The Desolation Poems

For the people of North Cemetery, Manila where 5,000 poeple without other homes live among the dead -- and have for generations.

#276 SHA'IR or SJAIR I
(in Malay from Indonesia)

9-2-98

After Hamzah Pansuri of Sumatra (16th/17th Century):

Satukan hangat dan dingin,
Tinggalkan loba dan ingin,
Hanchor hendak saperti lilin,
Mangka-nya dapat kerja-mu lichin.

When hot and cold combine,
When greed and desire have faded out,
When all wanting melts like wax.
Then your road will be like glass, like smooth stone.

translated by Burton Raffel

Give up desire, criticism yearning, greed. Give into the wind and cooling rain. Your path will be silk, smooth, transparent as glass -- and quite free.

#277 SHA'IR OR SJAIR II (Indonesian Malay)

9-3-98

On the pathways of galaxies On the war roads of great Xerxes When one human must, in his need, seize The way wends ever more slowly to peace.

#278 SHA'IR OR SJAIR III (Indonesian Malay)

9-3-98

When did the earth's great ball begin, so frail, so soon covered with sin by mankind's two-legged disruptive kin? If God winks we may again grow pale fins.

#279 CANSO

9-4-98

Who is my lady love? Who is the one so fair? Whose smile is the sun shine? Does my grey morning dove "Hoo," mourning in her lair? Come from the night to fine day, dance with the red birds, waltz with pinking thistles, feed on honey with bears. "Nay, nay," cries my love, "herds of sorrows ride crystals that pierce the heart who dares." Angels will guard above, lucent beyond compare. I bring more than just nine. There's a delicate glove that will guard you from care and the crimson wine's vine. "O," she cries, "I hear words, but they sting like nettles to one on earth who fares quite alone and thus girds her heart's blood that drizzles through the wounds that she shares with betrayal." She ran like the deer, with too much to fear, and remains lost behind the fern's green fan hidden in a dark hutch. Unendurable cost with velvet and slime can terrorize but a touch, spread like slippery earth mossed, incite permanent ban in the muses as such to insure all gets tossed. When there's little from Jan and the going is dutch, a shy muse can be bossed.

#280 CANTICLE

9-5-98

Thus, her morning canticle she sung, "Sleep, my love. Sleep just a little more. Let the angels kiss your peace and your ears their songs of joy." "Behold thou art fair... Awake, my love, for little songs hover in the air," cried the irredeemable beauty of the rising day "I shall be here but a little while, before my wiles are absorbed by night. Sing! Sing! I live on the ring of your clear voice spiraling high to the sky clouds, the galaxies. Rest in contentment, but come with me. Come with me home, home. Please come. Let the angels kiss your peace and your ears their songs of joy."

#281 BESTIARY

9-6-98

1 Physiologus was a grand old man who started a trend in mythology. Ysengrimus, the Wolf born of Nivardus regarded his co-womb mate Reinardus. Talking animals reached an apogee here and in Panchatantra's Indian Jackal. There were Monkeys who advised, Panthers who talked giant Whales who spouted, Caxton the Cat who pouted, Shurley the Kit who stalked, Chanticleer with his keys jangling the morning without any warning, and Phoenix roasting and rising from ash. Reinhart Fuchs came along and became Renard Fox. Ant trailed Cicada seeking secret clocks. Hesiod's Hawks and Shelly's Nightingale so rash, O Filomena, Philomel singing: Leave the beasts and the plants and stone, free from your O so human moan. Let the Partridge sing in her tree. Let Quail's fragile question be free. Let Rabbit tremble and survive. Let the ten million Crows alive swarm to early breakfast, "Caw" in the sky, rest in night's earthy, spiritual cry. 2 Contain your urge to attribute, O man. Study your sad soul's ornithology. The house Cat and the Bird can both teach us with considerably less fuss from us. We owe Animals an apology having ruined their homes, thieved their life span, penned them, mocked them with keys, besought them, bought and hawked them, heartlessly touted our prowess and shouted our hunting skills, then mocked each frail beast as it flees. Apologies are accepted as forewarning we know the Dinosaurs fate will rehash each vulnerable body despite man's time locks secured as he tries to outwit the rocks. He, just like the industrious Ant he mash- es, will be gone like the wind that is whistling with times inevitable tone under the earth's terrible groan. Man, says the Beast, forget your me, me, me. There's enough time to see, for earth to recover, re-loan her nurturing laws that have shown 3 that if you consult the Bear and the Toucan, Ginkgo, Equisetum, biology, the Mouse, the Roach, the function of "estrus," (females -- missing in the OED, plus most other male-written dictionary, but "rut" is there, you can be sure, to scan. Balance missed.) On your knees, man! At last God has balked at your often flouted barbarity. Clouted, savaged, hurt, with pain rocked seeking on earth to squeeze past the esurient brute who stands obstructing the road to compassion, the crimson sash of love to bind wounds formerly treated by stocks. Listen to the Birds, Beasts, Plants and the Rocks. They are fed up with your lust, your greed and your trash. Listen closely, new life can be stirring down times inevitable clone. Learn something of why there's a drone Fed on honey, the great Queen Bee repopulates the land and sea. Hurry, there's energy to hone. Hurry, get on the cosmic phone! Our present vision requires etasis There is no such thing in life as stasis.

#282 BEAST EPIC

9-7-98

I want to write a Beast Epic. I want to write a Beast Epic about Mama Moo, the black cow but neither she nor I know how. She stands on the high hill, green as far as the grass can be seen. Thirty acres of grass and one small house in ruins, plus the sun, and the rain and the moon going round. Alone, chewing, re-chewing, ambling as a black cloud might drift. A black cloud huge as she might lift a thousand pounds with her great black head, her huge and watchful eyes, black as might be coal made of velvet shining with pleasure as we met to talk about the weather. She would moo and I would smile and be peaceful as she stalking the land chasing a bee, pawing the sand. For thirty years, the succulent grass satisfied all wants and lent an atmosphere of paradise. Only one incident, a slice of which I'd heard occurred in her life. She'd had a brown furred daughter. Together they walked green hills, gazed at the sky the clouds seen, slept in the night's sweet gentle breeze, did, as two big cows, what might please them. One day a man she knew as the owner brought another as dark as he. He raised his long gun and shot her daughter, then hung the body to bleed. "The meat," he said. The red grass he did not see. Mama Moo mooed through that spring night, and ate little grass by star light. It happened many years ago Did she remember? I don't know Such is my Beast Epic about Mama Moo the cow, black and stout.

#283 TMESIS

9-8-98

Time shall lend its -- O so golden -- thread Space will bend its -- O let it embrace -- embroidered light High on the dark side -- the shadowed side -- of the moon, shyly lurking behind sun's filigreed -- fancifully bursting -- flare of gold let me lie there -- silently -- grow old. Wind wander home.

#284 CACCIA

9-9-98

The only hunting I do is follow the soul's twists through corridors of sorrow and laughter The wild game is illusive shyly mocking, chase cantering, cleaving, crocheting and rocking. Resting in sleep, rising in gallop, girding, it grips, rides my laughter, test my pain, leaps over river-wide splits in the sea. Peer down O soul! Peer! Set me aside in a still water pool, clear from the maples of autumn hung from the boughs glimpsed through surface of still lakes, silent waters. I will be gone, I will be the reds and the golds are but leftovers of greens, greens feed the beasts Ah, beasts I will leave alone. They deserve peace more then the bee buzz of my soul, quiet refrains.

#285 PALINODE (after Stesichorus)

9-10-98

I Helen is my sister's name She started all the Trojan fuss She stays at home and cleans the muss Her real name is grace or flame Helen's hair is blond and gold Active, she whirls about the world Angry, too, she always stays furled You would never think her old II She lights the world with beauty Invents never ending duty Devotes her life to joyous song Dictates quite annoy-ous, wrong For a sister named Helen I've learned to be somewhat quellin' To smile, to cry and be cheerful She means well, and is fearful

#286 ITALIAN SONNET II, (with Sicilian Sestet)

9-11-98

When I recall the innocence of dreams of hopes now scattered with gathering time; when I understand more, perhaps, life's mime, mute before "morals" and man's other schemes; when I see beaten humans bow before teams urging to hold a man guilty, 'til a crime can be found -- then O God, the first stone, the slime has been cast, the law subverted. Who deems himself pure enough to castigate another man, strip him of privacy? Four years of relentless pursuit, of outrageous bait to trap a man on a technicality! Bow your heads in shame America! Sate your lust! Witch-hunts rage now as in our infancy.

#287 EPIGRAM

9-12-98

Judge him guilty, President or any man. Squeeze until you concoct a trace of a crime. Sell it to the world for a cyberspace dime. "American Justice," the world read and ran.

#288 IAMBIC TETRAMETER QUATRAINS (after Marlowe, Ralegh, Donne)

9-25-98

DEVAYANI,

Come live with me, and be my love, and we will outside pleasures move to golden lands and sacred nooks which seem alive, but just in books. There will we honor hope and the sun, bright evening light, maybe what's done in flame like the red of sunset's ray fending the cold, while fish delay. Surface world's yet do play God's wrath though brooks are still beside the path where birds are mute and silence grim, luteless, you hide behind the scrim. Do not from me conceal crimes both of nature's angels, Gods who loath offenses washed by laws, or sea through which life swims free, fine,sans fee. Among the weeds, reprieve re-seeds; a veil to all its pow'r impedes the opiate, opalescent debt and treacherous deceit, black as jet. With breath comes death, eternal rest; the greeds do die, and are confessed as curious traitors lying cries for those too shy with guested sighs, Come be with me, I am your gate beyond, beneath, by which bleeds fate, all glory moves before my eye, my love, my sacred wise one, I.

See: A Quatrain Quartet (Marlowe, Ralegh, Donne, Haag)

#289 ANAGRAM

9-28-98

Kenneth Starr, rare rat, tenth Seth, he ken tee, net, tar, rent, rate ten nether star nets, ran near tears at tea ta sear rear, see! but William Clinton will win, tin, tan, ton, wim, wic motion all wall, mall, nation lit, Toni wit. Not ill, no nil nit clit. I am a man.

#290 CALLIGRAMME 1

9-29-98

The sky was Indian Summer blue. The weeds grew up to seem like tears

of green beneath the weeping cudrania trees.

the gold

of autumn

lay in

circles upon

the silvering

sacred ground

#290 CALLIGRAMME 2

9-29-98

The celestial basin spills the sky Indian-summer-blue. The weeds grow up to seem like tears

of green beneath the weeping cudrania trees.

The gold sleeping

autumn lays cool

circles upon reddish

silvering sacred ground.

#291 VERS

9-30-98

Nobody mentions or admits to what fun it must be, being the most powerful man on the planet, to stand in the hall with your pants almost dropped and be licked by an overweight chippy, what glee it must be to thumb your nose (or cigar), to throw your weight against sex, the titillating thumb- up to behavior quite wild and talk to guys on the phone who know the rules and will with hypocritical talk deny to the world their own bent rules. How they envy the guy daring to take on the wrath of his scurrilous opponents and still have the fun to do what he pleases, as scurrilous teases are tastes shared by the top most gods and men of the world. What's power if not sex, rockets and TV's most blanket, lurid touting of power through publicity and the ratings. While we are all more than suspicious, they wag their long immoral tongueings. Sweet world! Admit! Sex is delicious! We do it to get here. He did it! They do it! Rejoice! We, too, do it!

#292 VERS II

10-1-98

Shiva would have approved, and Dhraupadi in lands less affected by perfidy. Women will be who they are. Just as man. It's a pity we've grown no older than tittering kiddies, horrified near-saints who, deep, deep in their souls, know no such taints. Hypocrites all, where mendacity rules. Lying in Congressional Houses fools not a single point of the pragmatic people who have voiced their vote in public polls consistently, constantly to close, dear Republicans, the matter you pose. The only true, clear voice to be heard is Hastings calling to impeach Starr for his mad compulsion to unleash rumors and reports calculated to inflame, strand public opinion, beach the president, bring government to a halt and prevent the solving of real problems: tobacco, health care, the welfare of grandmothers, sew up attention while the world collapses in financial hysterical sepsis. Then point to Clinton again as the cause of his own demise. O ghastly Starr, pause! Consider the horror of declaring man guilty and for four years pursuing a crime to pin on him, forcing onion tears, charging his people forty million dollars to try to incapacitate their representative-elect of State. Hide your shameful, smirking witch-hunting head. No cause so unjustified has been led since Joseph McCarthy's head-hunting red.

#293 CATALOG POEM

9-29/10-1/10-2-98

ON THE BUS
or
DIMINISHING RETURNS

He had a pop-out belly button and a band(age) around his head. His great bulldog face hung down. O Lord, don't let me live so long that some young squirt like me (64) can wallow in compassion. There was a plate upon his breast screwed to a pale plastic, rigid shield. He wore jeans and some heavy high-topped, oiled boots, a plaid shirt, gapping wide. When he got off, I could see it was a brace behind his head that held the plate in place over his worn tee-shirt, under open plaid, that forced him to bow (to fate).

#294 CHANSO

10-3-98

According to Octavio Paz, I must be a saint not a poet, for I live in the silence of talking only to God and my true self, Devayani. We are in love, for there is just the two of us walking this desolate road. Who else would join us in perpetual silence, the cynicism natural to more than six decades of modern life where no reliable, musical fife plays with the obsessive drums calling us, where all sides freely shout, but in the fuss no truth is to be heard? I cry at night to scrape knowledge from strife, redeem the light. But only ghosts stretch forth hands to receive the eviscerated blood gouts we grieve to proffer as payment for the leaves of autumn's gold, winter's white when the springs of life flow from awkward nooks unnoticed by the rhetoric, the furor spewed. And my clean hands are gloved in gore while disbelief shields me from the barley's nourishing sheaf. Know nothing. Nothing! Devayani says, as if I could don a red high-crowned fez to whirl away my days, not only in silence, but in solitude as well, win stillness, perfect freedom within a cave where nothing is to learn. But desire's slave serves us mango liquids, perpetual questions, scorns to say: Fear is natural. Life is fear. Life's no answer. Life is death. Devayani and I weep, declare our love in a dead woman's hidden bower.

#295 SAPPHIC AEOLIC PATTERN

(after Cowper "Lines Written During a Period of Insanity" 1774)

10-4-98

Shriek, O my soul with silent pain, disturb not sleep, nor let rain run down upon the fountain stilled by the drying waters, flowers scentless, withered, soon dying. Cry at the sky, and weep for spring, which comes not; Autumn, too, passes color lest we fall sad. Memories fade. The night, the shade will wrap us. Fortunate light falls. Blackness in space will answer suns' cooled dying beams as the drumming God begins his dancing. Once more, again, his feet will lift the lightning past the small heart's fear. Shiva! O Shiva your delight will weaken hopes left and hopes to seek beyond effulgence. Nothing remains but light consumed in darkness. Great is the Goddess. Radiant Shakti, dance! O Shakti dance with Shiva because you are the light! And bringing Shiva to climax creates the world, the light in night, all of nothing.

#296 CENTO

A scan of "THE CONSCIOUS ACT OF CONSTRUCTION"
from Paul Valery's "Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci"
translated by Thomas McGreevy

10-5/6/7-98

He who has never completed -- be it but in a dream -- the sketch for some project that he is free to abandon; who has never felt the sense of adventure in working on some composition which he knows finished when others only see it commencing; who has not known the enthusiasm that burns away a minute of his very self; or the poison of conception, the scruple, the cold breath of objection coming from within; and the struggle with alternative ideas when the strongest and most universal should naturally triumph over both what is normal and what is novel; he who has not seen the image on the whiteness of his paper distorted by other possible images, by his regret for all the images that will not be chosen; or seen in limpid air a building that is not there; he who is not haunted by fear of giddiness caused by the receding of the goal before him; by anxiety as to means; by foreknowledge of delays and despairs, calculation of progressive phases, reasoning about the future -- even about things that should not, when the time comes, be reasoned about -- that man does not know either -- and it does not matter how much he knows beside -- the riches and resources, the domains of the spirit, that are illuminated by the conscious act of construction. The gods have received from the human mind the gift of the power to create because that mind, being cyclical and abstract, may aggrandize what it has imagined to such a point that it is no longer capable of imagining it." See: Paul Valery's Paragraph, with Notes for an Analysis by Haag

#297 CHANSON DE GESTE

10-8/9/11-98

STUDYING SANSKIRT

On my sixty-fifth birthday my clematis died. In class I could hear chalk on the board through the wall from the room beyond -- tap tap swish -- at the window, the wind, wild -- swish -- unseen, moved the trees -- tap swish tap -- I met the Sanskrit gerundive for the first time. Any root can -- tap tap swish tap -- take any form tap swish tap tap -- at any time. A bee got into my trousers, stung. I stumbled, dropped my -- tap tap -- favorite, mellow-pitched, ringing snifter; a falling chestnut -- tap tap swish tap -- shattered it. I took my life -- it was enough -- tap tap swish tap -- I took my life in hand -- tap -- Nalla said: "If this is my -- tap tap swish -- dharma, I will do it -- swish tap -- as my own purpose." In drumming -- tap tap tap -- I learned patience -- tap tap swish tap -- enough to practice -- tap tap -- to let life unfold as it will. Let music play -- swish tap tap tap -- let music die into silence -- swish tap swish I backed off from goal to process -- tap swish tap -- I listened -- tap tap to Sergio lecture that death is the seed (path) of life -- tap tap -- Let nature grow flowers -- tap tap -- set more time aside for Sanskrit, avoided the path of the bees -- swish tap tap tap tap -- stay out from -- tap -- under the chestnut, be pleased -- tap swish swish -- to drink from any glass. I counted my blessing every morning, wrote Sanskrit letters -- tap tap swish tap tap tap -- every night. Still the Gods were not happy -- tap swish -- The world economy fell. The Republicans -- tap tap tap tap tap tap swish -- pressed to impeach the President. Blue volcanoes exploded anew, millions -- tap swish tap tap swish tap -- of Russians starved -- swish swish swish tap -- not once did the rich think they were at fault -- swish swish -- "The poor have always -- tap tap -- been with us," they philosophized in Christ's name -- tap tap -- nonetheless the president, head of earth's -- tap swish swish swish -- most powerful -- nation, did his job with -- tap -- grace and humor, outliving the -- tap tap tap swish -- scandal, the storm -- tap tap swish tap tap swish tap tap -- The bamboo, wings spread -- tap -- like a swan -- swish swish -- heavy with rain -- tap tap -- stood poised for flight -- tap tap -- weary of the world's problems. "If I were -- tap swish tap tap swish -- to create a world," I said to God, "I'd do it differently." -- tap swish tap -- As in: -- tap tap tap -- some days all the busses run on time. What you look for is at your finger tips -- tap tap swish tap tap swish tap tap Every decision seems just right. Where ever you look is beauty. -- tap tap swish tap tap swish tap tap -- People finally realize that all they need -- swish tap -- is some where to sleep, something to eat -- tap tap -- a cloth against the cold -- tap swish swish swish swish swish -- they don't need -- tap tap -- the world economy, growth, capitalism, goods -- tap swish -- and services. They don't need -- tap tap swish swish -- spending power, possessions -- tap -- nor full-time jobs. Indeed -- swish swish swish swish -- doubtless they need more sex. Clinton -- tap tap tap tap tap swish swish tap swish -- saint and martyr, who didn't know he had volunteered -- swish swish -- to be chosen -- tap tap -- as scapegoat to the times -- tap tap swish -- doesn't know he will be talked of in times -- tap -- to come -- swish swish -- as he who sparked the world's consciousness -- swish swish swish -- about sex, the fun there was to -- swish swish -- be had in the hallways of life sans -- swish swish swish swish swish -- the fallacious rules -- swish swish swish -- we impose -- tap tap tap -- upon ourselves -- swish -- which passion -- swish tap -- rightly declines to obey -- swish -- If only it could -- swish -- there might be fewer of us -- tap tap swish swish -- and if there were less of us... Ah! -- swish swish swish -- I take my leave -- swish swish swish swish swish -- the sounds like rain from the other room stopped, the wild wind stopped tormenting the tossed trees, the bright bamboo, as a swan, rose, becoming the golden sunset, planting death's seeds along its path.

#298 GEORGICS

10-12-98

I saw a Nova last night about Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. It began in smiles and moved quickly to tears -- Wiles' tears followed aptly by my own, for it celebrated a wily illumination of the mind, the frequently unutterable joy -- profoundest joy to see ideas in air manifest, take shape, like Bohm's visions of implicate order -- a metronome ticking, the analogy of music, lighting the darkness of an empty room, slowly pushing away the shadows, bit by slow bit, single, tiny calculations, one after the other, piney scented hints from the natural world, walks along the river, the path of sunlight and faith, belong with the giggle of the childhood dream: he would solve the unsolvable. Persistently to revolve for seven secret years the implosion of his heart's desire, the exploding, almost static fizz of concentration, attention, meditation, focus, was his infinite, sole delight. To shun even a hint to the world of his projected goal, sustained him. Working in sunlight, he was led through here-to-fore unexplored corridors of mind, linking and testing, guessing, pondering to find the Tao. And he did. Through hesitant steps, narrow misses, bird-walks, wrong turns, false whispers from sparrow similarities. Ah yes, and then one day... You must see the Nova to see bliss, the unique joy to be that suffuses his human form in his God-like, solitary, climb to resplendence, a fragile dike against the stress of being human, strife enmeshed, sorrow imbued, struggling with flesh, at once refreshed: "The Gods have received from the human mind, the gift of the power to create...."

#299 EPICEDIUM or EPIKEDEION

10-13-98

A song of mourning sung by a chorus accompanied by dance and Lydian mode flute music in the presence of the corpse; also for pet animals and birds...

We've come to mourn your pussy cat, your bird, the life you lost to time, to fear, to frenzied future pain. Death is the seed to be strewn on the path by the river where swans nod their heads, where the music, the melody lies still beneath the moss. We've come to mourn what you have lost, the falling leaves. the rain, the dew, the moon, the sun, its gone, its done. Death is the last of quotidian time, it will mark a small place when it comes with a kiss, quiet, pleasing to pass generation by. We've come, to dance, to play the flute, to march upon the silence, dark futilities, the still, shorn grave. Death is the mother of new life. It seeks time, it seeks sorrow to motivate peace, the desire for the Lydian mode, soft, voluptuous.

#300

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Copyright © 2002 Jan Haag
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jhaag@janhaag.com or jhaag@u.washington.edu

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ALPHABETICAL INDEX BY FORM

of

POETRY FORMS USED IN ENGLISH

ART & POETRY - ACCUMULATIONS

POETRY + MUSIC + ESSAYS + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART

INTRODUCTION + HAAG'S BIO

21st CENTURY ART, C.E. - B.C., A Context