Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Fin Sorrel writes



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

2 comments:

  1. 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.”

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  2. Geoffrey Chaucer adapted Petrarca's version as “The Clerk’s Tale” in “The Canterbury Tales." Though he heightened the terms of the agreement,
    “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

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