Bare To Such Luscence - A Catfish Mass Poem by Warren Falcon

Bare To Such Luscence - A Catfish Mass In Mississippi

for John Berryman, his Bones, Confessed

Antiphons:

The original fault
Will not be undone by fire.
The original fault was whether wickedness
Was soluble in art. History says it is,
Jacques Maritain says it is,
Barely.

- John Berryman, from 'Sonnet ix'

Introit then Lauds:

Punctuated surprise
hosanna of rivers
sounding with
or without gills

I could not make it there
that 'pointed conjunction'
nor up to air. I, Catfish,
soft sift bottom mud, give up
on purity, on flitting civilizations
lifted or pressed between
surface and aspirant spaces.

Done with all that some
have had no choice.
Catfish choices differ
from those of the 'Windhover' Christ,
'dappled, dawn drawn' though they be
(Hopkins implicate flights of resurrection) .

'Stead, Berryman without art or Maritain
out leapt his sonnets to river-fells and missed,
the fool, one last scansion - dirty trick -
'hisself, too, hit, Bones sans pomes,
hard mud, perhaps one foot or his
beard delicately dipped
in paginated river.'

Catfish Homily:

Witless old mud spawn, widest mouth,
no lips to speak of, greed pulls black water
to shore, a bark in air Catfish makes in
punctuated protest at too much light
or is it, rather, ecstasy, final vision gasped
vague in depths, hinted upon surfaces,
Platonic shadow plays portending sparks
praise to what is finally seen at the end,
a life mucked and mired in obfuscated fundaments?

Eucharist 1965:

Fate, then, heavy in a boy's hand
hoists dead weight to a nail on a tree.
His knife scores firm flesh yielding
beneath freshly limp gills - there is an
instrument made just for this, pincher-pliers
for catfish skin - he grips and tears,
uses his weight down-stripping smoothly
bare to such luscence little ribs of roseate
flesh.

Only the overly large head, the ugly face
whiskered within gilded monstrance,
remain pure to form, thin-lipped and
mocking, restrained by depth pressures,
sustained on surface trash, dead things
that sink down it's treasures.

Tenderly sing, then, to a nail,
to a boy's blood catechism -
hands, minds, are meant
to be stained, mercy's quality
unstrained neither by will nor gill.
Scavenging flocks gladly fill their
gullets inhaling entrails tossed
in supplicant bins.

In unison Gregorian they scream:

There is a nail for me
plain, a chorus of barks** -

splintered lips
punctuated surprise,

glossolalia of rivers
now given weight.

One can only will
praise to 'The End',

and spill, post-pliers,
one's silken guts in offering.

**A catfish when brought to shore barks, a rasping, barking discharge of air.