Six Scandals

He was listening to the wind in the telephone wires

Paul Bowles, A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard

OF THE SIX SIBLINGS

in sleep

the gentle madness

in her sleep

 

in his sleep

the ratios wound (wound)

into sleep

these weathers come

to lift light

from the night

the night a word for it

 

Kovalevskaya

solved the case of a top

in which two moments

of inertia at the fixed point

a small bird— passer—

 

are equal and double the third

passes her window and its shadow

across the drawn shade like a drawing

she would display

she would play

when the center of gravity

is in the plane of equal moments

of inertia (Whittaker, 164)

OF THE THIRTY-SIX-STARRED CONSTELLATION

For it is the business of a man gifted in the word to prophecy good. (Christopher Smart)

the light as a kind of passion

a passing

a wilderness of bed,

it lies above—

 

the spinning as of

the making of

threads and threats;

the toy survives the boy.

 

to wake is to wake

tormented

in her sleep

into her sleep

 

abed, a bed is a ratio

of threads and threats

sheets and blankets

a place to put

 

So with his sister he cast he threw sticks

and read from I Ching:

Quiet perseverance brings good fortune

and each went separately softly to bed which is quiet

which is perseverance—to sever, no, severe…

 

sleeping daughter

is the cause

 

sleeping son

is the effect

 

of light

to enter again:

in her sleep

into her sleep

a dream of sparrows.

 

OF THE FINGERS

not rare but a surprise, that sixth digit

or there is one finger missing, and nine

digits indicates disaster, but such

dis-aster as might engage and delight:

“For Nine is a number very good and harmonious.

“For Cipher is a note of augmentation very good.

“For innumerable ciphers will amount to something.

“For the mind of man cannot bear

a tedious accumulation of nothings without effect.

“For infinite upon infinite they make a chain.” (Christopher Smart)

OF THE CAT ON THE 16TH FLOOR

who that last morning was sitting,

the protrusion through the window, having

escaped the screen, and she (his distraught mistress)

was reaching through and begging him

to return and I being afraid I would distract

moved from the window and returned

to sleep with a vision of cat falling

without fear believing himself to have

the skill to land upon four feet

the art to right himself upon air

the right to live eight times insouciantly

the ability to not suffer gravity

but be borne on the back of all flying things of the city.

OF THE THREE BIRDS OF THE CITIES

PIGEON: which loves height and is not afraid

of the cat nor the foot of the passing stranger

yet does keep one eye cocked

 

CROW: which loves height and is not afraid

of the angry man whose fist is raised against

bird and god alike, who is late even before he awakes

for his appointments and his sinful anxiety

 

SPARROW/PASSER: which loves the low

places around the feet of diners on the sidewalks

and is aware of her name in Latin and her place

in various scripture and delights at the trope

of god’s eye, of being the object of God’s attention

even though she knows better and has always known

she was less than the crumb itself swept

by the hand of the waiter from the table,

the trembling table when weather threatens.

OF THE KOREAN SCREEN IN THE MUSEUM

han’gel calligraphy, developed for farmers and women,

not the elegance of Chinese used by the scholars

the story of a man who played lute and his wife

who played flute and they were attended

by flocks of phoenix birds…and after their death

simultaneous one was lifted to paradise on the back

of a dragon, and one on the back of a phoenix.

And the fiery attendants of flocks.

 

“The bird alighted so softly it would crush nothing

would eat only dewdrops”

 

The left eye does not know what the right

eye is wanting.

 

And here is the secret of consciousness,

why mind evolved, the secret of that which

is the cause of the human, the accident

which turned us from the path

of beasts to the rising road, the Way:

the eyes are not alike but are like

a sister and brother asleep in the same house.

 

© Bin Ramke