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         [  Hesiod And The Muse  ]              [  By Doug Tanoury  ]


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Hesiod and the Muse
Poems by Doug Tanoury


Hesiod and the Muse

 In Moreau's painting "Hesiod and the Muse"
 There is a preponderance of blue
 That softens the sky and subdues everything
 Into a twilight background

 Except the poet who stands naked with his lyre
 Embraced by a winged Muse
 A long sword hanging from her girdle
 She seems to hover somehow above him

 Hesiod wears a garland of laurel like a nimbus
 His face androgynous his features feminine and fair
 More light in frame and delicate in form
 Than the Muse that supports him

 Not a farmer not a sailor not a craftsman
 But one who sits on soft pillows
 And sips sweet nectar at the table of the gods
 Hesiod is painted a poet

 Suspended in the blueness of sky
 There is a temple a single bright star
 And winged creatures fly far above
 The ground where blossoms touch bare feet


Music

 In Albinoni
 And all baroque masters
 Who flourish and shake my desk
 With trumpet, organ and harpsichord
 With cello, flute and violin
 I am taken for a moment
 To a child's world
 Of playfulness that escalates
 Slowly toward full riot and
 Honest innocents that moves
 In stages to pure simplicity

 In music weightless and light
 That floats graceful
 Through my ears
 In Overtures
 Of unending variation
 In preludes
 Of unexpected brilliance
 I hear gleeful sweetness
 My children's laughter
 The giggles that grow
 To shouts and yells

 And I go on to ponder
 The substance of sound
 That touches me like a spirit
 And moves through me
 With ghostly freedom
 That passes through my walls
 Without hindrance and enters
 Through unopened doors
 In the softness of bassoon and flute
 My daughters whisper
 And in the shrill voice of violin
 My son whistling


A Season

 In am stuck
 In the middle of this is a reluctant season
 Within its heart of slowness
 Its self-centered sloth
 In a holding back in bashful reserve
 Where the sun never shines
 And the clouds hide a shy blue sky
 Over trees sleeping so soundly
 In self-conscious reserve
 They do not dream of buds
 Indeed this season
 I am caught in
 Is the triumph of timidity
 
 And I too celebrate it
 In my holding back for my touch now
 Is uncertain reserve and I am paused
 In tentative indecision for a moment
 An hour
 A day
 A collection of days
 Until there is nothing left to touch
 But the starkness and realization
 Of all that is missing


A Study In Form

 I have mastered the art of approach
 The dance of improvisational movement
 Around a subject
 Like the low brick facades on Main Street
 Articulated by second storey windows

 The movement of muscle
 Sinew and bone
 An expression of torso and limbs
 My body bent into a word
 Moving in a phrase
 My breath upon a line of verse
 Of what is and why
 Toward what could be and is

 This is the art of pose and stance
 Rhythm and tempo
 For I have mastered the approach
 And am a channel for burning forces
 That bubble up in blood vessels and brain
 In nerve endings and spine
 Twisted in all the expressions of form
 All the permutations of shape


Nativity Church

 There is a Romanesque basilica
 With a tall bell tower that rises
 Above a neighborhood on
 The near east side
 It stands stately high above
 The squalor and poverty below
 Topped with bronze dome
 And ornamental urns

 Solid and stately and strong
 I remember looking up at it often
 As a child like some talisman
 It protected me from all
 Uncertainty and want and weakness
 As I played in the shadows of
 Wood frame houses in need of
 Paint and repair

 It reminded me always
 Of a larger world
 Outside the borders
 Of Iroquois and Cadillac
 Beyond the yellow sunrises
 Above Pennsylvania Street and
 Behind the swirling purple sunsets
 Hanging over Gratiot Avenue


Expressionist
(A Hollywood Park Poem)

 Shall I paint the night sky
 Neon indigo
 And her sequin dress
 That catches light
 Cobalt blue and glows
 With what seems
 Some inner luminescence
 That sets her ass to shimmer
 And makes her breasts gleam
 As if she were wearing nothing
 But fish scales on her skin

 Shall I paint her movement
 Accentuated by a trembling
 Like aspen leaves
 On an August evening
 That dance choreographed
 In sunset colors and
 Grow toward darkness
 If I should see her dress
 Strewn carelessly across the floor
 It would look only like a blue gill
 Washed up on the beach


Last Will & Testament

 I have often said that
 Old poets
 Never die
 They simply lose their voices
 They get quiet
 Fall into silence
 Forget and are forgotten
 And I know that I am on my way
 Toward the great wordless

 I see death and it is
 The stark white page
 The eternal pause
 A period
 And a blankness
 An eternal
 Search that stretches from
 The back of your mind
 To the tip of your tongue
 For a word
 That is never found

 I am moving
 In ever so certain steps
 To my quiet time
 Like the hush
 On summer evenings
 As I lay in the backyard hammock
 Still and unmoving
 As a figure carved in the cover
 Of a sarcophagus
 I see the signs
 And read the foreshadowing

 Yes old poets never pass away
 They just somehow lose their vision
 My eyes are going bad and
 I can no longer see to write
 I fancy myself
 Like Homer
 A sightless poet
 I am blind as Milton
 And one day soon
 The only way I'll scribe
 A line of verse will
 Be to give dictation
 To my children
 Who will grimace
 And make faces
 That I cannot see

 As my senses leave me
 And my faculties flee
 And all the muse
 Take flight at once
 Hear this from me now
 That those the gods
 Would destroy
 They first make mute
 Then take their sight
 So I bequeath to you
 All pretty phrases
 To you all sunshine similes
 To you the moonlit metaphors
 I give you
 All lightness and alliteration
 I will you words
 I leave you voice unending

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 uXu #572              Underground eXperts United 2000              uXu #572
                Send your submissions to: submission@uxu.org
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