MOSS/
LICHEN
Helium
Griselda lying in a switched radio
sunset Flight
over badlands, over clouds ~ helium Griselda
Shapeshifter
of orange jewelry
setting her platinum body
into the glass cliffs~
Haven’t
touched whales to ceiling in a long continuum,
fluctuating
between clock hands, white clocks and roaming
room,
guitars flying in the sky canceled out ~
Sky
fly by
on
a tricycle
shallow
pool
of voices
I
swim in ~ Motorcycle-paste-to-paper
climb
down
rocks,
all along
snakes nest
1 & 2 & 3,
expect delays & Tea formulas
drip-pressed flower/ stomach / mind
Pink
fight fishing a swim on
a
pants leg in a rage to capture
Madison/
Milwaukee /Chicago
ninety
four
Cleveland/ Erie/
eighty
six times thirteen
Randolph
Further looped
Sounds turkey
That the shooting
Lifted steady crank smoking
Hand
and pulley
these
shoulders
Through
elbow to open the
Bird
cage
Out
the swans and ghosts come, the closet
spins
its wheels, spun when you reach the wheel and the
mechanic
Hand
turns, unlocks ~ a
secret lake
in
the walls of our house ~ where the swans go to
Wander
these slaves, buried beneath the
Pencil
thin orange taste in the furniture inside
of
strawberry
paint, that opens up the broken down house walls
on
a hillside, only at dawn this ~ is witnessed
We’ll meet there
Beneath the
Sample
shelf crossed
bones
in the metal sorry
Meadow and ships rotation
The moss spider wheels back in the sound
Of breath
Oozes flowers from her eyes and mouths
and nostrils
Dripped pumpkin saliva, reflect doorknob
pinstripe
neon
In
the peaceful warm soup of the compost sequel two
sundays:
(of) Sarcasm
centaur
floated in the garden
peopled
with children who play basketball, saw blade season
and
leather painted doors ~
Top
down at the tower of Pizza. Peppermint sunlight
~ and moonlight. A moonstone
horsey
rides
Through the ocean at midnight ` Squid that
rummage
through boxes in my memory hide there in the
fuzed
blue glow ~ A distant morning ship
A keyring nausea takes off clothes, and
lifts up the
bodies from the snake infested terra cloth
this winter hands from a chandelier now~
fly trap
line paper ~ Sinks shannon the roses
in gypsy flowers climbing on the porch
steps ~
The Patient Griselda -- Frank Cadogan Cowper
Griselda was a European folklore heroine noted for her patience and obedience. The best known version of the story was written by Giovanni Boccaccio in 1350, in the last of his “Decameron” tales. Gualtieri, the marquis of Saluzzo, married a peasant girl after “he asked her whether, if he were to wed her, she would do her best to please him and never get upset at anything he ever said or did, and whether she would be obedient, and many other things of this sort, to all of which she replied that she would.” At the wedding, Gualtieri led Griselda “outside and in the presence of his entire company as well as all the other people living there, he had her stripped naked. Then he called for the clothing and shoes he had ordered for her and quickly had them dress her.” In order to test her fidelity, he insisted that their children must be killed, and Griselda submitted to her husband’s wish without protest. But the marquis, still not satisfied, publicly renounced her, claiming he had a papal dispensation to make a better match. Years later he recalled Griselda as a servant to prepare his marriage preparations and introduced her to his 12-year-old bride. Griselda wished them all well, and then Gualtieri revealed that the “bride” was actually their daughter and that he had not killed their children after all. Griselda was thus restored to her rightful place as wife and mother. “What more is there left to say except that divine spirits may rain down from the heavens even into the houses of the poor, just as there are others in royal palaces who might be better suited to tending pigs than ruling men. Who, aside from Griselda, would have suffered, not merely dried eyed, but with a cheerful countenance, the cruel, unheard-of trials to which Gualtieri subjected her?” In the year of Boccaccio’s death in 1374 Francesco Petrarca also wrote a version, “Historia Griseldis,” in which the compact between the spouses was harsher: Gualtieri insisted that she must be “ready and willing never to disagree with my will in anything, just as I agree with you in everything, and whatever I wish to do with you, you will let me with all your heart, without any gesture or word of repugnance,” and Griselda promised, “I will not only never knowingly do, but not even think anything that is against your wishes, nor will you ever do anything, even if you order me to die, that I would bear grudgingly.” Petrarca’s account of the disrobing was more humane than Boccaccio’s: “lest she bring into her new home any trace of her former condition, he ordered her to be undressed and to be clothed from head to foot in new garments. This was carried out discreetly and speedily by the ladies in waiting, who vied in cuddling her in their bosom and on their lap.”
ReplyDeleteGeoffrey Chaucer adapted Petrarca's version as “The Clerk’s Tale” in “The Canterbury Tales." Though he heightened the terms of the agreement,
ReplyDelete“I say this: are you ready [to submit] with good heart
To all my desires, and that I freely may,
As seems best to me, make you laugh or feel pain,
And you never to grouch about it, at any time?
And also when I say `yes,’ say not `nay,’
Neither by word nor frowning countenance?
Swear this, and here I swear our alliance.”
Wondering upon these words, trembling for fear,
She said, “Lord, unsuitable and unworthy
Am I of that same honor that you offer me,
But as you desire yourself, right so desire I.
And here I swear that never willingly,
In deed nor thought, will I disobey you,
Even to be dead, though I would hate to die.”
he, too, softened the disrobing:
And so that nothing of her old belongings
She should bring into his house, he ordered
That women should undress her right there;
Of which these ladies were not very happy
To handle her clothes, in which she was clad.
But nevertheless, this maid bright of hue
From foot to head they have clothed all new.
Chaucer also commented on the marquis’ cruelty:
He had tested her enough before,
And found her always good; why was it needed
To test her, and always more and more,
Though some men praise its ingenuity?
But as for me, I say that it ill befits one
To test a wife when there is no need,
And put her in anguish and in dread.
Madison and Milwaukee are the 2 largest cities in Wisconsin. To their south Chicago, Illinois, is at the southern tip of Lake Michigan. Further east, Cleveland, Ohio, and Erie, Pennsylvania, are on the eaternmost of the Great Lakes.
eighty six times thirt