I Once Your Other Darkness - distant Conjectures About A William Hawkins Painting Of A Horse Poem by Warren Falcon

Full Title of the poem is:

I Once Your Other Darkness - Distant Conjectures About A William Hawkins Painting Of A Horse, An Echo of Caravaggio's Painting Of A God-Horse, And Gerard Manley Hopkins Haunting The Text

[The poem addresses re: William Hawkins painting of a massive horse, a video about Hawkins, his life and paintings, and my association of Caravaggio's painting of massive horse towering over Saint Paul stricken down on the road to Damascus. There are distorted quotes/improvisations of/from poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, Jesuit priest and poet in the late 1800's. I've restored the first draft in order to preserve it and then allow a later draft published beneath it just to preserve the attempt to wrench some semblances of meaning from the wreckage of the attempts (dithering a poetic attempt to death, a poem already on 'life support' becoming assemblage most Frankensteinian) ...but, regarding wrecks of poems, one can learn much since the inner poet is at work all the way through and must learn that saying/writing a poem 'the wrong way' leads to discovery of what/how a poem wants to reveal itself and, in some sense, reveals such as he/she is, the poet as 'maker'. Note that lines with quotation marks denote phrases from a Gerard Manley Hopkins sonnet]

First Draft:

1
How would you now depict it,

even a corner of it?

paint as in
the film,

busy with the making
of it, belly's too much,
needs thinning, haunches
trimmed too to size, or
not, concise seizure of
eye and paint dependent
upon hands, monumental
concerns aright or at least
perspectives private
suffering amidst, against,

or in the teeth of, daily
concerns taken on as
ultimate-form,

it is

visual commentary, response
imaged, is backyard ruin put
to good uses, kindness extended
in hammer's claw on cast
off wood, it is Crow near the
barred door, and with heart,
with heart meds, provide limit
to dulling descents, may then
find again's Desire, may plunge
further/deeper, deeper still,
into muck magic of shorter
days given in winter, in the longer
nights generously dumped,
portion/proportion control
upon the human,

such occupies, with familiars,
allusive smears, serving now
and ahead who will partake of
the offering, who will be held
healed in their beholding

nuanced in cloud swatch,
in land swath tumbled.


2
I once, your other darkness, quoted Hopkins
to you, 'seasons of dryness' 'upon the bitter pitch'
amid discovery, 'What I do is me, for that I came',
not a text for self worship but, rather, an assent
to keep world woe personally felt in that greater
perspective making poems from orphan woe,
from ever furtive grace eluding, then surprise,
in bleakest place, sudden braced, parses newly
in the greener green of things pleading still,

'O thou lord of life, send my roots rain'.


3
In the shorter light, the extended night of cold
and star-bright questions, may you cast clumsy
net forward into what it all might mean to fretted
you, to me, stretched, though I will not thrust
these words any longer upon your brush or paint
but make offering with thanks for your own work
to feed us through the eyes, perhaps time to mount
that horse and soldier on or to fall off again, gain
Damascus perspective yet, from one's back watch
vision distort the massive horse into a God receding
into necessary darkness foregoing image in order

to see what may form in the spreading dirt,

what resurrection there is in the smell of paint.

_____________

DRAFT the 4th [the wreckage thereof]

1
from one's back
see the vision -
a massive horse
distorts God
back into image
necessary to the dark to see
what can be spread upon dirt

to see what resurrection
there is in the smell of paint

to find again the desire immense
deeper, still deeper mud magic of
shorter days in winter,
in long nights generously
pouring out stains allusive
serving now and before
to ancestrally partake of
this offering-place, this altar
steeped, cured in contemplation -

sample of nuanced cloud

strip of land collapsed

2
And you, what, still here?
have helped, he to me, to
others, urgent internal imperative,
a torment, insisting persistence
within that unexpected whirling
hopefully soon to blow itself out


then busier with the realization,

IT

HORSE

then see how the belly is too much,
must be diluted, a new leg cut to size
a brief seizure of eyes on the swollen
hock

paint depends utterly upon hands,
a'rights a monumental problem or
at least the prospect of suffering

dislocation

oneself
in the middle

against or

teething daily concerns

paint assume ultimate form


3
I once your other darkness,
Hopkins said to you in
'The years of drought'
'in the bitter, half-tone'
discover, rather, stroke
'a nod-woe the world to keep'

making poems'
Misfortune's
orphans of grace

always furtive such escapes,
surprises, then sombre,
sudden, analyzed only
in the green
green of things
still pleading,

Einfälle

4
Falls the shorter light
Nights cold and long

stars' questions spark
awkward networks,
associations, gestures
though they do not push
these longer words to
pen or paint

but offer with thanks
for their work to feed
through the eyes perhaps
assemblies of all time -

the kindly extended claw hammer,

Crow at the barred door

and with drugged limitation
lend or extend, offer, proof
to Dullness Itself, not texts
for Worship of self but rather

a nod or

my God,


NOD

***

NOTE: the image of the Hawkins painting is too large to upload on poemhunter site. I refer you to the original poem published on poemhunter some years ago when images could be uploaded as is. The original poem, 'Missive For Darkness As Vocation, William Hawkins In Mind', does have the image of the painting.