Terra Firma, Odes VI - VIII

Terra Firma
Eco Odes






(IV-VI)
















James Cowan






Cosmos Press









Contents




IV. Labyrinth 5


V. Cloud Talk 11


VI. Cantata 20





































It is closing-time in the gardens of the West
- Cyril Connolly




































IV. Labyrinth


Should we? listen to the gods, as they
promulgate their fatuities.
Should we? rake over old truths to remind
us of how soil becomes humus.
Should we? retreat into a cave, that haven
for bemused ascetics.
Should we? abandon our heart's craving
for the simplicity of nature's justice.
Or should we? allow it to rise invisibly within us
leaving nothing outside to see.
~
At the turn of a civilization we are
Cast adrift, unbuoyed by stratagems
Which tell us how to behave.
The earth
Has dismissed us because we lack
Gravitas, that old beaver in its dam
Submerged among a scaffold of sticks
Constructing its familiar lodge.
~
Lose yourself in the possibility of being
Someone else
or thing
As it proposes the probity of its
Unique attainment.
Listen
To the integrity of earth-worms
As they slowly secrete their way down
Dark tunnels among decaying roots.
~


I sense a new dispensation
Gathering in the bowls of trees
Like moss, green & unappeased.
In halls where gods continue to assemble
There are rumours of reproof:
The age has lost its will to be
More than flashy glister on a watch-face.
Time has become a graven image,
A substitute for the act of giving.
~
I want to be coral on a reef
Exuding colours and tropical fish.
I want to be spots on a jaguar
As it pads through sunlight & leaves.
I want to be a hawk's outspread wings
As they jostle with air above bluffs.
I want to be a statue in the Bay of Naples
Standing in a submarine street.
I want to be a ley-line in Wiltshire
Heading towards a chalk man on a ridge.
I want to be tide-turn on a solstitial
Evening, phosphorescence my treat.
~
I've left my body in a shallow ditch
I've woven my mind into a cocoon
I've placed my senses in a museum
I've attached my limbs to a balloon
I've lost myself in ocean whirlpools
I've established my lips among blooms
I've allowed my ears to hear sea-breezes
I've let my eyes wander among clover
I've pressed my fingers against stones
I've encouraged my toes to know rivers
I've asked my thoughts to be true to what I see
I haven't yet discarded my sensibility,
It alone is my ballast.
~
Have we overpowered the earth
With our regimen of tricks & deceits?
Do we turn our backs on its metaphors,
Its intimacy with fossils as mirrors?
Will we honour it as a mother goddess
To which we offer respectful libations?
Can we begin to see it as the Great Snake
Forever emerging from its ochre cave?
Or will we park it in a field like a tractor
That has come to the end of its life,
Down a mineshaft, a canary dead in its cage.
~
Let us believe in the earth's integrity
As we do hallmarks on a spoon.
No silver plate can hide what we know
Of its malleable capacities, its delight
In running rings around the universe.
Geologies are its converse, a language
We begin to understand when we
Fossick among loams. Not simply
Soil, magma and gemstones, the earth
Is a composite of myths and stories.
It tells us how to be, to evaluate being
As if it too were some sort of granulate
Indelibly marked by consanguine noises.
~
Space, musically, is much more than clefs on a page
Or the rubble of song played on a pianola.
~
Saints understand how the earth works,
They listen to its remonstrations
Febrile tissue among autumn leaves
Bird-talk on forest paths, the shrillness of fledglings
In their nests, broken twigs underfoot
The sun when it utters its bright rays.
Their gaze turns inward, away from measured
Assumptions garnered among the solemn
Columns of the day-to-day.
Talk of theos
Resonates like a bell in a square where old men
Gather, leaning on their walking sticks
Sharing thoughts about harvests, boar hunts
& the coming Easter festivities.
Like them
We are not privileged to the fullness
Of terranean existence, except when
We hear the low whisper of gods.
~
I hear them, yes, when I climb a path
In Delphi, home to Apollo's silvered bow.
His temple stands amid ruins, metopes
Shorn of sculpture lying about, detritus
Of an ancient spirit whose fight with Pythia
The Great Snake, released the earth
From its age-old prison. He plays a tune
On his lyre that is in me, a tune
Reverberating with my body's tempo.
As the Poet remarked, it's easy to spot a god
Given that they enliven. They spring forth
Into our being, enthusiasm their passport
To a land we have all but forgotten.
~
I look about, at what is god-given
The Omphalos that breathes prophesy
Into the hearts of men. How does a stone
Conceal this radiance we associate with flint?
Easy, when it flashes fire with the intensity
Of glow-worms as stars adrift in caves.
No one climbs Parnassus without a sense
That he is clinging to a god. Geology is skin,
The rampant dermis translucent with a desire
To witness the invisibility of what gods
Wear when they step forth into presence.
~
Let's assume that we're marooned on an island
Not on any map. Lilliput, where stunted men
Converse in a language without vowels
Devoid of fullness or the peregrination
Of shipwrecked sentences on beaches.
Flotsam, disfigured speech, worn emphasis
A feature of how we think. No-one listens
Yet babble is what we hear, an Esperanto
That passes for communication among
Those eager to confabulate.
O Pardes!
Does it extend to islands faced with sea-rise
And cyclonic devastation, palm trees
Lying on the sand like storm troops
Mown down by machine guns?
`~
I lie here among broken coral from a reef
My head caked in sand, crabs chattering
At my feet. I hear the sea, this preponderance
Of water that defines coastlines and lagoons.
I'm alert to its slow rhythms, its tidal talk
As it advances towards me, accompanied by
Empty shells, seaweed, & the skeletal remains
Of cuttlefish & humpback whales.

Oceans
Are great extruders of garbage as they repel
What contaminates. Salt water cleanses,
It acts as a salve to old wounds inflicted by
Outboard motors, oil slicks, gases leaking
From off-shore oil rigs. Nothing is safe.
The sea has become a vast waste dump
For industrial afflatus pretending to be
Divine inspiration.
O Pardes!
Remember your fire-temple by the Lake
Of Shiz, whose waters are pure, unruffled
Their decorum one of bliss!
~
Labyrinths are home to dead-ends, the prospect
Of an inner garden protected by a careful
Arrangement of pathways. Shadows lie in wait
Concealing escape. Choice determines
Which way to turn, left or right, towards
An uncertain outcome. The thread is Ariadne's
Drawing us ever onward into the garden,
Home to all the beauty of containment.
Invisible is this haven. We cannot see it
But we trust that it lies beyond the maze.
A cosmic egg, a Tower of the Winds among
Ruins, measuring time with the finesse
Of the sun on its walls, these are artifacts
Of that sanctum. We are in the hands of gods
Whose epithets are verbiage nurtured
Among stillness in sacred groves.
The centre is where we belong
Even as we stumble about blind alleys.
~
I want to hear the voice of cosmic speech
as stars warm to one another
I want to hear footfalls on a bush track
leopards lingering over scats
I want to hear leaves rustle, free from contagion
by acid rain
I want to hear elephants trumpet with joy
not from fear or prolonged drought
I want to hear ants in a termite mound
collaborate and shout
I want to hear the sonic boom of glaciers
the instant they fall into the sea
I want to hear – no, I want to listen
to nature's symphonic moments.
~
Make us wise as rodents in a sewer
Make us stand tall as pines by a road
Make us pristine as dew on grass
Make us heartfelt as flowers in a vase
Make us as flexible as an eagle's wingtips
Make us as silent as stones
Make us pray as a mantis prays
Make us humble receiving nature's gifts.
~
Labyrinths. They weave discord & hope
Solely for a glimpse of world-wonder
Garden, pavilion, fountain, & book
Lying open on a stone seat. Its pages
Are synonymous with hieroglyphs on
A tomb wall near Luxor, the underworld
Surrounded by a field of reeds. Duat
Realm of the Dead ruled over by the Eye
Of Horus, tear-drenched by forces (Seth)
Of dissimulation & deceit.
Let us
Surrender to this zone of silence
Lying beyond the solicitude of text.
Let us bare witness to the natural order
Of things, simple artifice of numbers
That make up the Golden Mean.







Notes
P 6. The Lake of Shiz was the location of a legendary fire-temple
of the Magi during the time of the Zoroastrian priesthood. From
its waters it was said the four rivers of Paradise commenced.
Emperor Heraclius occupied the region for a short time, from
whence the word "paradise" (paradaeza)was brought back to Europe
by returning Roman soldiers.
P 6. The Tower of the Winds is an octagonal clock tower
in Athens that functioned as a "timepiece". The structure
features a combination of sundials, a water
clock, and
a wind vane. It was supposedly built around 50 BC. It
appears gain in VI. Cantata.






































V. Cloud Talk


Cities awash, seaweed floating
through foyers!
Encrustations of seashells
clinging to lamp posts!
A taxi underwater on Wall Street
meter turning slowly!
Elevators at half mast
in downtown skyscrapers!
Liberty's statue raising its torch
amid onrushing waves!


This is how the ocean reclaims
what was its frozen acres.


Green algae in rivers, the bloom
of nitrates
Ozone holes that shift & squirm
like rabbits in burrows
Sharks rabid along coastlines
confused by warm waters
Turmoil, a snake wreathing
without its head


The one noun we refuse to accept
when nature feints.


Die, make an end to it: I shall
accept my own in due time
the Poet urged
his lance bloodied by warfare
& the sight of spirits
fluttering
like moths around a flare.


Death hovers near that flame
seduced by its light.


O Pardes! Save us from the inertia
of intellect, sovereign star
lost among the dust of nebulae
created by some enormous blast.


I'm warming to my role as
Tiresias, that god-given prophet
the one whose blindness observes
every move I make.


We go forward, climb Ponte di Maddelena
built by the Devil
for souls to cross at the cost of a goat,
its archways pure mandalas
of stone on Sercio's clear current.
Honouring the gods is our only link
to world loss, to vapors that emerge
from fissures in the earth where they lie
in silent repose.


Our age is raddled by its own self-filled
demise, by its i-phone fetish &
obsession with gourmet food.
Plastic buys you everything,
from a holiday on an island
half-submerged
to a clinic where breast implants
& facelifts are the last word
in epidermal delusion
a craving to be someone else.


Let us give thanks to rhapsodists
who live in longhouses
among wooden wafers of poems
singing of birds.
Their songs
account for rice harvests, law
& the growth of plants, of words
hiding in banana shoots, secret
of long life.
Good health is tethered to the fruition
of death in the bloom of wild orchids
as testicular dreams.


I love it when words fall to the ground
take root & grow. They feed
on the humus of the mind, that decay
so rich in nutrients.
How can they
not blossom among organisms
destined to alert them to life?
Water lilies are their metaphor
afloat
as greenly attitude to the croak
of frogs succumbing to their shade.
Night noise in a pond
is as languid as any poetic phrase
rebutting of cliché.


Much talk here of glass, of
the invisible pain we endure
that prevents us breaking through
to a place undisfigured by our own
inordinate self-abuse.
We live
within the space made up of hyphens
that separate meaning from
the discord we impose, a measure
of world delusion dressed up
as our longing for knowledge.


Old men among fish traps on a reef
consider the moon & tides first
before they venture their opinion.
This is how knowledge works.


Malu, great octopus
war drums
his voice, as hermit crabs scuttle forth
fleeing the outreach of his tentacles.
This is also knowledge
this is cloud talk
gathering like a storm on the horizon,
rain of sacerdotal moments.


I've lived in a thatched hut, close
by a lagoon where myths thrive
like coral atolls, seeding a reef
with polyps & eco-skeletons
that are the stuff of story.
How we
deal with the earth depends upon
subtle emanations, those cosmic verbs
that augment action in the name of care.
We live in a care-filled universe
whose prose is a composite of astral
endeavour & the rhapsodist's
smooth rhetoric.
Grant us his voice
alchemy of earth uttered in songs.


Hiroshima & Nagasaki, denuded
of their myths by nuclear fission
stories destroyed, human histories
cindered as so much waste, now
melded into a mushroom cloud
for the benefit of cine cameras
& victory parades.


O Pardes!
Pythia's snake emerges from the earth
as a scheming artifice of destruction
seething coils of multicoloured decay
disguised as progress & profit.


I listen to clouds. They cumulate
in white clusters, blooms forever
adrift, changing places, arrangement
of shifting escapades whose forms
shape, disengage, become edifices
as tall as New York City's skyline.
Their sport is the sport of undefined
limits, the full expanse of distance
struggling to express imaginary
landscapes, the overheated temerity
of my dreams. Climbing through them
as a child in an airplane was to land
in a field of wild cotton. There I waited
to be swept up by pickers whose hands
ran softly over my shoulders. Clouds
had dropped me into a bale of wonder.
I was a cloud picker surrounded by
an endless possibility of strange faces.


Talk of sky, how it articulates
a peculiar dialect, a convocation
of solemn attributes we fail to heed.
Weather whorls, cyclonic eyes
the windy bombast of hurricanes
marching across prairie & plain
with no thought of consequence.
Shutter screech its response when
trees are uprooted, cars overturned
houses cast adrift on floodwaters
& radioactive waves explode against
sea-walls after nuclear meltdowns.
Sky reacts to pollution in cities
by spreading respiratory contagion,
fug layers of smog, fetid odours
& the long march of people enslaved
to the industrial machine.
Rosy hued dawn a relic of rhapsodists
buried in the mayhem of rubbish tips.


O Pardes! Save us from the scourge
of smug legislators
telling us
"coal is good for humanity."


Fallen coconuts on a coral beach
by a lagoon are replete with milk
& memory, youth unsquandered
full of hope
tearful nodes of white flesh
scattered like confetti
among predatory palm crabs.
Here I lived, under thatch, my gaze
a cavalcade of myriad transitions
gathered, one instant to the next
miraculum vita est.


Unknown life, life sutured by threads
of experience weaving them together,
a carpet bemused by its patterns.
Earth is a loom at the doorway
of a hut in a Thar village, motifs
of incontestable pigments glowing
in the sun.
Warp stands tall as
weave tells a story, its tale one
of effervescence in the wake of glory
miraculum vita est.


Give thanks, then, to a crow
on a limb, its caws death-dealing
as an old tribesman is buried beneath
red earth, songs of grief, clap-sticks
tinseling the air.
Cessation is earth-giving
a libation
to honour untold gifts
miraculum vita est.


Does it ever end? this concoction
we call joy. Entablatures of gold
malleable in their warmth
a boon
to smiths by their forges, hammers
aloft, poised
to render form with their hands
miraculum vita est.


Tiresias watches, his eyes
inwardly turned, scoria a vision
of lava, intensity in his gaze.
He lives among clouds
multi-sexed, his ears attuned
to birds
Foresight is his burden, & love
Shuttles between man & woman
miraculum vita est.















































VI. Cantata


Above a back street wool hangs on poles
in bright skeins, a fretwork of colour, dyes
extracted from the earth, sap of flowers
leaves, bark & ash. Rudimentary colours
of emotions
red, green, purple & blue, a deceit of
perpendicular dreams, suffrage
squeezed through a prism in a bid
to roll back plainness, drab echelons
of exhausted life.


In the eye, a range of spectral delights
received as voluptuous shimmers
dallying at the doorway to the mind
like urchins on a street corner
Watch
the curious seduction of our thoughts
by wavelengths of light pretending
to be solid vats stain-drenched
by men's feet kneading wool for cloth
and the palpitations of warmth.


Earth works, the ripple of transformative
life, change as a bastion against
ordinariness
O! how we deal in miracles, the grace
of a peacock's tail, tropical fish ablaze
with their camouflage
a comet's tail afire in the dark night
iridescence of a tortoise beetle
so gold when it wishes to repel


Wear this panoply of arms, this
Fernlike enfolding of witchery
as earth's attempt at beguilement.


Old charts filled with wind-roses
make geometry out of the broad sea
landfall, wide rivers, mountain lakes
& harbors where ships lie at anchor
while sailors row ashore
Taverns
whores, the sodden waste of exile
lying as garbage in the streets
Latitudes of laughter echo from bars
with the discordancy of tambourines
played by a girl on a Greek wine jug
Watch the saccade of furtive glances
the lascivious gaze
Scrimshaw the only beauty now, carved
out of a seaman's yearning for home.


How well do we know the earth? How well are we able to fathom the
intricate story of its cosmic inheritance? How well do we understand
its multitudinous dimension, its capacity to fashion infinite life
without recourse to a song or the slow convolutions of prayer wheels?
How well do we comprehend its adumbrations, its excesses, its anarch-
ic behavior in the face of earthquakes, eruptions, hurr-icanes,
droughts, those weather patterns that savor of some interstellar
dance? How well do our minds embrace matter as a bridegroom his bride?
How well do we attach ourselves to the slow incubation of its breath,
to leaf fall, to the moon's orbit as a perfect circulatory of time?
How well do we smell its aromas as they waft through the air, the
scent of flowers, the bitter smell of decay, body, the stench of
death? How well do we delight in its variorum of olfactory indulgence?
How well do we adjudicate between waves, the slow undulations of
oceans, the wind-whipped spume of seas that have become agitated? How
well do we identify with hilltop monasteries where men celebrate the
coming-of-a-god in its name? Aglaia! Shiny brightness, the glitter of
gods, lamp-lit, clinging to an iconostasis high on Meteora's peaks!
How well do we go down on our knees before a crucifix, earth-embodied,
the very shape of voluntary death?


The old issue: the earth with no spirit
save that embodied in myths
leftover tales cared for by peoples
shorn of alphabets & ink
Cave walls
no match for papyrus, vellum
pebbled landscapes in Ryōan-ji temple
that speak of aesthetics
Even
the voice of harvests, wheat in fields
apples' ripeness in orchards, bamboo
rustling when breezes disturb
don't compare to psalm or sutras
Utterance
prevails over mute earth, lack
of tongue, lips, glottis, raw speech
guttural in its abuse of vowels.


Arctic ice, hear it trill at dawn
bird chirp
machine-gun fire, the easeful comfort
of springs in an old sofa
this is nature
alerting us to life
pagination of ancient codices
found in a clay jar by Nile farmers
a language
lost to us in the wake of grammar
Seals hear and know, bears
seek permission to walk its wastes
terns hover above its translucence
in chilly light.


Earth talk this, vibratory air, sibilance
of snakes cornered in burrows.


Periplus, sailing offshore in a galley
drumbeat orchestrating oarsmen
as a ship hugs unexplored coastlines
in its bid to find
new land! Undiscovered provinces
where men cozen dreams of gold
old trickeries
promising wealth for privateers
with no thought of forests
filled with parrots, tree pythons
& the sagacity of insects.


Pramnian wine in kylixes a diversion
for soporific minds, unknowledged
by comfortable exertions
Pragma
a deft game played by merchants
whose bottom line is profit, not
the perfection of numbers
in a conch shell, its logarithmic spiral
or the round dance of the earth
axis-driven
in deference to its seasonal tilt.


Untamed, untranslatable, that's how
the earth sees itself, its truth
neither small nor cramped, a richness
going to the heart of being alive
Self-attunement is one way
to corner a scampering rabbit
temper its fear, make it feel
at one in your arms
Sleek ears
twitching nose enjoin us to love
the pelt-glory of smooth fur
No language here, just touch.


Votive offerings in a shrine, a pyx
of poems to satisfy the hungry
part of any wayfarer's baggage
bundled
across drooping shoulders, weighed down
with the journey's uncertain end
sharp stones, bitter winds, robbers
eager to strip a man bare
Bone-anguish
more destructive than unscalable heights
wondering whether the body
is still attached to the heart
limpets washed clean by waves
symbiosis between flesh & rock.


Smoking ruins, a city buried under hot ash
bodies petrified by heat & dust
urbs civitas
lying amid ruins & empty streets, figures
womb-like in death
surrender themselves to Vesuvius
as the volcano erupts
books aflame
words cindered by a hiccup
subterra horribilis
backturning gods reminding us of how
sedate assumptions become ashen.


Orpheus plucks his lyre, seduces
flowers & animals with his clear song
hears their yearning
modulation
a featherweight of sound, so light
it is barely discernable
noiseless
like planets practicing their chords
seven of them, all in orbit, as gyres
of magisterial cosmic invention.


Interstellar thought! sound's heart
beating above the tumult of desecration
rooted in soul yearning
in the anguish of unneedful noise
unlike bats or swiftlets, whose sonar
creaturely navigates darkness
in pursuit of prey
nourishing
flight as nature's incantation
sound bites.


Will the prairies remember its great herds of bison? Will the veldt
celebrate the return of lions in their prides? Will the Tasmanian
wilderness resuscitate extinct tigers? Will the high Rockies embrace
the return of wolves? Will snow leopards come down from their
sanctuaries in the Himal-ayas? Will turtles and dolphin free
themselves from nets and factory ships? Will the mosquito abandon its
malarial attacks? Will sea-birds vomit plastic and fishing tackle
coiled in their guts in a bid to unpollululate themselves? Will
contaminated rivers recover the purity of their waters from mining
companies and chemical outflows? Will the earth rise up against
macadam and diesel fumes? Will the air rebel against extreme
compression by jet engines? Will the body reject polyester heart-
valves and titanium hips? Will coral reefs overcome sun-bleach as they
succumb to ozone holes? Will wagtails grow resist-ant to pesticides?
Will koalas survive tree-felling in old growth forests? Will protons
resist attack from Hadron colliders in subterranean tunnels? Is the
atom moving towards… extinction? Will cattle overcome incarceration in
feed-lots? Will battery hens become birds once again? Will factory
farming be condemned as a holocaust? Will cruelty to animals be deemed
a crime against life on this planet? Is the earth capable of
protecting itself?

On the Tower of the Winds, we know
a sundial beckons
time telling, caught up
in wavering peregrinations of men
bent upon commerce, appointments, trysts
as history proceeds
Intellect amiss
eagle eye blinded by unseeing schemes
the clock's shadow recording loss
& the problematic of gain
Insistent
Time is a measure of the sun's suffering
obliterated as integer on rainy days.


Listen to this song, count its decibels
noise is an affliction of soul's loss.






























James Cowan has published over thirty books, including
fiction, non-fiction, essays, poetry, biography, and art monographs.
He is a recipient of the ALS Gold Medal for Literature in 1998, as
well as an honorary doctorate in the USA. His work has been
published in more than 25 languages


www.james-cowan.net




Cosmos Press. Bangalow, N.S.W.
Terra Firma copyright © 2015 by James Cowan


First printing