Meta-lect 42 (Quirquincho)

25 February 2011. Sun amidst rain...or...

The fate of the quirquincho. But can such an adorable creature have a fate? This small, wiggly being--mammalian, they say--held in the right hand, gently, by it's implacable back. The combination of shell plate and fur--a few bristles, that is, and a shaggy hairy row along bottom of shell. Carapace--the shield or covering, as with Ulysses. A rounded banner of bronze--bas relief--and the story of all time...

(for Leonard)

Meta-lect 41 (Peludero)

24 February 2011. Gray slanting rain, as predicted. A woman's voice...

Too many associations. But can that ever be? Loss of a neighbor, Hal--his one-time trap set, hidden away behind upstairs screen--sounds of dance bands from long ago. On the road, Evanston, Granite City, Champaign... Indian chiefs and fox trots, a warm smile... The need to speak...

* * *

Peludero, where we began. A small creature with hard shell--mammalian, a tiny nurser when young, evolving into this desert brute. Marsupial--the southern line. Tierra del Fuego and above...

The Antipodes...

Meta-lect 40 (Jaime Dávalos)

23 February 2011. Sun, misty sky, late morning...

From the sands of Salta to Albany nails, Joi, that would be, here on Solano, where a pleasant Vietnamese woman of middle years with alert eyes and a very deft touch applies silk and super-glue to the offending item--la uña de la chacarera--a guitar player's middle nail. In the old days it was the thumb--pulgar--favorite of Celedonio Romero, and then of course Diego. Down stroke of those bulerias falsetas, off-beat accents a lo gitano, life in between the seams...

Jaime Davalos again, listening to his songs late in the evening, an old recording, made in a concert in Salta. His rapport with his listeners--subtle criollo asides--bien entendidos, si no mas...

La quebrada...

Meta-lec t 39 (Pato Sirirí B)

22 February 2011. Beautiful and fresh sunny morning. Yesterday, late afternoon--snow on the hills behind Oakland, white...

Jaime Dávalos, from a live recording, early 1960s? In Salta--a child of the mountains. Writer of songs, and a poet, like his father (in his own words--"un homenaje a mi padre, quien me espera bajo de la tierra.") Yet here: Pato Sirirí. A river song. Patient, whistling call of a water bird, in the night--"que de noche pasa..." Dark head with striking white face, white blaze on dark breast.

Jaime. Image of fire, the three of them, seated around the fogón, even if it's indoors, even if it's been filmed--still the chance to feel something of his spirit--the spontaneous intelligence of his words... Su pasión...

"Poesía que nombra como ninguna las cosas de la tierra, sin gastados lugares comunes, con las palabras del alma..."



* * *

(Note: The last line quoted from an anonymous admirer of Dávalos, posted on line)

Meta-lect 38 (Pato Sirirí)

17 February 2011. Rain times rain. Hello from Mo in 7-Eleven, "200 per cent"...

Dictions and evasions. The Southern Cross. A shy girl (not unlike the young gull) in Andean cap with dangling flap, beautiful round eyes, by the waterside, singing these verses from Jaime Dávalos, half a century before...

Pato Sirirí, que de noche pasa.
¿Adónde te vas buscando amor?
Las estrellas son rumbos de tu raza,
por eso en el río persigues reflejos
de la Cruz del Sur.

Pato Sirirí, debajo la luna,
barco de papel que en elcielo va.
En el espinel, pescador de estrellas
yo busco una de ellas, que alumbra
mi Pato Sirirí

Si algún día vuelves
y como el sauce me ves llorando
es que una estrella vivo esperando
que con el canto se encienda en mí.

También el río, buscando cielo
siempre se aleja
y aquí en la orilla solo me deja
tu silbo errante
Pato Sirirí

* * *

Pato Sirirí, Jaime Dávalos

Meta-lect 37 (Santiago)

16 February 2011. Rain in slanting sheets... Then a moment's sun...

Santiago. Inevitable changes. Changes? Inevitable?

Article on Yeats in middle of the night, black anodized flashlight, arm slightly cramped under the covers. Someone's elaborate conceits on times long ago. The Irish wars, questions of force, views strongly held, fought for, abandoned. Compromise--but not in the poem. For what is a poem?

Pictures and paintings--the Charlie Rich recordings, his last. Billboard on I-80, approach to Bay Bridge, San Francisco to Reno. Mane of gray silver gray hair, leaning into the piano. Back to a sharecropper's shack, border of Texas and Arkansas, when he was a boy. Piano pushed in on one wall. Work hats on nails in an array just above. A teacher...

Meta-lect 36 (La Atamisqueña)

15 February 2011. Warm gray skies--rain here, then gone, then back again...

La Atamisqueña--una chacarera, resolana santiagueña--the mysteries of Domingo Aguirre, blind musician, la arpa, his narrow fingers recorded long. In the company of Andrés Chazarreta--el patriarco del folklore argentino, su Conjunto de Arte Nativo. But whose arte and whose nativo? Atamísqui que misquiáta...me átas el corazón. Something rather of the earth--coplas de sol--me han de upáyar los requérdos...y el verso núevo vuelvó a escuchár...

Gansos libres, buscando dulzúras...tus glorias víven en él lugár...

La mujér atamisqúeña
entre sus pénas tejé un amor...

Meta-lect 34 (Towhee)

14 February 2011. A universal day-late valentine, in the rain. Downward mist, on mansard roof. Umbrella...

As in Axel Corti's film, set in 1940, when actor Johannes Silberschneider wanders the arcades of Paris, stopping to open his black parapluis--inside which are displayed a set of ties--each one for sale--while the man alongside--a potential customer--opens his own black umbrella to same...

Sensibility of Mittleuropa...

While here, the fluffy chicks enjoy a moment of freedom. That would be freiheit--the sound "eye" not an "ee" (and in any case, frieheit looks like some Berlin wunderkammer version of Taco Bell...)

Nabakov in the spring. Traipsing the fields of Switzerland, umbrella in hand. Or butterfly net, rather. With similar results--freedom becoming the recognition of necessity...

Towhee, a beautiful friend...

Meta-lect 34 (Your Breakfast, Sir--envelope view)

Meta-lect 34 (Your Breakfast, Sir)

11 February 2011. Dentista. La limpia, con Lilly--on a sunny morning. L's note, on yellow post-it--Mubarack is gone...

Happinesses. "Your breakfast, Sir..." The Biltmore Hotel, downtown LA, with my Dad, also on a sunny morning--the dusty palm trees on Pershing Square. That would be 1958? (Why is everything 1958?) Covered plates--pewter tops over thick porcelain, white cloth napkins, and the formality of a waiter. "Your breakfast, Sir..." Jump to Warszawa, a decade later. Hotel Polonia, heavy plates, no palms. But the same waiter, cloth over his arm, back slightly bent, impassive face, a distinguished profession of sorts... One of the oldest...

Lilly's face, from Mexico, beautiful middle brown, fine forehead, her dark eyes appearing over the white mask, like something out of Satjait Ray. India, China, Kamchatka, the Bering Sea...

"Finally we are free..."

Meta-lect 33 (Instructional)

10 February 2011. And a sunny day it is...

Winged creature on white floor board, gothic symmetry in morning light... ends and beginnings. As with the Frank O'Hara poems...a playful anything, then something, then back again...

Instructional. The road crew returns. High on a road in the Sierras. Or, high in the Sierras on a road. Wait, we'll never get this right. Let's just say: small chickens. A child's architectural garden, with white paper crowns and a spot of gold.

Permissions and detachments--the security of a data base.

Love...


* * *

(for Angie)

Meta-lect 32 (Slon)

9 February 2011. Sun. We're getting perhaps too fond of this...

I smile--but for an elephant without a home? No, that can't be. More, an elephant whose home is too small. Apartment, rather. The bumpy head, unfolding trunk. But why an apartment for an elephant in any case? Such an existential creature--a creature with such an existence. Eucalyptus leaves, pulled down by the branch-full, winding paths through rambling brush, the occasional water-hole, a nice bath. Smells of the African veldt. Veldt? A Dutch word, hmmm...

An elephant song. Something pounding. But graceful, too. In 9/4 I think...

A somber delight...

Metalect 31 (For Po-Chü-I)

8 February 2011. Sunny, but still February... Large youth with smooth cheeks, stubble chin, orders pack of Marlborough (some other detail included) and a Gizmo (wrong name) lottery ticket. His beautiful, narrow-faced lady sitting outside, half-light, in seat of waiting SUV...

Mo in the aisles amidst boxes of Peeble-O's. Mary-Lou's and Granny Pokes (invented inventory--products from the American heartland). Manager and stocking clerk. "Also cashier..." "But your customers love you..." Eyebrows raised...

Maybe a gift instead. The Year of the Rabbit, for example, or Atchafalya, for Princess N (yesteday), with elaborate note about Tolstoy's description of Pierre Bezukhov, and how the word "tolstoj" has been tendentiously translated.. (After seeing the plump English ceramic alligator on N's side table.) The available paths--we don't even choose them. More a matter of saying no...or, better, yes...

This morning. Master Po. That phrase of his. "What's the use." Or was it James Wright's? Either way, it's pure Po Chü-I. Neither fatalism nor resignation. More a kind of whistful delight in the present. What better reward...?

Metalect 30 (Atchafalaya)

7 February 2011. Warm and sunny day, go figure... T-shirts and flip flops... Tiny whirling creatures in late afternoon light...

A question of the precise choice of words. Tolstoy, for instance. His description of Pierre, in the Russian--tolstoj molodoj chelovek--which Garnett takes as "a stout young man," as do the Maudes. But Pevear and Volokhonsky say "fat." S. imagines their conversation: "Now Richard (voice rising), in Russian it says fat! (However, S. has also told us that she also describes Tolstoy himself--his writing, that as--as the sound of an elephant approaching. So let's consider the attitude here. I understand her adamance--and the need for the freedom of the translator (in an absolute sense). Nonetheless, we're dealing with Tolstoy--and his Pierre-- one of the great and transcendent creations of character in the history of the writing of the world (Babel's phrase)--so the adjective matters. And who is Pierre? (Everyone, in the end, must revere him--or is it just me?) The price of the word fat (with it's connatations in English of roundedness, deracination and even an absense of sex--no doubt lost on the Russian ear (no matter how perfect one's acquired English)--where stout implies layers--coverings--in the Russian meant quite literally (layers of skin, or another material)--and a certain stiffness. Read masculinity. The price--the months wandering in the Russian winter, a prisoner of Napoleon's army in retreat, his feet exposed, body covered with lice (Tolstoy notes that their profusion keeps Pierre warm)--the presence of Platon Karataev, and a kind of impossible awakening--to himself and to the world. But of course, all this is too easy to say--for one would really have to suffer--live through--such an experience--to write these words.

To grow...

(for Princess N.)

Metalect 29 (Year of the Rabbit)

Metalect 28 (Initial Chicken)

And in the garden, as it were--a garden of lights and darks--

Metalect 27

17 December. Bright sunny Thursday, just like old times. No, just like today...

Furious flock in their quiet mode. A wobbly clay bowl centered on wide green field, our local meadow--rumpled sedge, burdock, mimosa shoot. Whose yellow blossoms still months away, billowing...

The silver-gray rock dove, jay and daw (not shown)... Chickadee and finch, and tiny white-crowned sparrow--high on spindly branch of pine. An old Chinese poem, something from the T'ang, no doubt. Our pleasure, our thanks...

Metalect 26

11 December 2009. Gray, cold, rain. Well, almost--wet streets, impending drops...

Mrs. Burke, dressed for the day as the Great Leader. Terrible chicken humor, surfacing even in the sanctity of the classroom. But the little ones--Monique, Fritz, Charley, and little George know she's only pretending--a bit of theater which draws their attention--devotion, even. Chairs direct from Central Casting, in this case an old tin warehouse in West Oakland, where we rummage through piles of vanquished props-faded armor, Doric columns, a martini glass, the occasional sword...

A kingdom off the coast of Illyria, and sweet Helen, on the ring above...

Metalect 25

10 December 2009. And what kind of day? Gray clouds, sharp wind, lonely scattered rain...

And moments of almost sun, in keeping with this gallinaceous guitarreada. A plunky tune, with full chorus-- ponchito, little drummer, raven chick and reader... Then, from high above, the curlicue tree limb--something always gets out of hand--and a ring of pearls...

Expectations, laughter, twists of fate...

Metalect 24

9 December 2009. Cold and bright.

Shoe time. But why? It's a bird's world, and the residence permit is an old sole. The well-worn brougham, or a Dr. Scholl's. Narrow alpargata tucked away behind--a mere slipper--and sturdy Red Wing boot. Each one with it's avian visitor--lighted, for the moment, in drawing's realm...

1953, Nevada Street School, Oceanside, CA. Our assignment--to write a philosophy of life. Impossible them, impossible now...

Metalect 23

8 December 2009. Morning sun, sparkling frost on bright green grass, nice layer of white...

Chickens on parade--desfile natural--mother hen in the lead, at the wheel of her 1954 Plymouth. Skateboarding progeny, unicycles, ice-skates, a single balloon...

World refashioned in the gallinaceous manner, foibles revealed, within and without. Guston's image--hooded figures in a car, bats and clubs, up to no good. Smoking, eating and drinking...the painted line. A matter of what's inside--and pure invention...

Metalect 22

7 December 2009. Heavy steam rising from pool, air in the mid forties...

But the chickens don't care--they're well trained. A battery of treats--or sampler, from the bake shop, as it were, with private seating--all on high. And Sammy the Duck, entering stage left, with campaign banner--the Turks at the gates of Vienna, Jan Sobieski, King of Poland, leading the defense...

1683...

Metalect 21

4 December 2009. Cold morning mist, as in old Amsterdam... ("Heb je het kaut...?) Arching stone bridge over gray-green canal, icy air...

This morning: no big deal. A moment of instruction--three's a charm. Set the instruments aside for the time being. A saxophone pile--tom tom and maracas, the lone tambourine. A music room, for growing children--the upright piano, the open-holed flute, a drum set at one point. And, off to the side, a suspended wire cage with newspaper bottom, scatter of tiny seeds and that bit of rocky suet--the home of Elvis, parakeet variety, somewhere soon after 1956...

Heartbreak Hotel...

Metalect 20

3 December 2009. Steam rising from blue pool, gray skies...

An offering--in the sense of--an offering. A pan of parched corn--from the maizal... Gaucho birds ready and waiting, their varied hats a sampler of 19th century lore--the sombrero pampeano, estilo Santa Fe, or a flying boina (beret, as it were)--and a Churchill top hat--una galera--borrowed somewhere from the wardrobe of Europe, but assuming a more countrified vigor on the Argentine plains. On the right--no known name--a kind of trucated felt cone, nondescript, pulled snug... (panza de burro?) And, finally, the one of my own--courtesy of lids.com, a contemporary brand. Cotton and hemp, knit fast on the seams...

Whirling...

Metalect 19

2 December 2009. Foggy winter's morning, bundled guards, furious swimmers...

And a Metalect searching for a home. The regular suspects, yes, although Frau Pullet seems to be off for the day. Snoozing on the cot, perhaps, or taking in some daytime tv... A monitor with mirror image, the world of work, and an arching branch--their atavistic home. Resident saucer concertina player, high above, Ranelli at the ready... An older model, brown and deep red, worn at the edges, with bellows of folded paper...

Mazel tov, y'all...

Metalect 18

1 December 2009. Chilly dawn, steam rising from blue-green pool...

"It's a storage issue," announced from across the room. As with this house of cards, presented on a sturdy magician's table--the one with rubber leg tips. Rubber leg tips--a product of civilization--like magic itself, with its perfectly-disguised rationales. To wit: a casket of gem stones--or be they glass? An ancient manuscript, found lying upon the ground. Swords and swordsmen--dagger and shield. An ancient song by Glinka...

Or boots for the rain...

Metalect 17

30 November 2009. Clear fall day.

The Metalects return--a holiday special, the berry pie--or was it quince? Chicks at the ready, chefs hats and ladles--a bottle of Merlot, and the shoulder-strap alms bowl--City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, somewhere up in Mendocino, in honor of master Hsüan Hua... But no, this is more Ringling Brothers, or the vaudeville stage, where Jack Benny, with that subtle turn of his head, needs must announce his own version of total resignation...

One watches, in expectation...

Metalect 16

Rainy day sleuth, coffee in hand, with associated trembly line. "Don't draw shaky," said Yaakov Yehuda. And Princess N as well--cut out the java. But that morning launch, the dark aromatic brew--who could forgo thee? All the more a feathered friend, in raincoat and goggles (de rigueur for these wet beginnings). As in his talk with Jilly, father's fine face peering down from the wall--her own hand, a recreation, or creation in reverse? As things must be--we paint to know.

We know to love...

Meta-lect 15

And a chicken cotillion, where the young birds learn their manners. Mom as waiter, Hotel Polonia style, with the perennial towell draped over her wing--and an ambiguous Soviet-era chandelier providing light--with perhaps a touch of Santiago de Compostela--the ancient censor on theater wire, from very peak of vault, swinging in long smoky arcs, back and forth, above an open-mouthed crowd...

Meta-lects 14

Flags and flight. The big night. All chicks at their ready, stacked in a Soviet wrestler's embrace--t-shirts over Bulgarian biceps. A short history of Bessarabia--the one-thousand and one nights, each one longer, or shorter, than the last, as the customer wishes. And tray of gallinaceous h'or d'oeuvres--the dry martini with Ethiopian thistle--guizotia abyssinica--for the house finch set. Missing here, in the domestic array. Better a flight path, long distance, to southwestern Mexico, and beyond...

Meta-lect 13

Benny Goodwing and his Balalaika Orchestra--with the pizzicato twins on fife and violin, Harry Q on rustic drum, and Alberto Rotondo on bass. It's the New Year's Bash at the Acropolis Club, downtown Oakland, waiting for the Athenians. They've sent a messenger, it seems--a small Greek bird bearing gifts--as would be appropriate, given the season. States of the world nothwithstanding...but the music must go on...

Lower Broadway, retsina, sad song...

Meta-lect 12

Rings and reprimands. The challenge of rearing chicks--golden halos notwithstanding. It's their small size that makes them fit--ring and range, admissible. Hunched in the dark green chair, back to the sun, listening... The human sound...

Meta-lect 11

Dawn patrol, with coach. Heading for Swami's, big north swell breaking all the way out beyond the point, whitecaps and combers, no day for novitiates. But what does a chick know, when all the rest huddle on shore, knit caps and grey hoods pulled up high over their heads. A clear report, and fearless--that's the way, as with Paramahansa Yogananda and his golden domes--mushroomburgers--just now catching the light...

Meta-lect 10

And also for today, a trip to the garage, in Oceanside. Instructional, to be sure--with the varnished map of the world that Dad once mounted on plywood, carefully framed in rounded molding, which hung above our beds. Not so elegant, perhaps--the Mercator view, with Greenland looming, and the famous Siberian goat giving his Alaskan moose a perpetual kiss. At least it was so imagined, along with all the rest--Spitzbergen, Kamchatka, the Seychelles...

The foundations of knowledge, ca. 1954, or, a large non-blank slate, onto which one might project all possible vectors of meaning. A kind of preparation, yes, for the future--the great unknown...

Meta-lect 9

Troop 739--sub-chick division, present and accounted for. The great hike--overnight--with a stop at Panky's Pastures, arriving in style, by car, somewhere east on Highway 76. Towards Pala, in the old days, ends of the earth. Cold cold cold in those lightweight wraps, waiting for dawn, tossing and turning in the valley mist. Owls in the sycamores, mistletoe, season's cheer...

Alternative: scuba gear, well, fins and mask, all summer's fare...

Meta-lect 8

Another high-wire act by the master of the Ring--Jeanette, that is, not entirely sure as of this broadcast just what her purpose. A scaffolding from deep in Dr. Perrin's office--optometry tools of old, reworked here as a gallinaceous hi-dive wand. But wait, my dear, don't jump, your friends below will cheer you on--take heart, it's more a ballad, dreaming, dreaming, more a song...

Henry the Rat, Don Frog, Manny the everlasting Snail, Howie G.S. and James William Mallard III, present and accounted for. We shall see...

Meta-lect 7

Off we go--the special swing, a loop for a chick, while mother hen looks on--as do all the other assorted locals. That would be Henry the Rat, Don Frog, Manny the everlasting Snail and Howie, of garter snake kingdom fame. A kind of ground-level admiration society, for it's not every creature that can manage the ring. Yes, the Ring--that all-encompassing band of coppered wire, specially fabricated by Schirmer and Sons, many years back, in Paris--and tuned to precisely the chicken-octave key. Make note, no sound so fine--just ask little Jeanette, in all her yellow fluffery...

For she will tell...

Meta-lect 6

Vacation spots, some miles south of Cancún, flying in on Aeronaves de Mexico, a corporate venture to be sure, and fairly soft, as wings and prayers go. But who's counting, only this lonely returnee, his briefcase in hand--a gallinaceous CPA--with a parasol against the sun. New Jersey yards, no doubt, transposed west--to Petaluma, with all the feisty argument: Arakana, Old Hungarian, Rhode Island Red...

Meta-lect 5

Ah yes, the henhouse WPA, revisited in a new century--where the roads and bridges and dams find their reincarnation as broadband schools. Or interiors, green. And yet and yet, the shovel, the rake, the hoe--implements of the farmer's life, appropriate, too, when every techno-jot and tittle must need be questioned. What price power? What price love?

Meta-lect 4

And for this morning, a chicken pie--no, wait, that won't do--introducing the little ones to lives of such complexity. Maybe deep dish beef--how much more less so. The whole thing's caboodle. Such sweetness goes not with feedlot fare, so it's to berry we turn--picked fresh, off the vine, a wild tangle alongside the henhouse--the local jungle in late summer--yes, late summer--somewhere in the world--and there's again the rub. One can't even nibble safely.

Back to gleaning, rows of harvest corn, end of autumn. There but for the taking...

Meta-lect 3

Chilly here on the farm--upper reaches of the San Pablo tract, where parked semis and yardbirds meet, en route north along a winter's road. Yesterday: three crows in the mimosa, black black black against whirl of softer grays. Nudging left, hops and skips, make me room. Cluck or two, but mainly not--their silence, just above.

Good morning. It's Sunday again, sound of rain on skylights now, dark within. All as predicted--the weather, the fare--a rice cracker spread with peanut butter and berry jam, black coffee in warm glass. Greetings to Thelonious, solo in San Francisco, years ago--and to Po-Chü-i, beyond beyond...

Meta-lect 2

It was a quiet morning on the farm. The chicks were busy with their worm explorations. Or just wandering in the misty light. Mother a bit harried--as are all hens--the fox, the crow, the unknown beast. Beast. Well, maybe a tiny rat--caught by Natasha (she could not help it)--squeals on the order of a baby raccoon, hiding we were told behind the couch. But no, this morning, small stretched form on dawn rug. Almost at peace.

Meta-lect 1

Full-bodied largely ground-feeding domestic or game birds, characterized by feathers and forelimbs modified as wings--pheasants; turkeys; grouse; partridges; quails; chickens; brush turkeys; curassows; hoatzins--thought to be descended from the red jungle fowl. A cosmopolitan order of land birds having small heads and short legs with four unwebbed toes…esteemed…