Ivan Arguelles

r o c h e s t e r     43.

“There is no possibility of remembering what has been found and understood,

 and later repeating it to oneself. It disappears as a dream disappears.

Perhaps it is all nothing but a dream.” 
― P.D. Ouspensky

a sole crow flying across the horizon

November grey clouds shot through with light

argent twilight sifted from the Olympian mansions

what is the augury here what fatal presentiment

lamentations kyrie eleisons requiescat in pace

you name it like the time stumbling you realized

the immensity of the tragedy the size of alcohol

spreading the veneer of sleep across the lawn

already anesthetized by evening’s Italy

and where the fossil fish are so are the mummies

and the underground world of arches and tombs

inscriptions in long hand Latin grieving losses

waterways of invisible ink moonlight lexicons

echolalia of the damned how is it to sleep

forgetting where the button holes are

we’re going to be in high school forever

Sanskrit books arrive in the mail almost daily

a dictionary of Old Marathi Greek through reading

colloquial Sinhalese Joe, what’s the secret

you can’t just hide behind the willow tree

Janey’s Latin third and fourth year revised ed.

a formula for aging without superseding yourself

editions of Thucydides Suetonius and Tacitus

with Italian translation on facing pages

the dusty alley between 7^th and 8^th streets

where the world mapped in 1903 was discovered

Indian Territory the Yukon frozen in its radio

the Green Hornet the crepuscular nowhere

Joe, get that look off your face you’re going to faint

what’s in your eye you’ve got another nose bleed

lie back on the grass and let the clouds take over

sky is just an inch away and we’re There

in Ouspensky’s fourth dimension eternity

where everything that has been named cannot

be remembered for what it was not even you,

Joe, sitting there inside a camera eye developing

Light and the fractions that compose the universe

of Number and Sound trying to understand that

falling asleep in the elbow of inebriated angels

Nepalese shaman oral texts Śri Guru Granth Sahib

the lamp has turned to stone the leaves are sere

it’s all transitory, man, the coming the going

the Avestan hymn to Mithra the garden myth

and the story about the lost finger and other

aerial feats promised in lapis lazuli sky writing

it’s in your eyes in the blurred vision nuages

floating across the thin volume of early verse

smatterings of everything borrowed from time

immemorial and still wondering how can it be,

Joe, the verisimilitudes of mask and persona

solitary crow lost in the November horizon

pilot lights on in an otherwise empty chamber

who is coming home and who isn’t coming home

a book opened to the part where it says

from now on you’re on your own, ashes

what bitters near the end a frustration memory

faded the gold of absent sunsets a legend

paling in the wan of a house of 13 moons

madness etched in each vanishing dream girl

what else but the Sarvāngī of Gopāldās

or the Gadyarāja to peruse of a future time

is it the powder blue car whose winter has come

is it Nathan Milstein performing Mendelssohn

is it Peter Thomas pounding the drums like Gene Krupa

you tell me, Joe, whether it’s Mel Tormé singing

Moonlight in Vermont or just another dead evening

counting the headlights that double the corner

bearing away phantoms of remembrances things

caught unawares in the drain pipe of oblivion

small envelopes of hair darkened windows snowflakes

a part of the mind where no light can enter

is it to leave home once and for all vomiting

over the map guide of the Etruscan necropolis

and a deep voice ascends resonating from a depth

bearing in its tremolo the resined violin bow

which is nothing more than the faint echo of cherubim

who have been hung out to dry in the Mayo Clinic’s

top floor where the x-rays of years past fade

exhibiting your tiny lungs, Joe, your ancient breath

fossil light chiaroscuro of a soul fleeting

fleeing in a delicate fugue into the airy Unknown

Mallikā-e-Hindustān

oblong excursions through early summer nights

to find the dead freshly interred beneath the skin

evening on the banks of the Jamuna

                 when the sands cool off

and from afar the muezzin's dying voice

a prayer a summons a curse in the dark

Nur-Jahan! it's the last time I'll speak to you

red ink secures posterity in the symbol of your name

a scrawl in the insect world of scripts

your face buried in the pillow of desire forever

is it possible that such secrets are etched

like fire in the heart for a whole lifetime

do we ever come back to find ourselves

void as empty balloons floating in the Bay

Light of the World! what is conscious

what is unconscious wherein lies the difference

a sheet wrapped around remembrance of grass

lying alone in the endless dark of no recovery

thirty two years after the fact I am filled with you

the Ganges evaporates and elephants in hordes

pass into the torpid mists of oblivion

Rajputs and Sikhs put to the sword daily

it is eternity in the empty vial of Opium

it is never because you are brought to mind again

an Unfortunate Woman a photograph of light

just as it evolves into something even brighter

aeroliths bamboo groves the invention of Spain

bodas de sangre flamenco witless speech acts

the entre'acte called les Pleurs d'Orphée

an ovarian tragedy to be complete in 4 years

what was sleeping in the stone if not the child

who is the water of the memory of everything

I appeal to the Hare Krishna of the ants

who have long since devoured your mouth

I appeal to Vertumnus god of gardens

I appeal to the goddamned Wheel of Fortune

that took you away almost unawares

still puzzled over the scars of your becoming

from the Himalayas to Sri Lanka's verdant lush

from the folds of the Deccan to harsh neon Mumbai

Empress of Hindustan it was all in the palms

of your vertiginously painted and dancing hands

the clouds that redden suffused with human blood

the practice of planting irises in the sleeping eye

hamadryads and centaurs mythically composed

to sing the evanescent the incandescent chord

the one that bound you invisibly to fate's cart

and pulled you under in a storm of dust

ancient animals came to peer with dead eyes

at the pond which was the depth of your own skin

goddess I thought you were a yellow swirl

a flaming hibiscus caught in a tangle of black hair

a brilliant thread running through blue lotus

tying it to the seven heavens of silk incarnadine

does language matter do words decompose

only to form newer unknown words of ether

what does sense mean in the window's silenced ear

where is the painting with the billowing trousers

what is the fragrance that defines the edge of time

is it the shampoo that washed your miles of hair

is it the drug that rocked through your paltry veins

trying to stop the rushing engine of the cosmos

in the immensity of night does anyone have a home

or is it just the crazy wandering of constellations

blowing out the finite screw that holds in place

the igneous moment of undying love

goddess you seemed to be for a golden instant

smothered in the circular embrace of your heat

I took in all the worlds embedded in sweat and sperm

myself became transformed for you a divine fuck

today is nowhere a vapor an instamatic flash

nobody is coming or going trees are powdery shade

sky is nothing an aggregate of azure swarming

distance is consummate with its tempest of bees

evening by the banks of the Jamuna's cooling sands

architecture of time crystallizes in the remote vedic vowel

unseen the entities we used to be renew the steps

that lead to the burning ghats and smoking disappear

                                           for nikki arai in memoriam

                                           again

10-03-14

© Ivan Arguelles

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