A Triptych
For C. H.
Panel I
Beneath the waves the currents strength
The mane; vast, swirling, spiralling, uncompromised
As the thought of St Sebastian and as thought as absolute
As Aquinas’ – the masses who occupy the distance
Who fall and fade into the background.
The masses make up and swim in their mediocrity
A happy sea to swim in. waters of renaissance
Panel II
That song: you know the one.
That song – that stopped you DEAD!
Dead! The nudum pactum*** of the raw –
Four – on – four that drives them on and on.
The vein of your past grows on in the garden
Of your might and magnanimity.
The cortex maps the past too much.
In the scented garden there is no need
No, no need for vision
The right path is always found always
Can become lost in the morning mist.
Panel III
leges humanae nascuntur, vivunt, moriuntur****
With that sense certainty: the French have a word for it.
As the air reverberates with swirling conversations
“…the polymath, one who is interested in everything
and nothing else.” °
°°
Expansion of self – in the ravine between the hemispheres
The waters carry fresh and brine at the same time.
Clothed in silk and in goat hair
The external world of the unexplained
The changeable world from Babel
To Père Lachaise Cemetery where Chopin’s
Nocturnes echo on into the night
As the river ripples flow on
Endlessly into the night.
* From the beginning
** A condition without which it could not be
*** Naked promise
**** The laws of man are born, live, and die
° From a conversation between Susan Sontag and Umberto Eco
°° Expansion of the sum