Classic and Contemporary Poetry
IN WALKED BUD WITH A PALETTE, by CLARENCE MAJOR Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Take one pompeii-eyed old man Last Line: Thrower behind the curtain . Subject(s): Cezanne, Paul (1839-1906); Monk, Thelonious (1917-1982); Paintings & Painters | ||||||||
(Alternate take) Take one Pompeii-eyed old man with a brush, poised in midair near Mont Sainte-Victoire, take one strange young man filled with light, bopping at the piano in Minton's. Who are you, dull-eyed mathematical seer? Who are you -- monsoon-sound maker? I force the two of you together -- mix you in a blue bowl and you rise like a Blake fantasy -- a vorticism unto yourself, left-handed with keys and brushes. I call you Cezmonk. I hang upside down from your gut-wrenching rafters. Birdcalls go out from you before sunrise, combo-smooth. They smooch the sky. Your boats are filled with labeled gunnysacks of precise beats, licks, and uncoiling cubes of careful color. I'm knee-deep in fidelity to what you see, to what you hear. Ruby, my dear. I'm lost now, T, in your bright armpits of tangled vines. I'm lost, lost now, C -- Ruby, my dear, Ruby my dear. Yet I linger lost, mixed -- short of breath, in your tall darkness, waiting for your next move. Tell me -- what's your hidden agenda? I've made you a tempest pretending to be a dog-headed storm. Surely your agenda is not the spreading of Greek creation myths, not the spreading of grapes of Paradise, not the churning of bodies in cotton beds, not the splash of church bells across the village, not the smile of a patron saint of brick buildings. You say you created me -- you should know my agenda. I know that light dances in cubes like bop piano notes across Lake Annecy, North Carolina, where half of you rose from the water. Oh, Ruby, Ruby, my dear. I know the smell of a hazy day of gathering weedy flowers. I know the sound of flowers. I know you are anything of life. I gather myself like flowers. Your trees look back at me like hungry animals. I am a chimp eating termites. I swim back and forth between your two shores. You are Gilgamesh's buttons. You are toes of a Spanish martyr. You are teeth of a vestal virgin. You are purple rocks in a stream. You are ghost figures in a zoom lens. You are seeds in sunflowers -- in that vase on Vincent's table. You are the interior of a dolphin's mouth. You are the unoiled screws in a new motor. Your sounds and colors are my self-portrait -- unlike me, it's a portrait of uninterrupted elegance, an elegance twice that keeps lifting lifting -- lifting belly to the dice- thrower behind the curtain. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...1801: AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE ENVOY TO CONSTANTINOPLE by RICHARD HOWARD VENETIAN INTERIOR, 1889 by RICHARD HOWARD THERE IS A GOLD LIGHT IN CERTAIN OLD PAINTINGS by DONALD JUSTICE DUTCH INTERIORS by JANE KENYON INVITATION TO A PAINTER: 3 by WILLIAM ALLINGHAM THE CHINA PAINTERS by TED KOOSER ELEGY FOR SOL LEWITT by ANN LAUTERBACH ON THE SEPARATION OF ADAM AND EVE by TIMOTHY LIU READ THE SIGNS by CLARENCE MAJOR |
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