Poetics and Ruminations

Three Ekphrastic Terzanelles

Spiders, Long Island, Maine. by
 Elizabeth Burke

 

A PAGE OF SPIDERS

 

The spiders seem to want to crawl away,

Out of the drawing with its printed notes

Onto my desk top where, perhaps, there’s prey

 

For them to draw into a net that floats.

But I am building this fleeting cage of letters

Out of the drawing with its printed notes --

 

I have no wish to be the prey in fetters,

Although I have no other choice, of course,

Except to build this floating cage of letters

 

To fend the spiders off until remorse

For the misprisions of my days is lost

In spinning filaments without recourse.

 

The price for living – an atrocious cost,

A page of debts that cannot be repaid,

For the misprisions of our days are lost

 

In filaments of time gone retrograde.

The spiders seem to want to crawl away --

A page of debts that cannot be repaid --

Onto my desk top where, of course, they’ll prey.

  

PAST SOUNDS OF SINGING

“…his poems are like singing from the cemetery.” – Rhina Espaillat

 

When we stroll out by evening we are wary

Of our route. We would not like to hear

The sounds of singing from the cemetery.

 

Although we know there is not much to fear,

We whistle past the churchyard lying there

On our route. We would not like to hear

 

The sounds of singing burdening the air,

Emerging from the boneyard on our course.

We whistle past the churchyard lying there --

 

We wish to hear no aria; even worse,

A chorus of old voices made of stones

Emerging from the boneyard on our course.

 

We care no whit for what the wind intones

As we go strolling through the evening shades,

No chorus of old voices made of stones

 

Should shadow us through streets or country glades

When we walk out at dark. We should be wary

As we go strolling through the evening shades

Past sounds of singing from the cemetery.

EVENSONG

On lines from Dylan Thomas’ “The Hunchback

in the Park.”

 

Until the Sunday somber bell at dark

Made dozing tigers jump out of their eyes

By casting its summer song over the park,

 

Drenching us daylight creatures with surprise,

Startling the nurses near the willow grove --

Until the tigers jumped out of their eyes

 

We had no notion it was time to leave.

But evening calls and it is time to go.

Until next weekend there is no reprieve,

 

For we must work or study and the zoo

Must bide its time among its ponds and fountains.

Evening summons us. It is time to go;

 

Shades lengthen, shadows fall out of the mountains

Onto the streets where we must travel home.

We may not spend more time with ponds and fountains

 

But travel the ways and byways we have come.

We must arise, begin to travel home

Because the Sunday somber bell at dark

Casts its evensong across the park.

 

 

 

Alfred Moskowitz, R.I.P.

Rhina Espaillat and her husband Alfred Moskowitz

 

NEWBURYPORT, MA: On the evening of February 27, 2016, in Newburyport, Mass., Alfred Moskowitz passed away in his home on Charron Drive, where he had lived since late 1990.

Born in the Bronx, N.Y., to Rumanian immigrants David and Mary Moskowitz, Alfred was educated in New York public schools, served as an infantryman on the European front during WW II, returned home in 1945 to attend NYU on the G.I. Bill, and went on to teach Industrial Arts in the NYC public schools for 30 years.

In 1952, he married Rhina P. Moskowitz, with whom he had two sons, and brought up a third. He took a highly active part in the formation of the United Federation of Teachers, and in demonstrations for civil rights, desegregation of the schools, and other liberal social causes. In 1990, the couple moved to Newburyport, Mass., from New York City. For many years Alfred Moskowitz was an active member of the Newburyport Art Association, and of the News & Views Club of Newburyport, among other organizations.

He is survived by his wife, son and daughter-in-law, Philip and Lauren of Georgetown; son and daughter-in-law, Warren and Lori of Ipswich; foster-son, Gaston and daughter-in-law, Colleen of New York; as well as grandchildren, Evan, Ilana, Ambrose, and Perry; brothers, Marvin and Howard; sister-in-law, Gayle; nephews, Gregg, Brad and Keith; and nieces, Janine and Diana.

FOR ALFRED MOSKOWITZ

When last I visited Alfred and his wife
We spent the evening talking about his art.
Sculpture was his passion, the largest part
Of his endeavor, his creative life.

Rhina is a writer. She and I
Became the best of friends. Her poetry
Shows readers how the heart and mind can fly
Through the Muses' ever-greening tree.

Now Alfred's mind and heart have taken wing
And she is left alone to write her songs --
She feeds them to the wind: it, too, can sing
Even when her heart breaks and belongs

To breezes in the needles and the limbs
Of brooding woodlands that can echo hymns.

-- Lewis Turco

Zombie, from A BOOK OF BEASTS

 

THROWBACK THURSDAY

 

 

 Image by Louise Dickinson-Brown

 

ZOMBIE

 By Lewis Turco

 

Outside the door, the noises of the sleugh.

indoors, the tropic heat, the potted ferns,

a palm stuck in the corner near the couch.

She waits and picks at lint. Her fingers run

through her hair. "It's nerves, just nerves," she says,

but still she listens.

                               And then the sudden knock.

The potted palm sweats. Its leaves ripple.

She cannot speak. Then — "Yes, who is it?" She

gets up and smooths her skirt. Another knock.

She goes toward the door. The mirror there

beside the clock shows her what she must see:

a plain young woman with faded eyes, her hair

a neutral shade. "What does he want with me?"

she tells the glass.

                              "Who's there?" she asks again.

"I've come," he says. She reaches for the knob.

Her palms are sweating: they slip as her fingers turn.

She pauses — pulls.

                                 He stands there on the stoop,

his eyes too bright and blank. His puffy skin

is white as mallow in the dimming light.

He has no hair. His body is too stiff.

His mouth gapes as he looks at her. She starts,

 

but catches herself. His hat is in one hand;

the other goes to his tie. He clears his throat.

"We'd better hurry," she says, "or we'll be late."

She turns off the light, picks up her coat, her purse,

and moves toward the door. He stands aside,

closes the door, and follows her into the night.

 

     From an unpublished manuscript, A Book of Beasts, poems by Lewis Turco, illustrations by Louise Dickinson-Brown; the poems may be found in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007. ISBN 978-1-932842-19-7, cloth; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, paper. Also available in a Kindle edition.

Yeti, from A BOOK OF BEASTS

 

THROWBACK THURSDAY

 

 

 

Image by Louise Dickinson-Brown

 

YETI

 By Lewis Turco

 

We do not know whether the tales are true

nor, if they are, why he will not come down

out of the high slopes and the winter peaks

where he has lived, they say, since earth was new.

He is called Eldfather: The name bespeaks

 

ingle and hearth, perhaps, but he disdains

to take such comforts. So, from dawn to dimpse

he ranges his sterilities alone,

casting his shaggy glances to the plains

below the wind, taking nor giving rone.

 

And is he Adam, then, as some assume,

or Abel's line at least, rejecting Cain

with all his artifacts — the roaky skies

choking the murderous cities' palling doom

and piling scroil? Does he recall the lies

 

an uncle told, therefore seek out the screeve

of cloud along a ridge? It may be so.

And it may also be he is the beast

of solitude — merely that. Let him grieve

or joy and wander, coldly fast or feast

 

where blizzards rail and the planets hover.

Our crops are sown in blood upon the nover.

 

     From an unpublished manuscript, A Book of Beasts, poems by Lewis Turco, illustrations by Louise Dickinson-Brown; the poems may be found in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007. ISBN 978-1-932842-19-7, cloth; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, paper. Also available in a Kindle edition.

Xoanon, from A BOOK OF BEASTS

 

THROWBACK THURSDAY

 

 

 

Image by Louise Dickinson-Brown

 

XOANON

 

By Lewis Turco

 

         Its body is like that

   of a buffalo, black and thick.

         It is lugsome as mud.

It depresses me to think of it,

     lying there in the corner

under a table of my study.

 

         It is best that I not

   look at it, though its eyes are closed.

         I have fed it a root

of nightshade, and it is sleeping. It

     will not cast me one of its

killing glances for a while. It is

 

         content in its despair.

   Its dreams fill that boarskull and spill

         out of the bristles, rank

as gorge, into lamplight. I try not

     to watch these visions in shades

of pallor and nocolor. Its neck

 

         querls about its body,

   translucent as intestine. In

it, slowly spiraling,the night

shade darkens and dissolves. If

     I rise, it will rise as well.

Its lids will open to slits, its neck

 

         uncoil; it will lumber

   after me, nearly stepping on

its chin, for I have tamed

Xoanon. I stop and stare it down.

     It moans, heaves beneath my bed

to watch me dream of it. The beast knows

 

         its master, knows that I

   will not think of it if I will,

that I can strike to its

heart with a look. And Xoanon knows

     as well parasite from host,

knows who shall cast the last glance at last —

 

   who is the master's bete noir.

 

     From an unpublished manuscript, A Book of Beasts, poems by Lewis Turco, illustrations by Louise Dickinson-Brown; the poems may be found in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007. ISBN 978-1-932842-19-7, cloth; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, paper. Also available in a Kindle edition.

Vielfras, from A BOOK OF BEASTS

 

THROWBACK THURSDAY

 

 

 

Image by Louise Dickinson-Brown

VIELFRAS

 

By Lewis Turco

 

     He inhabits a precious pelt,

dogsize, but a hunger greater than he

   inhabits him. He is the gorger

     Vielfras, habitant of scrog

 

     and underbrush. All creatures grand

and minuscule are his prey. Upon his

   thick legs the long body moves, silent

     as snow, until his bright teeth close

 

     and rend. He will devour the roe,

the boar, the ox — anything greater than

   himself, his sac of fur swelling till

     it strains to split. Then, he will seek

 

     two close-standing saplings and squeeze

between them, head first, disburdening his

   swollen bowels of their freight. If he

         is captured somehow — stunned, perhaps,

 

     by blunt arrows so as not to

damage his variegated fur — when

   he wakes in a pit, he will attack

         mortar and stone, eat his way out,

 

and noggle awkwardly into

   the winter air toward his trees. If he

is chased, the hunter behind will be

   pelted with half-digested rock.

 

   The flesh of Vielfras, they say,

tastes like hunger. It will grow in the paunch,

   and he who wears a coat of its skin

     may never remove it again.

 

     From an unpublished manuscript, A Book of Beasts, poems by Lewis Turco, illustrations by Louise Dickinson-Brown; the poems may be found in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007. ISBN 978-1-932842-19-7, cloth; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, paper. Also available in a Kindle edition.

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Uroboros, from A BOOK OF BEASTS

 

THROWBACK THURSDAY

 

 

Image by Louise Dickinson-Brown

 

UROBOROS

By Lewis Turco

 

     Some call him Uroboros:

   "That-Which-Is-Its-Own-Sustenance."

He is the chemist's worm, things in a circle,

     air and fire, water, earth,

   a mouth of darkness devouring

 

     its own bright tail. Sarsens for

   his spine, scales of blue stones, he wheels

upon himself, and nothing is consumed. All

     wisdom and all matter: These

   are his. We may transmogrify

 

     his image in the dark glass

   of our minds — he may become the

worm in Eve's fruit, asp at the breast, Wyvern in

     the tower hissing out

   of Merlin's spell; nevertheless, he

 

     is the Hermetic dragon

   Uroboros: All things in one.

One may not transmute his elements unless

     he dies. Where shall one bleed him?

   How can we sever everness?

 

He is the Worm Who Lives,

   each thing and All: Water of life,

torment's fire, wind-breath, stone and soil from which these

     green things spring. Uroboros.

   Look inward where he coils in blood.

 

     From an unpublished manuscript, A Book of Beasts, poems by Lewis Turco, illustrations by Louise Dickinson-Brown; the poems may be found in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007. ISBN 978-1-932842-19-7, cloth; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, paper. Also available in a Kindle edition.

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Sasquatch, from A BOOK OF BEASTS

 

THROWBACK THURSDAY

 

 

Image by Louise Dickinson-Brown

 

SASQUATCH

By Lewis Turco

 

     After the wind-tempest, when

branches lie in crambles upon the clearings

   and neighbors at far distances phone

   down the foothills under the mountains

 

     to ask if all is well still,

the answer is "Yes" and, sometimes, "But have you

   seen anything of a shambling man

   dressed in furs running before the birds'

 

     chirming just before the sun

was wiped out of the slate sky and the rain erased

   the trees, made them slop and wiggle like

   pines in a fingerpainting?" And, "No,"

 

     is the answer, "not this time,

but now you mention it, last time we thought we

   saw a bear at the edge of the woods,

   and when we went to look there were prints

 

     "in the mud — footprints the shape

of a big man's, a huge man's bare feet. They put us

   in mind of the manse of the films,

   the girl in the chiffon gown walking

 

"down the hall to stop under

a portrait whose eyes move. And then, you know, it

   slides aside, and a hairy arm comes

   reaching out toward the maiden, and

 

"we scream, don't we, for the girl

in the white gown, but you know, what must it be

   like to be the thing the arm belongs

   to? What wouldn't we want, and wouldn't

 

     "we hide in the walls and woods?

And if a storm blew up, wouldn't we wander some,

   down from the timberline to where the

   houses started, to look in windows

 

     "at firelight and carpets,

to think about chiffon and wish the folk would

   understand somehow, somewhen, that there's

   a bit of hairy arm in everyone?"

 

     From an unpublished manuscript, A Book of Beasts, poems by Lewis Turco, illustrations by Louise Dickinson-Brown; the poems may be found in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007. ISBN 978-1-932842-19-7, cloth; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, paper. Also available in a Kindle edition.

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Roc, from A BOOK OF BEASTS

 

 

THROWBACK THURSDAY

 

 

 

Image by Louise Dickinson-Brown

 

ROC

 

By Lewis Turco

 

     Stones are falling from the sky

     somewhere at sea. The clouds part,

   and a boulder edges through, slowly,

froths of vapor trailing from its edges.

 

     As it descends, behind it

     there is another, and yet

   another: A column of stones

dropping toward the cool blue mere below.

 

     They have always been falling,

     for how else would there be waves?

   The brown surface of a stone touches

the water, dimples it; a circle swells

 

     about its bulk like the lips

     of surprise. The mouth swallows.

   The astonished wave widens, begins

to roll toward the islands and the coast.

 

     It picks up substance and size,

     the fluid force moving through —

   not made of — water, this strength of stone.

Within the zero zone another grows.

 

No one knows where the boulders

     fall to sea; no one has seen

   the bird, great beak filled with rocks, the cairn

of time piling upon the lost sea bed.

 

     From an unpublished manuscript, A Book of Beasts, poems by Lewis Turco, illustrations by Louise Dickinson-Brown; the poems may be found in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007. ISBN 978-1-932842-19-7, cloth; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, paper. Also available in a Kindle edition.

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Querule from A BOOK OF BEASTS

 

THROWBACK THURSDAY

 

 

 

Image by Louise Dickinson-Brown

 QUERULE

 

By Lewis Turco

 

         "Why?" it asks, and snivels.

     I must get rid of it. It

     makes me nervous, annoys me.

   "Why?" it asks, a tear sliding down

its throat, making its whine slick as slime.

 

         Its body reminds me

     of gobbets. "But why?" it asks

     again. It hangs around and

   hangs around. It has no teeth, just

gums. It is a parasite, a sorn.

 

         It sobs. "Why?" it cries. "Why?"

     I pick it up, look at it

     deeply, probe its mucous eyes.

   Holding it, my hands feel cold and

sticky, like my stare. "Because," I say,

 

         "just because. That's the way

     it is. Enjoy it, why don't

you?" "I do," it moans, "I do, I do!"

 

     From an unpublished manuscript, A Book of Beasts, poems by Lewis Turco, illustrations by Louise Dickinson-Brown; the poems may be found in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007. ISBN 978-1-932842-19-7, cloth; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, paper. Also available in a Kindle edition.

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