Two Englishmen Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain. How Celtic, adding 20 feet to the summit of a hill to turn it into a mountain for the geodetic record. Stature matters. The village is in cahoots, and collusion is a Celtic artifact. Colm Meaney is playing Morgan the Welshman. It takes an Irishman to play a Welshman? I'm reminded that I am Welsh on my maternal side, what the Walsh name signifies, does that make me Welsh, or Irish? 

5/13 

CPITS student poetry reading, Barnes & Noble

EARTH DAY (rivers)

I've never written about how
when you're pressed for time,
all your favorite clothes are in a heap
on the bottom on the bathroom floor.
And you've got unexpectedly guests at the door
and there is no back exit, and you're naked.
And you've run out of allergy pills,
your eyes are twin fountains of grief,
and youth is but a drink from the past.
And how all those old people on beaches
in Florida glowing like angry poppies,
are called snowbirds, and for some reason,
the weather is nuts. it's raining again.

I've never written about
how all words are related to each other
as if on a string, and they pull at you,
demanding equal time, and you're left speechless
because in the beginning was logos.

Logic has little to do with the word.
How come logic and art are separated at the hip
by two halves of the bicameral brain,
and that imperfect tunnel channeling them.
Sometimes the traffic jam leaves my words
stranded on the shore, pressing against your eyes
waiting for your lips to liberate them from
the secret reservoir of the blank page.

I've yet to write about way
the horizon line always has one vanishing point,
where all straight lines seem to meet up
on another dimensional plane.
As if getting in the last word in an argument.
I've yet to unlock the secret
of the Indian in the cupboard.
How we say the word cupboard,
the word cup is lost
in the broken crockery of the past.

What about coincidences,
like how a wild fire broke out
on the 10-year anniversary of Chernobyl,
releasing radioactive isotopes back into the air,
the Ukrainian still using the reactor
even though Ground Zero spread 15 miles
in every direction. The children of Belaerus,
in cancer wards, like wise and old men
heated out of their childhood by an angry light
burning graphite fire that raged for weeks,
making me realize the earth is a fragile flower
perhaps plucked too soon, one April
nearly 10 years ago, today,
and unseasonable rain falling,
I marveled how the unstoppable isotopes
knew no boundaries, save lead,
we could hold pencils over our heads,
but there's no longer lead in them,
and the covered porch at the school,
was a useless umbrella.

How that day lead me to the Ukraine
where I found myself eyeing dinner,
as they eyed me back, two carp
in an enameled washpan mouthed small o's,
as my host mother proudly showed me the day's catch.
I had to ask her how far were we from Chernobyl,
where they came from, the Dnieper River,
that drains the watersheds of Chernobyl.
She threw those fish in the trash,
still alive and gasping for water.
My fear did little for the concept of détente.
And the Soviet police followed me everywhere.

How come I've never read about the length of rivers,
the cradle of the Indus,1800 miles,
or Saraswati's knowledge
the Yangtze, and the Yellow River's 2903 silted miles,
where secretive river dolphins hide from extinction,
the Nile 4160 miles, despite the Aswan Dam,
the Amazon 4880 miles, that drains the Andes,
the mighty Mississippi , Old Man River at 3740 miles,
I have seen it at floodstage from the air,
devouring fields and cities with a relentless hunger,
and I've crossed that divide at Graceland.

And closer to home,
the American River, all 300 miles.
One summer I rafted down it,
And the Sacramento River, 320 miles,
how we silted it up searching for gold,
and the Russian River, 100 miles, home river,
Slavianka, Slavic maiden, or Snake River in Pomo,
most of its length I've hiked, swam or canoed.
All those rivers taking us to the sea,
thalatta, our mother, the sea.


With input from Jake Berry and Jack Foley
Earth Day, 22 April, 1996

Poetry reading with Bill Moyers, Sonoma

I spent the morning on PBS radio with three students, and Arthur Dawson had two students reading poetry. Then we practiced with students at Roseland, running off flyers, then dashing off to the Sonoma high school gymnasium to meet PBS investigative journalist and author, cultural icon, Bill Moyers.

Bill Moyers said many of us aspire to be poets and then he read a quote from Gary Snyder saying that the mind interprets the world in so many ways. Tonight we are paying honor to the handwork. Moyers says that poetry is a journey. When you get it right pass it on, said Snyder. 

Bill Moyers recounted that William Stafford said he writes a poem a day. So what if it's not good? I just lower my standards. We laugh. Jimmy Santiago Baca in El Gato, said he wrote a poem to the parole board to get out of jail. Bill had a question: what's poetry done for you? Jimmy Santiago Baca said, Poetry's kept me from being one of America's most wanted.

We re-created the July Readers' Books event for Bill Moyers, with Jane Hirschfield David Bromidge, Tom Centolella, Sam Keen, Arthur Dawson, myself, and our students reading poems, in tribute to Bill Moyers and his PBS series, The Language of Life. It was a tear-moving event.

Bill Moyers praised us, and California Poets in the Schools, what we do in essence, is the heart of poetry. CPITS was the central focus of tonight's events. I emceed the student reading: Little Matthew Merner, a second grader from Higham Family School read with such confidence, I thought I'd burst with pride. And it was a packed gymnasium, all the way to the rafters.

I closed the kids' poetry section with Trevor Yeats' poem, This Body is to Ask. The audience gasped in appreciation. I had tested the audience earlier by telling them that Trevor Yeats was the great-grand-nephew of William Butler Yeats and they all yelled Yeats! I said, OK, you guys passed. I finished the reading with my Poem for Sarah, which Bill Moyers said he liked very much, and asked for a copy of it so I gave him the kid book.

This body is to ask
this question of the mind:
Is the sun to shine on the day of my death?
Is the hole in the universe to stay as big?
Tell me, tell me, where is the answer?

Where is the answer to lie in today’s hands?
This is the breath, to breathe this air.

Trevor Yeats
2nd grade,
Higham Family School
Santa Rosa, CA

I said that the poem was coming out in Voices Israel and, and he asked me to keep in touch. Later Judith, his wife said the next program they are working on is on healing and the mind, and they wanted to use poetry. Yvonne Lyerla told him how I had worked at Napa State Hospital. But I leapt ahead, nervous. 

At the end of my reading I said picking upon a line by young poet, Gabby, who was 10, had said about politics. I closed with: poetry is the ultimate political act. Which at the end, Bill Moyers quoted, building his closing speech around it. I was twice honored. A magical evening. 

We all went to a restaurant across from Murphy's pub where a guitarist was singing the Foggy Dew. My grandfather's favorite song. Earlier this morning I had read something that Bill Moyers had written in his book about folksongs as being poetry, and leading us to poetry. And I thought of how those Irish folk songs led me to poetry, and those circles were completing themselves tonight on several levels. Epiphany after epiphany.

Letter to Valerio Magrelli, Via Condotti, Roma

Letter to  Valerio Magrelli 

Via Condotti, Roma

I write to you while watching the film, Kaos, by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. Finally after months, I was able to track it down and inexplicably in the dialogue, I was compelled to write to you, how your poems shed light—even in an alien tongue. 

Was it because the playwright visited his dead mama where the ghosts still have stories to tell through the fingers of pots? That made me think of your poems. You, a contemporary, or was it because I had been missing Mary Bianchi, my grandmother's best friend?

How in the afternoons she would grate cheese into a large jar, offer us  spongecake and sherry, or raviolis, while they gossiped. Her large hands could kill a rabbit or a chicken quicker than the eye could see, that same hand that patted my cheek each afternoon, coming home from school. 

She walked like a queen. The exact curl of her hands, my grandmother would demonstrate thus. Thous she had lived in America most of her life, Mary always thought of Italy as home. We drank her her wine and ate her chickens and ravioli, and became part of her clan, my family, my mother, aunts and uncles. 

The poets talk about exile, death is always an exile. All writing is a translation, this I know. In the movie Kaos, in the epilogue, Colloquio con la madre, the character Luigi (also the the author) confesses to conversing with his dead mother. He tells of the story of going to Malta one last time because something always eluded him, that yearning, that unnamed memory always goading poets onward into exile. 

Or was it because of the cable that Martin Mooij had sent us in February was delayed, it was his last Poetry International. Would we come? And will you be there, and may I hear the words again in their own native tongue?

April (11-18?)

He had written a poem about archaeology that I loved. I've a letter from him somewhere. He must've told me to see the film.

Valerio Magrelli

Bolinas journal: Catullus and the Celts

Last night Patrick Flynn and I got royally stinkingly drunk, like true Celts, we polished off a bottle of wine each, the bottles night before had less effect. I've been on a Celtic reading binge. The Celtic mythology dictionary I read from cover to cover.

Finding that Virgil and Catullus were probably Celts, Gaulish citizens of the Roman empire, was a shock. My grandmother always claimed that much of Western civilization owed its origin to the Celts, and she was right.

The night before I had dreamed that Patrick and I were making love but he turned into a living skeleton but with flesh. He so gaunt. I remember being open to him and he ignored me twice. Then I lay down on his bed and he lay down next to me and I realize it all wasn't one-sided, but there was so little to his kisses. I woke up before anything much happened. Thankfully.

Herman came over yesterday and we went on one of our famous little hikes. Last night Patrick came over to join us. We had a late dinner and  for dessert, we read Catullus. Herman and I reading two translation versions of the same poem in tandem. It was quite bawdy indeed.

I remember Patrick's eyes widening in surprise, saying, This is 2000-year-old smut. And we all laughed and shrieked and finished off the night with Lucretius and Propertius. What was on their minds? I'd say there was a little more than flirting going on just in the retelling of our drinking exploits from the night before.

We drank each other under the table. And we polished off a bottle of wine with our curry chicken. After dessert, Patrick said, I wish I had some cognac. So I whipped out my flask of Hennessey's and we proceeded to drain the contents dry, staggering across the Mesa into ditches looking for the comet. They were friendly ditches, and kept to themselves, they didn't intrude upon us.

Patrick said to Herman, Never go out looking for comets after drinking brandy with Maureen. And I said why,? Nothing happened, did it? He said, True we didn't even see the comet.

On a roll, we rigged up the tape recorder and listened to Irish and Breton music (tapes I had in my truck) into the wee hours by candlelight. The delight of candles?

Perhaps my comments carried a little more double entendre than his, they were soon glossed over by our reading of Catullus aloud. Certainly a little more flourish was added in the recounting of our evening. We were having a real Celtic Renaissance, eating, drinking, telling tall stories, reciting poetry, and listening to music.

I've been reading my Celtic books all week long. A pleasant interlude in Bolinas where nothing happens and all is possible.

I'm interested in Patrick, and Herman's always interested in me. But truth to tell it's just spring, the hormones are returning to tease the blood. Today I will leave and nothing will have come of it, just the possibility of another daydream.

Patrick was saying as we talked about canning and cordial making, that he misses not having a wife, all those things that families do, winter food preparation which no one does anymore. Herman says, We will all be one family. I add, Yes and you can both be my wives.

Patrick begins to object, laughs, and says, Yes, I guess we are all a little bit like that already. He, who brings me dinners unannounced late at night. This flirtation, if it is one, will probably go no farther than it already has. Herman says Marian, Patrick's sometimes girlfriend, and he have a part-time arrangement. Ok?

I went out on the rowboat this morning, the first time this year. We chained it up with a lock. But kids took it out last year and it got a cracked edge and it leaks a bit more than it used to. The tide was going out, a brisk wind, and we rowed up Bolinas Creek until we ran aground in the mudflats.

Herman told me that Victor diSuvero was in town last week from Tesuque, NM, to read love poetry at Macy's, of all places. His wife has a new perfume out, Poême. I had to laugh because we had noted that it came out in April, which is National Poetry Month. Little did I know that this major perfume would have a connection with a poet that I knew.

Herman says Victor's wife made all her money on horses, and now she invents perfume based on the narcotic odor of Blue Himalayan poppies, and hallucinogenic desert datura. I was expecting Herman to say that she invented a perfume that smells like horse sweat or something, not to be named after poetry. Poême indeed.

Bolinas Journal: Easter Monday

Easter Monday, after last night in Forest Knolls, I headed to Bolinas to escape the cigarette smoke, my aunt is a chain smoker, only to find Herman Berlandt and Verona Seiter in bed like two little mice after midnight. Too tired to return home, I headed off to the monk's cell, a toolshed with a bunk, to sleep like a babe, dreaming of Celtic hero warriors. 

I kept saying in my sleep they forgot about Eochaid. What about him? As if saying his name a millenia after his death would resurrect him. (Eochaid means horse). 

I slept long and hard, perhaps nine hours, I haven't been able to do that in ages. I was glad to be free of the oak pollen dusting my roof, I can at least breathe a little more fully, escaping the itching eyes. Perhaps that is why I dream so hard. Who is Eochaid Feidlech, the high king of Ulster, and why is he haunting my dreams? This is what comes of reading about the ancient Celts until all hours. 

How many years has it been since I took that anthropology class at SF State? 20 years ago, and it's just now jelling? Though much has come to light since 1976, I'm still reading an anthropology book published in 1957, working backwards from the skeptics, and tempering the work of new age nonsense, and wannabes, with a more enduring science.

Herman brings me a cup of coffee. Verona's a little miffed that I had barged in last night, but I didn't want them to think I was a robber. We catch up on gossip Saturday's River of Words event was a six-hour marathon success. 

A San Francisco six-year-old won the national poetry contest. It was about sun and clouds and Susan Sibbit was his poetry teacher. I guess none of my kids placed. Poet Laureate Bob Hass is doing a good job, says Herman.

Now I am more fully able to comprehend the information on the Celts now that I've walked the ancient shores and have swum in the Danube, and visited the museums of Europe, and Eastern Europe and Russia. It all comes into play, what I recognized as Celtic place names, in other languages. I don't understand the many languages of the museums I visited, but art only needs the language of the eye to find recognition. 

To think I have been to Bohemia, the Russian steps, the Ukraine, finding artifacts that spoke to me of my own culture. Connections to the Caucuses, and the Pontic Steppes. Horsemen of the steppes, wagon burials, Bosnia, reference to the Scythians and the Cimmerians begin to fall into place. 

I am a surviving member of the Celtic nations, having something in common with Native Americans, folk customs nearly lost, due to repression by the Anglo world. Always, we come back to the horses as central to our culture. 

And the horseman who came from the East to destroyed Gimbutas' matrilineal culture? Now I must read of this too. Do our ancestral memories contain the memory of treks across the steppes, on tarpaulins in southern Russia, Indo-European warriors from the Asiatics steppes?

THALASSA, THALASSA

I begin this last day of March with 

Malachi Mulligan chanting to Daedalus, 
thalassa, thalassa, the sea the sea, 
she is our great mother. 
The morning echoing 
the Greek winedark sea. 
We each pray in our own fashion. 
The beauty of it is that I 
can't come back to this place.
Not even twice. Not even once.

3/31 1996

MIRRORED WRITING

Books, too often, 

are written out of other books. 

Poems, out of other poems. 

Progeny responding to itself 

like a profusion of warped mirrors, 

reflecting only what is already known. 

Go directly to the source, 

and don't trust the poem 

begotten of other poems, 

with no prima materia 

to distinguish it from the complacency 

of what is already recorded.

3/31/1996

Thalatta! the comet's tail

I begin this last day of March with Malachi Buck Mulligan chanting Thálatta! Thálatta, the sea, she is our great mother. The morning echoing of the Greek-tight sea.

We each prey on her in our own fashion.
That's the beauty of the slime. The snot-green sea.
Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, 
fretted his heart. Ate at his soul.
The scrotumtightening sea.Where is Dedalus when you need him?

The last time I read these lines, I was alone in a Hawaii hotel room, broiled lobster-red by the sun, angered by my pale Irish skin on a beach where generals one stood directing war traffic in the place of many springs, Waikiki. They dispatched the warriors that never returned home.

Thálatta! the snot of the sea. Stromatolites, blue-green algae are the first sex.

Olamphalos. The comet has business in another sector of the universe. 

We are measuring the age of the universe by the age of water evaporating from the comet's tail. Spit in the ocean. Measure the relative age of spirit and the ocean. Thálatta! The sea is our mother. That comet is avoiding its solar orbit.
The mother of water in its tail, the origin of life as we know it, is gathered from the depths of deep space; 4.25 billion years worth of water vaporing across our sky each night. Thálatta! The sea is our mother.

3/31/1996
added & rev. 11/17

CPITS reading, San Rafael

CPITS meeting at the Falkirk Center. We're reading at Open Secret in San Rafael, Steve Garber, Toby Kaplan, Arthur Dawson, and myself read to an audience of four in the temple room, a wild and wonderful room with Ganesh and Buddha, and hundreds of Tibetan singing bowls.

Steve's wife was there with their daughter and though he occasionally philanders through the ranks of CPITS poets, Toby says they remain committed to the relationship because of the child. 

I look at the little girl, she's beautiful and looks Irish, I say to Steve, We are mostly Irish, especially when we fight, said Steve. Funny, I resemble that. I could tell instantly that she was Irish. Why is it that we Irish can spot each other so easily? 

Of course, no one can tell that I'm Irish. I tease Susan Wooldridge about being Jewish when she, Steve and Tobey all look at each other. Susan saying to Tobey and Steve: I didn't know you were Jewish! We laugh. Their blue eyes dancing, I laugh, saying, Everyone thinks I'm Jewish, and I'm 100% Irish. Susan instructs me to turn around, and slaps my butt, and says, Yup you're Jewish. 

Thursday night I'm going over to Tobey's for Passover. Someone asks, how do you get invited? and the tradition of the CPITS poets Passover dinner is born.

ON THE DEATH OF MARAT SADE XXX errors in text

Marat asleep, or murdered in the bath,
it makes no difference.
JL David's classical references were made,
upheld, perspective upheld perspective,
keeping us all in our places.
We are invited to view him, like voyeurs,
but are not allowed in. The painting is a wall.

The viewer is held in lower esteem than the artist.
The hierarchical distancing of art
that instructs, rather than just is. Or is-be in Irish.

Is it true Saint Augustine was the first writer
to scribe from the point of view of self question mark,
the "I am" that we are so eagerly following 1500 years later?
Is there nothing beyond this I am?
To think I blamed this Descartes
for moving us into the realm
where we separate ourselves from nature,
when, in reality, it began at the fall of Rome
eleven centuries of civilization
disappearing in a generation.
It might as well of been an afternoon
on the other side of the Empire.

Was the empire staring back like a temporal wormhole,
the proverbial eyes of the wolf both suckling and on suckled?
Remus and Romulus practicing cross speculation.
Milk mother who was Rome of the seven hills.
There are different opinions of course,
the window of the eye, nonetheless myopic hidden agendas
coloring the perspective of the victor
in a fit of self-aggrandizement, calling it history.

Such is the story of the Celts,
always on the wrong side of history.
And the civilized world can't understand
the anger of our politics,
why the Sinn Fein, forced into a bed, not of our own choosing.  
or the political annihilation and trivialization of our culture,
except on St. Patrick's Day, then everyone's Irish.
We've even lost Halloween to the great galaxies of culture.
On the other side of our belief exists Oisín, and Tír-na-n´Og,
land of the eternally young, on these clement shores.
But age finds its way into my mirror,
reminding me of how worship is limited and ageist.

At 70, Tony Curtis quips,
can you imagine being with a woman
old enough to be my wife?
As long as they're combined age
doesn't equal hundred
they can hold onto the illusion of youth
in the land of youth.

Jack is wearing a Guinness shirt. It's in Gaelic.
I can make out a few words. Darkness. St. James Gate.
He says clearly it is another onomatopoetic word,
the sound of a gate latch closing.
I tell him of my letter to Dear Abby
who claimed Saint Patrick was both Roman and English.
Someone says he was Welsh,
Britt, Breton or Welsh he was still a Celt.
The darkness sliding down the tongue
to the gateway of the word cock.
Words unloosing from the tongue agitate the air
until the darkness capitulate and we find ourselves
circling the the molten eddy of meaning.
Simultaneous worlds collide encircling us
between their parameters leaving me to wonder what if.

If what if, meaning if only we had met sooner,
but the XXX would have the positions would've been different.
The gate would've been locked
our hosts are on what's print something  XXXX
safe from each other's words.

ASCII hell struck with this piece, this is what I was able to rescue. Third page of notes is missing

THE OTHER SIDE

On the other side of my heart 

there's a riverbed that lost its way,

seeking egress while I sleep. 

I wake exhausted, drowning in unborn images,

seeking a perfection of words 

in a translated world of incomplete thought

littered with random meaningless things.

The gypsy guitar is more articulate 

than all the imprisoned pens 

in yuppie briefcases, 

but this is the age of laptops.

I too have been guilty 

of keeping company 

with my warm PowerBook, 

displacing the fireside cat, 

we can no longer can afford 

the luxury of fireplaces,

trading them for thermostats 

and controlled environments. 

No time to get close to the elements.

I've never told anyone how I 

once dragged my computer to the hot tub,

despite the fear of electrocution 

or peacock feathers sprouting from my screen.

This wounded lover lost in fruitless daydreaming. 

I felt like Marat Sade composing in his bath, 

you know that painting by Jacques Louis David, 

where he's frozen in that moment in time.

Where we see him naked, and forever dead.

27 March 1996
Alexander Valley School
slightly revised for clarity 12/16

AT THE DANCING GOAT CAFÉ

At the Dancing Goat Café 

I suck my cappuccino down 

and write these lines.
The fan is mirrored in

the thick bottom of the glass
like an angry river with nowhere to go,
these words burst the dam.
I tell my students how I'm writing a long poem
that won't finish itself and so,
writer's block finishes my thoughts
before they take shape,
allowing no prisoners.

It's been a year and a day,
time for the enchantment end.
I've taken to find finished
finding my orphaned words
loose in coffee shops:
familiarity breeds contempt.

Someone asked how long is it?
I answer 36 pages, after Hiroshige—
he made 36 views of Mount Fuji.
There is there is an audible gasp
but they think one pages long.
We talk about the importance of poetry,
how poets are renegade philosophers.
The philosopher's camera needs no film,
no silver nitrate no, no digital chip,
no darkroom, only the prima materia of the universe
to tear down the walls that separate us
from ourselves and from each other.
The notes of malaguena rains down upon our ears
creating a scaffold for the ear
to climb to the fan circling the room.

27 March 1996
Alexander Valley School

GRAVE MARKERS

How come no one ever writes about
the roadside grave markers,
places where people have departed
to that undiscovered country
marked by crosses and plastic wreaths
in case they might want to return.
This place of death, more equivalent
than the place of birth, to memorialize.
There are too many markers
on my favorite stretches of road,
a sobering reminder of the temporality of life.

How come there are no words in English
for these places of personal departure?
Is there a word in Spanish? Liminal?
How come no one ever sees the family
of the dearly departedm planting marigolds there,
refreshing them each Dia de los Muertos,
drawing from the tradition of the Celts
and the Indian together
in their current memorization of death's doors.

Do we go on to another existence
or is there nothing but nothingness?
The denial of departure spawning
eternal generations of ghosts and philosophers
baling forever to their point of departure.

It makes me think of geometric progression
and the diminishing planes of perspective,
seemingly coming to a finite point
but always fooling the eye,
like a long hard road in the desert.
Seemingly vanishing into a lake of the sky,
only to go on and on like infinity itself,
until the edge of the continent ,
makes it define its boundaries.
Marigolds and skulls made of sugar for the dead.

I've never written about the elemental reduction
of my mother into bleached coral reefs
aligning the beaches of paradise.
How my mother wanted the ocean
to be her last road, but I've kept her in a box
all these years, a prisoner of my own inability
to articulate grief, while my father is moldering
in a lead-lined casket in the city of the dead.
Even if I could pour some whiskey over his bones,
the lead denies his egress
into where we come from,
our mother, the earth.

I think of Carolyn Kizer's mother
lost in the closet full of size 11 shoes
for a small eternity. Banishment
takes such a strange forms.
My mother lounges in a cardboard box,
and easy prison to break out of
for the more sentient inhabitants
of that room.

27 March 1996
Alexander Valley School

WHY I WRITE

Because these words find me wanting,

a place real in the eye of the beholder,

I imagine landscapes filled with flowers, 

with names known only in books.,

Places that seem so real
I revisit them in dreams.

They might exist between
the pages of a book, 

or suspended midway between
the lips of a lover, leading me
to real places in the world.

The intersection of my wanderlust 

is in memory of my grandmother's
unexpressed desires.

She, who raised eight children, 

had no life other than squalling babies 

crawling in the iron red dust, 

eating bugs and litter with impunity, 

later eating their words, and others, 

as they, and their children after them, 

practiced the hunting stance 

with well aimed arrows, and epithets,

not realizing the enemy was also within,

forgetting the thickness of blood 

in their thirst for ammunition.

27 March 1996
Alexander Valley School

BECAUSE THESE WORDS

BECAUSE THESE WORDS

Because these words find me wanting

a place real in the eye of the beholder,

an imagined landscape filled with flowers 

with names known only in books.

Places that seem so real 

I revisit them in dreams 

though they might exist only

between the pages of a book, 

or suspended in mid air 

from the lips of one to another,

leading me to real places in the world.

The intersection of my wanderlust 

is taking form in the memory
of my grandmother's unexpressed desires.

She, who raised eight children, 

had no life, other than squalling babies 

crawling in the iron rich mud,

children eating bugs with impunity,

and later eating their words 

as they, and their children after them, 

practice the hunters stance

with well aimed epithets,

forgetting that the thickness of blood 

is more holy than water.

In their thirst for ammunition, they,

not realizing the enemy was within.

I imagine the breadth of history's story 

when I came to realize the outrageous arrows 

flew unheralded through the centuries 

to find their mark within. Genetic memory.

assuaged by the knower's ink 

blossoming into words.

27 March 1996 Alexander Valley

Comet sighting

Happy Spring! Nearing midnight I immediately found it in the sky, a fuzzy light, looking a little off-center. I could really see the tail, a real comet, though it was fairly wispy. Imagine, all over the world, people are looking for the comet with an unpronounceable name: Comet Huakutake.

25 March: Last night was supposed to be the big night for viewing the comets, or should I say, comet singular, as they're exceedingly rare. It was cold yesterday as if we were having more snow. Storm clouds, and biting wind reminds me of Russia.

At the Sebastopol flea market, a Russian woman mutters something in Russian: squelca denge (how much), and yells Tree dollar! to the Mexican woman selling clothes, neither leaving the comfort of their native language. Amazingly, they seem to understand each other well enough to do business. Tree is close enough to three and, tres, and dollar, no matter how thick the accent, is an international word.

Blank verse

I keep forestalling the inevitable, writing in my new journal because a few pages were left blank in my previous journal. And so, a stalemate ensues, and there is nothing to be done, except to take the plunge. Fragmentary scratches posing as writing, an extension of thought separated by commas. A verbal shoutout at the OK Corral where the only thing left sanding are the fence rails draped with ghost words.