The Virus Will Tell Us
“The virus will
tell us,”
—Dr. William Schaffner, preventive
medicine specialist,
Vanderbilt University Medical School
What
and when the virus will count
us
in on looms beyond normal
telling.
Sure, it will tell us
when
it has had its fill
when
it’s sated for a while
ready
to snooze. Can it tell us
tho,
why we forget the stars’
numbers,
their names, forget
to
listen to the trees? Will it tell us
why
that matters when it comes to
tell
us? Will it tell us
the
name of the sound of air
when
the Bay warms rushing
through
the birch? Perhaps the Virus
will
tell us what we want now
that
closed shops gape at empty
streets,
shuttered schools
harbour
only echoes, arenas
mourn
in the dark. The virus
will
tell us when it has had
its
fill but will it tell us
does
it relish us, smack
its
viral chops as we do
over
the meat we eat
with
such relish? Will it tell us
why
it has come to stalk us
haunting
dog park, playground,
concert
hall, bar?
Tiresias,
trickster, verge
being,
emerging between life
and
the other thing
that’s
not death but not living
either?
Will it tell us what
it
sees in the grey lands, counting
out
lives, beads on a string
White Pine, or, Hitchhiking on
the Road to Xanadu – a short sonnet sequence
—after A.J. Casson
1
The warrant of the pilgrimage
lies in
the heart of chaos’s
incongruous jumble
a thick farrago, a veritable
din
out of which miraculously
tumble
clarities of outline against
the sky’s
abrupt modulation, varied
tones
and erratic constellations of
eye’s
making, empires erected in
some zone
beyond reckoning where at a
distance
a dead dog may smell like
elder flowers
and strange unfolding
circumstance
of its composition sways &
towers
in mind etched form’s
immaculate torsion
yields the force of an
unearthly portion
2
Desultory brilliance in a
falcon’s
eye sparks unEarthly portion’s
portentous
sediment among unpromising
scraps
beneath the crust of facts
& contentious
vestiges of obliterated light
from uncanny substances —
curious
fragments of the horned moon’s
midnight
shadow entangles voluminous
bulk, such heave in
fountainous over
flowing spatial occupation
insists
luminous verbal residue is all
you can hope for, that
unexpected Kiss
a passing moment of dermal
contact
leaves all there is to know of
Time intact
3
Ocular spectra in a luminous
brain
do the Can-Can — for which
occasionally
people were arrested — which
doesn’t explain
molded & radiant form in
the night
or failed rhyme’s delicious
delight
in missed cues, but may
introduce errant
throng from nether depths
teeming huddle
and unloose it in pantalettes
open
crotch high kick revelations,
the chill
awful red of morning’s hoisted
frills
which botches earnest attempts
to inscribe
arboreal haecceity, still
& calm
in darkness fades as line of spreading
peach
incises the day’s sedulous
breach
4
The wild dance of death fire, corpo santo
to those in the know, does not
involve kicks
some crazy licks, or run of
the mill rhymes,
just skips about relics of
sensation
makes the point glow
sufficient to light up
tree’s proximate company,
intimate
alembic of bewildered
vigilance
and fecundated parallels’
eerie
congeries’ forgotten simulacra
render rhyme ambivalent but
lurking
still in reveries of polar
fragments’
fracture & leery estimates
of predictable ends
terminating
in some dreary abdication of
next
5
Ridiculous litter of labouring
mountains halts & jars
incipient juice
scatters abstruse thinking all
over place
in loose configurations
arbrous
and branchy on a collage of
Archaen
plates, crustal fragments,
& suture zones left
bare by mile high ice &
coalescent
accumulations erupted from pre
Cambrian vents where barbarous
vignettes
are visible yet in bared
roots’ rock clutch
and penetrant phantasms’
rampant
heat lightning plays along
untraveled margin
where rhyme struggles to find
footing adequate|
to companionate neighbour in
the dark
6
Assimilating energies transect
perpetual adventure’s unknown
fringe,
precipitous transit, that
dubious
borderland of unfamiliar sway
but can find no rhyme anywhere
able
to ease translation of
uncinctured time’s
outer verge & hither edge,
a ruckus
of destabilized zone’s
adamantine
encounters with wild luster
seeps into
gnarled kiss, tree’s
hieroglyphic passage to
and from kindred knowable
beyond, Alter
Orbis, in the surge & song of
some Bay
ice gouged out of stone in
retreat from sun’s
return, a hole, a cold, blue
remainder
7
A ruckus of crows cries encouragement
raucous joy, & hunting
tips, flit along
stoney verge of artless
felicities,
magic precision while rhyme
darts among
pine gist shadows, fleeting
moon etched ocular
heave & needlewind thrum, seeks connection
in time, a sign of further
coherence
amid the wreckage of this
clime’s monstrous
hunger & hollow minds heap
up charred ruins
of ancient forests, poisoned
springs, & piles
of dead kids in wake of never enough,
a state crows observe with a
sense of dread
as a star passes over the
moon’s horns
pale & wan as a bled-out
unicorn
8
—for Cass
The eye in the line doesn’t
lie, it can’t
miss, one way or the other,
the measure
of its own tones, here grey
& white pleasure
scattered along rock beach,
even if light,
aslant, glances off that
exquisite tact
with text required when ending
differs
from its end as radiant names
jostle,
contend, sound filaments,
glittering and
lucid, longing to connect with
specious
present’s occult beauties,
wave lap, roar,
polyphone vibrations,
recollections’
long xylophone evenings,
throats slaked with song
roused to resist with pine’s
precise twist,
architectonic embrace with the
wind
9
Twilight realm of thought, intermundium,
pools in the branches &
clings to needles,
shadow within shadow, teases,
wheedles
silly rhymes from the tree’s ingenium
where fragmentary hints of
spectres flash
through disclosures of goes without saying’s
latitudes lost to endless
obeying,
nebulous fastnesses &
haunted deeps,
beyond rhyme’s brash
expectation of end’s
ending, seep from astral seas
crash
on the stones into ocular
spectra
kick high & raise jocular
skirts to terminal
fixation which is unable to
smell
tree’s exhalation, fragrance
founds its measure
10
The exchange of luminous
influence
drives the poem’s magic to
distilled
play of shadow & light
across dawn’s awful
revelation, opening confluence
of interruptions, shards of
unassimilated
facts, & the old doctrine
of magnetic
emanation compel alphabetic
arrangements of secret deeps
iterated
in Pine’s memory & rhyme’s
repeated
insistence on chiming in with
surprised
connections demand trust in habit’s place,
uncertain incised & meted
out in
unearthly portions with no
beyond —
wave washed stones chatter,
the sun responds
