Sunday, August 2, 2015

Alan Catlin- Three Poems


Italian Landscape with View of Glistening Firehouse

Beyond the ruined arbor,
ancient portals formed from
marble toppled upon cracked
mosaic floors, aqueducts
overgrown with vines, wisteria
tendrils, stunted bushes, berries
and brambles amid gnarled root
clusters, wild flowers, reeds;
beyond the unexcavated ruins,
centuries deep in neglect, at the
winding edge of disused paths,
incongruous as crop circles are left
by unidentifiable flying objects
something manmade, something
housing relics of a new age, air raid
and fire sirens set for pre-emptive
warnings that never came.



Voices from the Garden (Paris, July 1750)
after art by Cristina Vergano

speak through the third eye
in the center of the young black
man's head. What he is able to
relay is something like a language
of birds, a knowledge all the books
at his disposal are incapable of
framing into a coherent philosophy,
one that might explain how the skull
of one species resting on a Natural
History of the Animal Kingdom,
may be exactly replicated in that
of a living species perched in
the form of a bird on the raised hand,
pointing figure, of this extraordinary
scholar whose every thought is
a hypnogogic spelling, a transmission
of the spirit world from well beyond
ordinary knowing to lesser creatures
whose thoughts, once divined,
are of no practical use.



Their Voices ( Lisbon, July 1652)
after art by Cristina Vergano

can only be deciphered by
one born deaf and made holy
for his uncanny ability to be
transformed in the image of
those who speak in ways only
audible to him. Observers may
see him as a pale, naked youth
perched on a plush red arm chair
staring at onlookers with what
could be thought of as serious
intent but is actually supreme
indifference to this mundane
world of merest mortals so
constrained by fixed times, set
landscapes and three dimensional
space, a world so unlike his own,
he is compelled to constantly
rearrange his own in the manner
of his companions, colorful tropical
birds and then himself, growing
claws where his hands should be,
gripping talons for feet to scuttle
about on as he learns the awful
secrets of flight.


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