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
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in his sleep the ratios wound (wound) into sleep |
| these weathers come to lift light from the night the night a word for it
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Kovalevskaya solved the case of a top in which two moments of inertia at the fixed point |
| a small bird— passer—
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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—
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the spinning as of the making of threads and threats; the toy survives the boy.
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| to wake is to wake tormented in her sleep into her sleep
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abed, a bed is a ratio of threads and threats sheets and blankets a place to put
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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…
|
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| sleeping daughter is the cause
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sleeping son is the effect
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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
