Man Cut In Wood 1 Poem by Denis Mair

- For my brother-in-law Dan H., blue-collar artist, son of a
Catholic family, he created the cover woodcut for an English
version of CHUANG-TZU.

Of all the dozens of talkers I've known
The bullshit self-promoters of the written word
Nobody ever hung scenes in air
Better than my brother-in-law Dan H.,
Woodcut artist, who scorned a single purpose in his speech,
But shaped his clouds by turbulent flow
Each stratum turned by breath of air, teased into a mare's tail,
displayed across his sky of feelings.
And this was only play, limbering a hundred inner hands,
Before the outer hand picked up its chisel,
To make the mark of a grassblade sing.
We were too small for him.
Symphonists of words should have sought after him,
Trailing the wisps of his blend in coffee houses.
When light appears in a corner, is it not sought out
And amplified by feeding back and forth
Until we have a Florence?
But the luminous do not trumpet themselves
And walls of conversations grow higher.
In booth after booth, the people are cornering each other.

He was large for us, but meek from measuring his smallness.
An unusual milch cow, mooing with us over fresh clover,
While wondering how to rebuild the works of a grandfather clock.
He should have been more visited.
I should have been the one to provide the party and the room
So he could hold forth in an armchair.
His raving sessions should have been prolonged to his forties.
He should have somersaulted into a dozen lofts,
His champagne consumption paid for by the Arts Commission.
But look at measly me, how I took his time, dramatizing
My uncreative snubs and disappointments.
Look what my sister did, claiming him, waylaying him
For her vulnerable, needy sense of self.
So much time, the purity of his projects given,
Till he becomes a salvager of stripping
In the wasteland of eternal remodeling.
I regret the hours my family's wounded litany
Jangled the dedication of his basement.
But I can live with my guilt, because
He did us credit by seeing in us the drama of life.

The people who never brought him anything new
Were like the uncle of James Joyce:
They brushed their derby in the foyer
Wouldn't take their nephew to Araby;
Went to meet their group at the pub;
Wouldn't feed a boy's wonder
Among the aisles of a bazaar.

He slyly welcomes neglect, having no lack of inner resources.
Out of broken wishbones he refits a prow for Ulysses' boat.
He casts up driftwood talismans and hides them
In the medicine bag of his house.
He ebbs and flows in the stairways and doorways,
He rolls in all seasons against the shores of his bed.
With condemned buildings as his lumber yard,
With syntax of magazines to shatter and mine for opals,
With a peace-train backyard, with which he begins
To heal the Hanford slag lagoons by prayer of hoe,
This uncle has something to entertain any nephew who stops by.