In Plainsong, Canticle Unhinging Poem by Desmond Kon

i.

let dreamers make the mauve whole, let them remake me supine
lazy long-handle songs which make me write lazy rhymes, leonine
animals let out into ankhs; let white thyme be wild and appliqué;


ii.

let the white bunkers cave in, churching, let in locked-in ghosts
in the back wall, let the third postern be built in to let them out
the chancy; one hanging onto the ceiling fan by its shard blades
ariel legs spun round and round, to lop off naked reds; let the goers
shovels to make bright-barn space, more milk-and-water eyes?


iii.

let the posies look pretty beyond thursdays? let the ochre go
to buying cheaper, larger chapel flowers; chrysanthemums tempered
desire yet strangely templed, in vain, less easy, less old, rugged
rampart rafts and long boats made to shellac, coattail memory;


iv.

duets make for difficult transversals, because one always whets
lets the other follow through; so let out those unknown windows
that’s what it feels like to live under a levee roof, black, scow;


v.

let the matadors and mandrills go, maneless, redder rivets
recite sacristy regret as reason, and love still; old words remind me
of age and how it takes one by surprise, one celebrant decade
at a time; let this chaplet hope be wisdom arriving actually
intercalating like a material collective promise
(the principalities took the vases and left papyrus promises;
how they ensured no one a godsend landing place)


vi.

please let in the low plains, let slip those upper slopes, fenced in
under tree-line weather, underfoot like self-restraint,
so we never forget the castaways, and how hard it was to breathe;


vii.

hear the banshees? bloodlet flags for the mirrors?
let go, alone, let the flashing lights in, in on all the undercroft
awfulness; who will see the dead-set fenders drawing
silver arrows and stainless steely-green wings?
but for the draughtsmen, what chorus and alcove aria, which amens;


viii.

let this year’s gift be newly gifted? not to read mid-day montaigne
perhaps soft friendship, enough wrestling with sunrise facts
its shadows; no more polar provisions yet one more blank-eyed bird;
which of them will be led homeless like a higher place like being;
and being able to read and sing and laugh and move
and revisit, and not have to wonder about which small rivers
what to think about all of it, the seawalls of all of it.





Author’s Note:

The earliest evidence of Christian hymnody can be traced back to the 3rd Century fragment known as Parchment Oxyrhyncus 15.1786. It also remains the latest in date of the extant compositions which applied ancient Greek music notation, marking the end of that artistic period. An earlier version of this poem appeared in The Pinch, a literary journal published by the University of Memphis.

In the book, Harold Bloom: A Poetics of Conflict (Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf,1994) , Graham Allen writes this in his chapter on ‘Maps of Misreading’: “Every act of reading is an exercise in belatedness, yet every such act is also defensive, and as a defense it makes of interpretation a necessary misprison… A strong reading can be defined as one that itself produces other readings – as Paul de Man says, to be productive it must insist upon its own exclusiveness and completeness, and it must deny its partialness and its necessary falsification. ‘Error about life is necessary for life’; error about a poem is necessary if there is to be yet another strong poem.”

Gustav Davidson traces the multiple renderings of the angel Ariel, meaning “lion of God”, through various texts:

“Ariel… [is] the name of an angel in the apocryphal Ezra; also in Mathers, The Greater Key of Solomon, the Grand Grimoire, and other tracts of magic, where he is pictured as lion-headed. Cornelius Agrippa says: ‘Ariel is the name of an angel, sometimes also of a demon, and of a city, whence called Ariopolis, where the idol is worshipped.’ In Heywood, The Hierarchy of the Blessèd Angels, Ariel ranks as one of 7 princes who rule the waters and is Earth’s great Lord. Jewish mystics used Ariel as a poetic name for Jerusalem. In the Bible, the name denotes, variously, a man, a city (Isaiah 29) , and an altar. In occult writings Ariel is the ‘3rd archon of the winds.’ Mention is also made of Ariel as an angel who assists Raphael in the cure of disease. [Rf. M. Gaster, Wisdom of the Chaldeans.] In the Coptic Pistis Sophia, Ariel is in charge of punishment in the lower world, corresponding with Ur of the Mandaeans (q.v.) . In The Testament of Solomon, he controls demons. In gnostic lore generally he is a ruler of winds and equated with Ialdabaoth as an older name for this god. In practical cabbala he is regarded as originally of the order of virtues. According to John Dee, astrologer royal in Queen Elizabeth’s day, Ariel is a conglomerate of Anael and Uriel. In The Tempest, Shakespeare casts Ariel as a sprite. To Milton he is a rebel angel, overcome by the seraph Abdiel in the first day of fighting in Heaven. The poet Shelley referred to himself as Ariel, and André Maurois is the author of a life of Shelley called Ariel. Sayce (‘Athenaeum, ’ October 1886) sees a connection between Ariel and the arelim (erelim) , the valiant ones spoken of in Isaiah 33: 7, an order of angels equated with the order of thrones. [Rf. Texts of the Saviour; Butler, Ritual Magic; Bonner, Studies in Magical Amulets.]”