Flower - Iris - Content Enough To See One Fetched From Dream Autochthony Poem by Warren Falcon

a nod, one of thirteen, for Wallace Stevens -
'a small part of the pantomime' 1
'that I may reduce the monster to myself' 2



Rather


Flower - Iris


content enough

(to see what

Whole-r see)


grant vision of

a bower that

may be seen



that of composer

not 'composed'

but

disposed

forever

to weave

from its

cleaving


a flower


*


An after-wrought

'in a world of gutturals' 3


The

'monster outright'


despised,

amplified,


It,


strives

to construct

'before'

the bower

'is locked

in stone'3


a made

mountain,

without

violation,


rules

of violet

random

do

select


Overture

or Ordure


does an orchard

make from (after

all) stone

(peach)


tomato

reborn strays

between rows

and roses

wilding

in heaped woods

yard-once'd,

plankt-ruins'

old stead

close beside,

hedged-tilde

wagon trail

barely road/not road


avails centuries


shovel-preserved,

rough-used,


of blood rock,

mud mortar,

réfused,

aviled, red

seamed

redundancy

over worked -


bruised,


hoof, foot,

wheel splay

where rose

thoughts' flowers

not stray—


remains a feminine pause,


a braid of

purple shade,

rough pines,

and poplar,


one fruit tree still daring.


***
***

autochthony - from autochthon - in ancient Greece, the concept of autochthones means the indigenous inhabitants of a country, including mythological figures, as opposed to settlers, and those of their descendants who kept themselves free from an admixture of colonizing entities.


***


References/quotes/misquotes (on purpose) from Wallace Stevens:

1 Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Bird

2 The Man with the Blue Guitar

3 Plot Against the Giant


And this, just to say, to salute,

William Carlos Williams —

turkey vultures

(zopelotes)

do not mock


they too cursive air in ruthless

modesty tho, darklings, sillouettes

in sky do almost curtsy (peer most

intently at wing ends fluttering

so softly against, see, a violent

air always unseen but there to

carry both bird and viewer

some other where present,

also tough 'as nails, ' as is

said, tho only claws know

a necessary differing


Paint then, if holding pencil,

or quill (to keep aviary allusion) ,

what suggestives serve

gluttonous eyes for the

better, letter-by-letter,

digestifs


Let not, hints Stevens,

AND Williams, thieves

purloin needed dictions

lending spectrals palpable

of breath made

but still solid in

echoes measure

always a pleasure

upon/within ears

eyes to hear/here


There



**

Here is Stevens' poem segment, one of many in The Man With The Blue Guitar:

XIX
That I may reduce the monster to
Myself, and then may be myself
In face of the monster, be more than part
Of it, more than the monstrous player of
One of its monstrous lutes, not be
Alone, but reduce the monster and be,
Two things, the two together as one,
And play of the monster and of myself,
Or better not of myself at all,
But of that as its intelligence,
Being the lion in the lute
Before the lion locked in stone.