Heart's Aviary At Odds With Hesitation Poem by Warren Falcon

for Viren
& for Delmore Schwartz


'If all reality is taken only as it is given in the immediate impression, if it is
regarded as sufficiently certified by the power it exerts on the perceptive,
affective, and active life, then a dead man indeed still 'is, 'even though
his outward form may have changed, even though his sensory-material
existence may have been replaced by a disembodied shadow existence.
Here — where 'to be real' and 'to be effective' amount to the same thing —
the fact that the survivor is still connected with him by the emotions of
love, fear, etc. can be expressed and explained only by the survival of the
dead.' - Ernest Casirrer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms Vol.2: Mystical Thought



Delmore, far-from though you are,

a young very tall lover visits late nights,

betimes glad son of sikhs no longer sikhs, or
so they think, who dwell beside Pulaski's draw,
it groans by day and night lifting divided weight
heavy to sky what silently floats under and through
their dreams, he reports, are haunted, something
pursues them from the old land

You are the new, Bapila, he says,
which means vessel, keel, boat, container

Rather, I am slain, says I,
apostate, not by Prophet's
horse jawbone but one
curved as antlers curve
nuzzles a throat entire

As I fade he rises a new
moon sharply dividing dark
from distance, there is no
confusion of which I am
when Lady Day sings

...I'm a fool to want you....

of empty space full-parted,
staked, says sickle moon,

confuse my bone, his, rather,
equine angle bright pressing

close to

parchment and stubble lullaby

rest o rest sigh upon my rubble

feel your swallow a sudden other bird)

each breath a rosary


India's God-son thin legs
entwine spindled swans
'whose toes are sparrows'
he teases whose laughter
deep is black demise too

the eyes

What can hollow a man
to crepuscular, asks
sickle moon,

no - to bone?

No, what is it makes
me more the shallows
but still all water?

What makes me shadow
but all the realer,

alive in refrain only?


Refrain ask further questions:

how assorted birds, the dove and the sparrow, constitute Heart's aviary

how Billie's staggers ever wager skin memory at odds with hestition

how this music, even yours Delmore, 'fathoms the sky'



*****

1 Delmore Schwartz, mid-20th American "confessional" poet

2 The Pulaski Bridge, a draw bridge in New York City connects Long Island City in Queens to Greenpoint in Brooklyn over Newtown Creek. It connects 11th Street in Queens to McGuinness Boulevard (formerly Oakland Street) in Brooklyn, NYC

3 Lady Day - Billie Holiday. Jazz vocalist Billie Holiday was born in 1915 in Philadelphia. Considered one of the best jazz vocalists of all time, Holiday had a thriving career as a jazz singer for many years before she lost her battle with substance abuse.

To hear Lady Day sing this song go to this link (make the link all one...I've spaced it out in order to get it here on this site:

you tube. com/watch? v= QJQ7GJB1FYI


4 Delmore Schwartz's poem "After Baudelaire" greatly inspires Falcon's poem. Charles Baudelaire -A French poet, "his most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) , expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century. Baudelaire's highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets...He is credited with coining the term "modernity" (modernité) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and art's responsibility to capture that experience