Ballad
Astrolabes and lexicons
Once in the great houses—
A poor lobsterman
Met by chance
On Swan's Island
Where he was born
We saw the old farmhouse
Propped and leaning on its hilltop
On that island
Where the ferry runs
A poor lobsterman
His teeth were bad
He drove us over that island
In an old car
A well-spoken man
Hardly real
As he knew in those rough fields
Lobster pots and their gear
Smelling of salts
The rocks outlived the classicists
The rocks and the lobstermen's huts
And the sights of the island
The ledges in the rough sea seen from the road
And the harbor
And the post office
Difficult to know what one means
—to be serious and to know what one means—
An island
Has a public quality
His wife in the front seat
In a soft dress
Such as poor women wear
She took it that we came—
I don't know how to say, she said—
Not for anything we did, she said,
Mildly, 'from God'. She said
What I like more than anything
Is to visit other islands...
(1967)
Ledge Dark Somewhere
I.M. Charles Bukowski
Maximum power is a river
it flows past wild rocks
something hits my ass mon dieu
the Chauvet cave paintings
“celebrate the stupidity
of our endurance” only wait
qu’est-ce que c’est delinquencies
satisfactions have been reckoned
they look pretty damn small
consider the initiation of art
the Late Stone Age in France
goddamn there were rhinos
far back from the light
rockfall sealed the cave
careful bear tracks framed
si ça se peut not my business
old wines stretch my brain
cat on the sofa watermelons summer
© 2012 Rob Schackne
Flowerpot
I lay back on the carpeted bottom step
Of the stairwell that like a well extended
Darkly up to the window near the ceiling,
Up where the Chinaman under the wide-brimmed hat
That hid his face pulled the flowerpot that held
No flower across the sill no one could reach.
There was a television on somewhere
Above me, and the doomsday clock was ticking,
Someone was saying. Someone was saying something
About a blockade and a quarantine,
Who would blink first, lose face, or push the button.
A fat man banged a shoe against a desk.
The Chinaman however didn’t care.
Pulling his flowerpot of absent flowers,
He was content to be a clot of darkness
Brightening the moment late sun caught the glass—
The hat tip first, and then the hat, the arms,
The rickshaw of the flowerpot he pulled.
And everywhere within the light’s slow fall
Infinities of particles were falling
Into the flowerpot they’d never fill.
(2010)
A Green Crab's Shell
Not, exactly, green:
closer to bronze
preserved in kind brine,
something retrieved
from a Greco-Roman wreck,
patinated and oddly
muscular. We cannot
know what his fantastic
legs were like–
though evidence
suggests eight
complexly folded
scuttling works
of armament, crowned
by the foreclaws'
gesture of menace
and power. A gull's
gobbled the center,
leaving this chamber
–size of a demitasse–
open to reveal
a shocking, Giotto blue.
Though it smells
of seaweed and ruin,
this little traveling case
comes with such lavish lining!
Imagine breathing
surrounded by
the brilliant rinse
of summer's firmament.
What color is
the underside of skin?
Not so bad, to die,
if we could be opened
into this–
if the smallest chambers
of ourselves,
similarly,
revealed some sky.
(2012)
"to come away with Hesiod"
to come away with Hesiod
and leave the rock as though to rocks
the tree to trees and dwell on other things
imagine the injunction
to leave the mint to its own devices
amongst the dust & stones in the shadow
of rocks or tree-roots hard as rocks
imagine poems like tended mint
or poems like wildest mint which survives
the oblivion of feckless gardeners
until plucked by knowing fingers
after the fiercer heat’s abated
imagine poems left to their own devices
as poets gorge on air & airy thoughts
& figures — the idea cuts me
to the bone of a sobriety earned
at the expense of the airiness Hesiod
was commissioned to name
but who wouldnt seize a staff of bay
or ash or gum and trade common or
garden cough for lungsfull of song
taking the world in one’s stride
careering towards heaven?
(1998)
La Magia
How can formulas be literature?
I love that. I laugh and give myself up
To the extra breath, side-step the beggar
Who is quite interested in my loot.
I’m watching you while something else
Is spreading like an eager plant
When the conditions are right.
The moon is bright. Maybe no pines.
Seeing all the forms of things
How they change before your eyes
Wait a bit for the lights and the darkness.
You watch the F1. The directions are on TV.
Take this poem. Stop and look awhile.
It has only my wallet on its mind
Sitting in an Italian restaurant
Walking down a street back home.
© 2012 Rob Schackne
The Atoms of Books
3. If reader wants to keep book and buy it:
i) Supply name of book store.
ii) The library cannot sell books to individuals. The books are the property of the Library Board.
4. If reader says he pays taxes and the book belongs to him:
i) State that the Public Libraries Act makes books property of the Library Board.
Chinook Regional Library Procedures Manual (2007)
Running up the path to the treasure house
I always maxed out the borrowing limit
The craters of the moon, insects, stories
Of people who lived differently than me
Geography and history, Greek myths
Astronomy and atoms, the pyramids
Tycho Brahe, his noses, magic moose
Telescopes and heliocentrics of sad
The blue-stocking's reprimand
This is not appropriate for your age
Once I even cried to show her that it was
And a guy said, Jesus give the kid his book!
Pliny the Elder, Pompeii, Alexandria
The Cairo Geniza, my forefathers, herself
On a carved page suddenly discovered
Where silence is no longer special virtue
Now books cannot sit squarely upon a shelf
With furred pages, the silverfish and worms
Growing older & more important in the shade
Happily replenishing the nutrition of words.
© 2012 Rob Schackne
