English Poems

John Gordon Boyd
died on the birthday
of three remarkable, and remarkably different, writers:
Heinrich Heine, Kenneth Patchen, Ross McDonald

John, too, was just as remarkable, blessed with an inherent “graciousness”
and with extraordinary eyes & ears…

I think of two texts
on the grievous occasion of his death:

“Religion does not help me.
The faith that others give to what is unseen,
I give to what I can touch, and look at.
My Gods dwell in temples
made with hands.”
— Oscar Wilde, in De Profundis

where the car hit him, fireweed sprang with
blazons of fennel

and umbels
of dill fell
through the spokes of a wheel

on Whistun holiday to the sun, Denton
Welch spun a web in his crushed cycle,

sat in the seat, spine curled up like a spider —

and spied: “saw
the very drops of sweat glittering frostily
between the shoulder blades”

of a lad

I. “If the Night Could Get Up & Walk”

I cannot put my hand into
a cabbage to turn
on the light, but

the moon moves over
the field of dark cabbage and an
exchange fills
all veins.

The cabbage is also a globe
of light, the two globes

defunct
list of
common
names
proxy
for the
bearer

nor’ wester
buffets gear
reach
into our
canisters

“Cassirer”
drawn and
sewn into
my lapels
assembly of
illegal men
peril will
not know

two
Roman
slaves rain
the rage
passes
through our
teeth into
interior
pneumatic
doors

my evening
of moniker
stamped
upon boxes
of envelopes

water
relives
reservoir

boat
bottom
draft
displaced

°

lineal
thought
backward
body

no one
knows
the brains
I am now

tree
an oar
origin

joints ruptured
soak in
deep ink

°

wallpaper
remnant
flower
float

chandelier

brief case
hundred words
logged

erode
my
Arabic

congestion
of resin

person

She wakes up in the afterlife in a fog. Unaware that she had an enemy, she was unprepared when the villain approached to deliver a fatal head injury. Part of her soul is stuck in her tomb, but as is common, it has a fake door where intercourse can occur, while another part of her soul begins a new adventure in form and in name. Always a reticent young woman, in premature death her speech-producing anatomy becomes irrepressible as she tries to render her circumstance comprehensible.

Amarantha sweet and fair
Ah braid no more that shining hair!
As my curious hand or eye
Hovering round thee let it fly.

Let it fly as unconfin’ d
As its calm ravisher, the wind,
Who hath left his darling th’ East,
To wanton o’ er that spicy nest.

Wise emblem of our politic world,
Sage snail, within thine own self curl’ d;
Instruct me softly to make haste,
Whilst these my feet go slowly fast.

Compendious snail! thou seem’ st to me,
Large Euclid’ s strict epitome;
And in each diagram dost fling
Thee from the point unto the ring;
A figure now triangular,
An oval now, and now a square;
And then a serpentine dost crawl,
Now a straight line, now crook’ d, now all.

When Love with unconfinèd wings
Hovers within my Gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the Grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fettered to her eye,
The Gods that wanton in the Air,
Know no such Liberty.

The smashed weirdness of the raving cadenzas of God
Takes over all of a sudden
In our time. It speaks through the voices of talk show moderators.

It tells us in a ringing anthem, like heavenly hosts uplifted,
That the rhapsody of the pastoral is out to lunch.
We can take it from there.

We can take it to Easy Street.
But when things get tough on Easy Street
What then? Is it time for realism?

And who are these guys on the bus
Who glide in golden hats past us
On their way to Kansas City?