I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You
Off-shore, by islands hidden in the blood
jewels & miracles, I, Maximus
a metal hot from boiling water, tell you
what is a lance, who obeys the figures of
the present dance
1
the thing you’re after
may lie around the bend
of the nest (second, time slain, the bird! the bird!
And there! (strong) thrust, the mast! flight
(of the bird
o kylix, o
Antony of Padua
sweep low, o bless
the roofs, the old ones, the gentle steep ones
on whose ridge-poles the gulls sit, from which they depart,
And the flake-racks
of my city!
2
love is form, and cannot be without
important substance (the weight
say, 58 carats each one of us, perforce
our goldsmith’s scale
feather to feather added
(and what is mineral, what
is curling hair, the string
you carry in your nervous beak, these
make bulk, these, in the end, are
the sum
(o my lady of good voyage
in whose arm, whose left arm rests
no boy but a carefully carved wood, a painted face, a schooner!
a delicate mast, as bow-sprit for
forwarding
3
the underpart is, though stemmed, uncertain
is, as sex is, as moneys are, facts!
facts, to be dealt with, as the sea is, the demand
that they be played by, that they only can be, that they must
be played by, said he, coldly, the
ear!
By ear, he sd.
But that which matters, that which insists, that which will last,
that! o my people, where shall you find it, how, where, where shall you listen
when all is become billboards, when, all, even silence, is spray-gunned?
when even our bird, my roofs,
cannot be heard
when even you, when sound itself is neoned in?
when, on the hill, over the water
where she who used to sing,
when the water glowed,
black, gold, the tide
outward, at evening
when bells came like boats
over the oil-slicks, milkweed
hulls
And a man slumped,
attentionless,
against pink shingles
o sea city)
4
one loves only form,
and form only comes
into existence when
the thing is born
born of yourself, born
of hay and cotton struts,
of street-pickings, wharves, weeds
you carry in, my bird
of a bone of a fish
of a straw, or will
of a color, of a bell
of yourself, torn
5
love is not easy
but how shall you know,
New England, now
that pejorocracy is here, how
that street-cars, o Oregon, twitter
in the afternoon offend
a black-gold loin?
how shall you strike,
o swordsman, the blue-red black
when, last night, your aim
was mu-sick, mu-sick, mu-sick
And not the cribbage game?
(o Gloucester-man,
weave
your birds and fingers
new, your roof-tops,
clean shit upon racks
sunned on
American
braid
with others like you, such
extricable surface
as faun and oral,
satyr lesbos vase
o kill kill kill kill kill
those
who advertise you
out)
6
in! in! the bow-sprit, bird, the beak
in, the bend is, in, goes in, the form
that which you make, what holds, which is
the law of object, strut after strut, what you are, what you must be, what
the force can throw up, can, right now hereinafter erect,
the mast, the mast, the tender
mast!
The nest, I say, to you, I Maximus, say
under the hand, as I see it, over the waters
from this place where I am, where I hear,
can still hear
from where I carry you a feather
as though, sharp, I picked up
in the afternoon delivered you
a jewel,
it flashing more than a wing,
than any old romantic thing,
than memory, than place,
than anything other than that which you carry
than that which is,
call it a nest, around the head of, call it
the next second
than that which you
can do!
Copyright Credit: Charles Olson, “I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You” from The Maximus Poems, published by the University of California Press. Copyright © 1983 by Charles Olson. Reprinted with the permission of The Literary Estate of Charles Olson.
Source: The Maximus Poems (University of California Press, 1987)