A Dialogue between Eye and Ear


Deep silence opens like a door.
Eye glimpses the banquet hall
With its polished parquet floor,
And marches right in. What gall!

As if heaven could be assaulted…
As if a beggar should be so bold…
Meanwhile, blind Ear has halted
And waits at the threshold.

Eye is dazzled by the glistening
Of silver and crystal on the table,
While Ear stands there just listening,
Like a blind wife, invisible.

“Come in now” says Eye to Ear.
“The table’s set so take a seat.
The place is empty: No one’s here.
And the host insists we eat.”

Blind Ear groped and found a chair
And sat there like a battered spouse,
While Eye cased the places where
Light illumed the Master’s house.

“Where are we?” blind Ear to deaf Eye asks.
“Do our setting just describe.”
Eye said: “On the wall are masks
Representing every tribe.”

Ear said: “I feel a breeze, and hear birds.
There must be a window open to gardens lush.”
Yes, we are in the master's menagerie -
Wild beasts and birds in the bush.”

Ear just sat there, hands in a cup,
In a posture of deep feeling,
While Eye went on to drink and sup
And talk about the ceiling.

“It is a vaulted pyramid of glass
In which hangs a star-lit lamp
Around which tiny planets pass
On the ecliptic ramp.”

“O Eye, you sketch a pretty image
Of matter spinning with no pause.
But even with all your knowledge
You forget the laws.”

Ear hums: “Do Re Mi Fa So La Si Do.”
Proud Eye blinked and blurted back:
“Is differences in tone all you know?
Why on Earth attack

Reality – things in space extended?
Shut up and eat your meal.”
But that was not what Ear intended.
No. She could feel

Thoughts thronging the mind's emporium,
From pick-pockets to computer thieves -
Bad children of the sensorium.
And for that she grieves.

Deaf Eye went on: “The table's set for three.
The empty chair is for all our children -
That brood of self-willed thoughts led by me.
Is not vision a thought splayed open?”

Though she looked like she was sleeping,
Blind Ear sat listening in the Soothe,
To birds chirping, peepers peeping.
“You are no guide to truth.”

She said: “You trick me and make me eat
This offal that you call mentation.
The seat you sit on is not your seat.
You broke in without invitation.”

Eye replied: “The master has for us arranged
A re-past of mental leisure.
It is you, not I, who are deranged
And prone to seizure.”

“O dear deaf Eye” blind Ear cries.
“It is I who guard you in the night.
The skies I know are more lofty shies
Than your poor sight.

“Listening to the music of the firmament,
I become even more curious.
Our Star seems to be an experiment,
Revolving around Sirius.

“Moons everywhere are being born
In a blessed octave called 'Creation.'
But more marvelous is Vision shorn
Of all abstract ideation.”

“The spectral inter-penetration
Of phenomena and noumena
Has no just origination
Except in the Holy Arcana.”

“You sound like the Queen of Pharaoh”
Said Eye to Ear. “Shut up and eat
Mind your master, above, below,
For we must meet

Our common destiny in a skull:
A blooded-washed mass of nerve and fat
Powered by a heart more like a hull
Than a pump in a vat.”

All power to you, Eye, but I grow tired
Of your bleached linear perspective.”
“True” Eye replied, “The human brain is wired
And so defective.”

“You, Eye, stole and ran with the light
And so drove the jagged chaotic brain
Like a bad master who, out of spite,
Slaps his slave.”

Eye says: “The brain is a plantation
Where slaves work for food, not wages.
Our children – the selves in mentation -
Are all listed in the neuronal pages.”

“You have never been allied to silence,
And so you leave your body!” Ear did sob,
“It is a brazen act of inner violence.
Even now, thoughts mob

The hall in which we eat. They are really not
My children. They encode the Eye's '-ism,'
Fleeting floating images in the blood: thought
Besots the whole organism.”

Deaf Eye got up and began to case the place.
But he found no clues as to Man's experiment,
Except that a big bang blew them into space
By accident.

When the Master came to his house,
He found Eye rifling the premises.
Ear tried to apologize for her spouse,
But Eye’s nemesis

Placed him under guard, on the porch,
Half-way between god and beast.
And there he stands with a torch,
Illuminating the feast.

While the other senses – taste, smell, touch –
Entered dressed in rags and tatters.
Each is in element in the real as such,
Transforming matters.

So the senses served up a high cuisine.
Heart and head and hand were invited.
The Master stood behind the scene,
And the psyche was united.



Hafiz 6 Translated from the Persian

I fear that these tears of anguish will tear the veil,
And that the sealed secret will become a worldly tale

Given enough patience, a ruby will be born of mud,
But only if soaked in the liver’s blood.

I’ll go to the tavern, weeping and demanding justice.
Only there can I be free of this compulsive anguish.

From every corner I shot an arrow of heat-seeking prayer.
Out of where the arrows meet, steps an honest worker.

Unfold the story, step by step, to the owner of your heart.
But don’t talk too much lest the quiet Truth depart.

Through the alchemy of mercy, my face has turned to gold.
Yes, from the joy of thy grace, dirt becomes gold.

Bewildered by the Watcher’s pomp and the spectacle,
The homeless beggar has become respectable.

Aside from beauty, a subtle finesse is required if one
Is to conform to the ways of one possessing vision.

The crown of your cypress a light-cut gem does hold.
But at your doorstep, human heads are so much mold.

If you can smell her tresses in your hand’s palm,
Then take a deep breath and try to stay calm.







To a Merchant Retiring


Just a face on the wall, you were, in youth,
Too small to lift the standard stone blocks.
So, for a smile, you served the masons
Cold green tea in little china cups.

In adolescence you drove donkeys hauling
Cut stone for the wall at Yinchuan.
Captured in the Ordos by the Kyrgyz,
You survived by talking to their horses.

You seldom talk about that. Who ever asked?
As for the land beyond, we know nothing -
Only that the steppe is littered with bones
And stretches all the way to Mount Kunlun.

But records show that, in the year of the dragon,
The emperor ransomed you for a bolt of silk;
And that, when you came through Jiaquan Gate,
You brought seven horses and a camel.

The army grabbed you. You knew too much.
So they made you a scout and sent you out
Over the horizon. You were gone so long
They said you had died or had deserted.

But eventually you'd show up, leading horses
And camels laden with priceless treasure:
Carpets, dried fruits, lapis lazuli,
And brief messages of confidence.

Such men do not escape imperial notice.
Court officials wanted you for their own ends,
But the Jade Ruler saw through their plots and,
Esteeming a wise enemy over foolish friends,

Sent you out again, laden with gifts,
And goods, and messages of peace,
Meticulously loaded and addressed
To the barbarian chiefs, those proud kagans.

All this was too much for the palace guard,
Who banished you from Chang-an. So you returned
To you ancestral village where, it seemed,
At every moment caravans depart and arrive.

Your walled garden never got enough rain.
So you turned it into a brisk emporium:
Jade baubles, knic-knaks, bric-a-brac -
And a furnace to melt down Roman coins.

As times changed, you moved to meet demand,
Importing exotic elixirs and rare herbs.
And later, sacred icons and wisdom texts.
As values changed, so did the currency.

You, hoarding nothing but investing all,
Set up way-stations in the middle of nowhere.
You helped build temples to the Goddess of Mercy
And stocked their pools with golden fish.

Now rumor has it that you hang with the monks,
Doing nothing for weeks on end.
Could it be that you have finally arrived?
Or have you gone crazy staring at the wall?

Last we checked, you were sitting under the eaves,
Spine straight as an arrow. But who would notice?
You sit so still that passing shoppers take you
For the grain in the wall's woodwork.





Time and the Hard Heart


When the glacier reaches the sea, it calves off.
So does the present moment split and fall away.

What happened yesterday is light years away,
Distant, submerged, and fading fast.

You said you would never forget, but already
You’re sleeping in the arms of some other.

From here, one can see the tips of the jagged
Bergs as they slowly drift out, unto oblivion.

“Go with the flow” you often said, and how easy
It is to drift, face down, to ‘southern climes.’

“Chip off the old black” they called you. Yet,
By law, you’ll warm, melt and evaporate.

Rising, you’ll blow back as a cloud.
And then what? Get snagged on a mountain?

Behind the glacier, a stark massif lurks,
Its huge shoulders bristling with spruce.

Its peaks are hidden in an ice-misting shroud,
The top of which sparkles in the sunlight.

Within the swirling snow squall is found
The single snowflake with its seven parts.

Just as the snow drifts and piles up so the karma
Of ‘good people’ who never doubt the self.

The world is like frozen water. Yet the nature
Of what we are is a misting humid vapor.

No wonder the glacier groans and cracks
As it staggers under its own full weight.









Einstein at the Carnival of Being


The trick with the table salt in solution
Revealed crystal structures in agitation
And showed the atom to the naked eye.

Energy and mass you aptly squared by light’s
Own measure. Now the circus horses run wild
In a vast corral of bounded potential.

Your last trick was best of all. You threw
Your wand up in the air. It did not fall
But twisted spacetime while we watched.


John Paul Maynard can be contacted at tulku7@verizon.net

Time and the Hard Heart

When the glacier reaches the sea, it calves off.
So does the present moment split and fall away.

What happened yesterday is light years away,
Distant, submerged, and fading fast.

You said you would never forget, but already
You’re sleeping in the arms of some other.

From here, one can see the tips of the jagged
Bergs as they slowly drift out, unto oblivion.

“Go with the flow” you often said, and how easy
It is to drift, face down, to ‘southern climes.’

“Chip off the old block” they called you. Yet,
By law, you’ll warm, melt and evaporate.

Rising, you’ll blow back as a cloud.
And then what? Get snagged on a mountain?

Behind the glacier, a stark massif lurks,
Its huge shoulders bristling with spruce.

Its peaks are hidden in an ice-misting shroud,
The top of which sparkles in the sunlight.

Within the swirling snow squall is found
The single snowflake with its seven parts.

Just as the snow drifts and piles up so the karma
Of ‘good people’ who never doubt the self.

The world is like frozen water. Yet the nature
Of what we are is as a misting humid vapor.

No wonder the glacier groans and cracks
As it staggers under its own full weight.


Appointment

Giving up he comes to Thee in station,
Not knowing how he comes, but tried, tested,
Alert to everything yet disinterested,
He is queried: first, as to avocation,
Where all the time went, then interests vested
In past-time pleasures and vain imaginings.
These you write off as so much identification.
I take it you take back all those things
You gave him, except the signet rings.
You want him free of what has been suggested,
That which mediates between You and him.
Christ sent you packing as a pilgrim
And with him that cult of sufferings.
But you want him for yourself. Vehement
And meticulous is your interrogation.
His capacity to resist is well-attested.
He will work with You to an extent.
Together you’ll work out a new offering
According to what was originally bequested
‘twixt man and God, not some simulation
Of self-in-life – that petty drama
Of sleeping souls awaiting transformation.
The spectre of death closes down all horizons
And makes us suspicious of this panorama.
Death, birth, who is ready for that surprise?
But by sitting still he comes close to You,
Or You draw him close, like a prisoner. Through
Your panopticon You watch him fall and rise
Creature-like, under forty eight laws.
Enmeshed in nature his heart cries
Out for You: it beats for no other cause.
But enslave him in a hungry body,
Overwhelm him with the senses, with mood.
The mind/body contrivance is such a shoddy
Sham I cannot let You keep him veiled.
As life proceeds, he thinks You have failed
To bring to flower a sacred potency.
So let him wilt in grief, leave him
To his fate. Just tell me, why have You forsaken
Him, You, his Father? Leave him nailed
There until he dies. Then reawaken
And make manifest his inner part.
Here, now, You want him free from stress.
You lead him to a different attitude,
Wherein one adapts to deep quietude;
But then appoint for him homelessness,
And drive him into exile and solitude.
But how will you cure him of his restlessness?
He needs Your love and to know You’re near.
But You have cast him into a darkness
Blacker than pitch, a starless night.
Is it that You want him only You to fear?
Or is it that You want him to see mystically,
That whatever light he sees in the cave
Comes from the spark inside himself.
If so, I accept Your argument of his case.
Do with him what You do; but loosen his
Leash and let him stray. Open up space
So that he can roam and graze.
You be his shepherd, all-seeing, never vexed:
He’ll let You enter, then will lower his gaze
To transcend this world and the next.


Hafez 447 by Hafez-e-Shirazi translated from the Persian by JPM

Heart tries to gladden, and prompts the spring.
Myriads of bright flowers are now blossoming.

I cannot tell with whom I sit and share the cup.
But you know yourself, being right side up.

Your critiques are talons shredding the shroud.
Such black warnings leave me blind and bowed.

Each leaf of every tree is in a different state.
Work not on self and be crushed by fate.

Life is a payment, so don’t fault the world. Hark
To your own strange narrative of light and dark.

Terrors stalks the path, but we are friends.
We’ll leave her when the awake one descends.

Should high fortune persist in its finesse,
You’ll surely be the prey of some high witness.

-JPM

BE THE BALL

Be the ball in a game of polo.
Red rider hits you across
The field where you roll
Beneath the horses’ hooves –
Intercepted by a blue rider
Who is not in a position.
To score a goal. So hit again.

Or do you prefer billiards?
Getting up and walking to
Another room - It is like
The breaking shot in a game
Of US eight ball. Whatever
Happens, the white and the black
Must stay on the mirrored table.
Be then the Q-ball on the table
And let those upstairs take their shots.

Meanwhile, I’ll get whacked
Across the green pitch in wild polo.
Resilient, I can take it: the horses
Snorting, the riders crowding in,
I’ll roll between the hooves.
Thrown from moment to moment,
I’ll have my rest soon enough.


To a Merchant Retiring

Just a face on the wall, you were, in youth,
Too small to lift standard stone blocks,
So, for a smile, you served the masons
Cold green tea in little china cups.

In adolescence, you drove donkeys hauling
Cut stone for the wall at Yinchuan.
Captured in the Ordos by the Kyrgyz,
You survived by talking to their horses.

You seldom talk about that. And few asked.
As for the land beyond, we know nothing –
Only that the steppe is littered with bones
And stretches all the way to Mount Kun-lun.

But records show that, in the Year of the Dragon,
The emperor ransomed you for a bolt of silk;
And that, when you came through Jiaquan Gate,
You brought seven horses and a camel.

The army grabbed you. But you knew too much.
So they made you a scout and sent you out
“Over the horizon.” You were gone so long
They said you had died or deserted.

But eventually you’d show up, leading horses
And camels laden with priceless treasure:
Carpets, dried fruit, lapis lazuli,
And brief messages of confidence.

Such men do not escape imperial notice.
Court officials wanted you for their own ends.
But the Jade Ruler saw through their plots and,
Esteeming a wise enemy over foolish friends,

Sent you out again, laden with gifts,
And goods, and messages of peace,
Meticulously loaded and addressed
To barbarian chiefs, those proud kagans.

All this was too much for the Palace Guard,
Who banished you from Chang-an. So you returned
To your ancestral village where, it seemed,
Caravans departed and arrived at every moment.

Your walled garden never got enough rain.
So you turned it into a brisk emporium:
Jade baubles, knik-knacks, bric-a-brac –
And an open furnace to melt down Roman coins.

As times changed, you moved to meet demand,
Importing exotic elixirs and rare herbs,
And later, sacred icons and wisdom texts.
As values change, so did the currency.

You, hoarding nothing but investing all,
Set up way stations in the middle of nowhere.
You built temples to the Goddess of Mercy
And stocked their pools with golden fish.

Now rumor has it that you sit with the monks,
Doing nothing for weeks on end.
Could it be that you finally arrived?
Or have you gone crazy staring into space?

Last we checked, you were sitting under the eaves,
Spine straight as an arrow. But who would notice?
You sit so still that passing shoppers take you
For the grain in the wall’s woodwork.


RUNNING WITH SPIRITS
for R.W.

How the child running drags the land forward
How the stag running makes the land leap

Can you be faster than your shadow?
Give up inner speech, keep the sun high.

When I walk, the mountain walks.
When I leap, the mountain leaps.

Creatures of habit all pop like popcorn
Their lives short and death much too early.

Let one waking walk through this sovereign valley
And the spirits jostle to be enslaved to the man.



On an Old Japanese Proverb

“There is no thing beautiful which is not useful.
There is no thing useful which is not beautiful.”

Take the pretty girl before her mirror:
She’ll surely become an instrument.

Take the soldier ready to die for country.
Now in dress uniform, he parades in order.

Corporate cadets are groomed like prized dogs.
They will quickly admit to being used.

Every plant or animal has a strategy to survive
And each is beautiful in the use of its organs..

The moon is beautiful on a clear night. How useful
Luna was, is, in the rise and sway of life.

The earth is beautiful when viewed from space.
Earth is a vital instrument in the solar system.

That thin film of organic life and biomass,
Makes Earth blush like a beautiful smart one.

Between the notes mi and fa, there is no semitone.
Here another octave – man – cuts across.

Under the hemlock the rocks in the brook are picturesque.
But they can be stepping stones by which to cross.


Einstein at the Carnival of Being

The trick with the table salt in solution
Revealed crystal structures in agitation
And showed the atom to the naked eye.

Energy and mass you aptly squared by light’s
Own measure. Now the circus horses run wild
In a vast corral of bounded potential.

Your last trick was best of all. You threw
Your wand up in the air. It did not fall
But twisted spacetime while we watched.



Night before the Wind

Crack of wind the wind whips
The waves above the ships,
Tearing sails, driving snow
In th’eyes of those who know
They never should have set out
To test a waterspout.
True, they analyzed fear
And sought to draw near
That of which the prophets spoke.
And thus they did invoke
Devils who never heard of God,
All for the sake of cod.

Across the land, across the dunes
Raging wind importunes
Every family member.
Are our men in danger?
It’s still November.
Who is this stranger
Who now struts down
The streets of Provincetown,
Who breaks the windows,
And blinds the widows;
Splits the dead off from the living
On the day before Thanksgiving?

The eye is no more discrete
Than the patterns of the feet.
Snow blown in their faces,
They’re sure to leave no traces.
Across the barren dunes they rove
Till they come to Herring Cove,
There to wait if anyone reaches
The “safety” of the beaches,
Only to die of cold.
Meanwhile, as the sailors told,
They stood far off Highland Light
Preferring the open sea that night.


WEIR RIDDLE

What am I that all of me disappears
Each day when the Moon Magnetic clears
The bay in a rush of surging waters?

Then I am but a momentary obstacle
To weighty phantoms, a scary spectacle
I cannot see or hear but only feel.

I know not who eats whom, or how they breed:
Whether they flow with the tide or act on need,
Only that I’d lose my catch if I impede

Their steady progress. Call me stick in the mud. Skim
My rim. Swim around or through my mesh, if so slim.
But all will fatten over summer’s interim.

O ye creatures of the depths, all who dream
Of fresher waters, fight your way upstream.
I’ll stay here and I am not what I seem.

O ye schools of chosen fishes, why prawn
The depths when clear mountain pools bid thee spawn
Sockeye’d progeny? Like a breath indrawn

And held for a summer, or a question posed,
I, too, am a circle not quite closed.
I mark the tide as I become exposed.

But still they do not see me. Nor do I lure or trick
Them. By law, a few enter, a random pick.
They thrash their scales against my rick

In desperation. But my door is always open.
Yet to get out they must go the way they came in,
And this confuses them. So they just turn a fin

And just mill about, which is opportune
When out like an egret in a choice lagoon
Steps the mantic girl child with a long harpoon.


Wantastiquet: Fires of Forgotten Ancestors

(For the Sokoket people, of the Pocumtuck federation, now extinct,
who lived along the middle Connecticut River.)

All summer then, the men lounged about,
Whittling, fishing, playing games
While the women hoed corn along the river,
Hauled water, cooked and cleaned.
They were not two societies, or one.
Everyone sort of kept to (x)-self.
There was no love, no hate,
And not a murmur of discontent.
The sun stayed high all through October.
The sky grew loud with geese and heron.
Shad and salmon fell back with the river.
On the rocks the men would lie like lizards
Observing boys angle fish with nets
The women had woven. The girls took the fish
To the elders, who dried them on fires,
Then ground the bones to powders
To be spread on the fields as manahatten.
That was why there were too many pumpkins,
Why the wheat went unthreshed and why the corn
Was left in its stalk for the raccoon and the raven.
Again, the harvest had overwhelmed the harvesters.
Or is a harvest to be tasted and not taken?
In any case, it was all too much to cope with:
The tree in its fruit, the bush in its flower,
All living things aflame in a flame
Brighter than any spring blossom.
The outer heat had kindled an inner fire.
From the embers in the marrow of their bones
It breathed out through the many pathways,
To ignite in an ear or in an eye.
You could see by the way watched
When suddenly wings whisked overhead;
When chipmunks pause, and the stag lurks
At the edge of the clearing of the eye,
Beckoning the hunter to come give chase.
So, too, is the way of the dying god
As he arc’d each day lower on th’horizon
Till the forest blazed up in his colors:
A fire infused through the veins of every leaf
Of every tree. Each leaf could be read like a palm,
All bespoke of a common lineage.
That was why at night they told long stories,
Listening to the wind as the wind might listen,
The women reclining on skins of lynx,
While the men carved points from antler bone.
So, when one night a wind rose up and in
One hour blew all the leaves from the trees,
There was only awe and laughter.
For no one had faith in an Indian summer
But each awoke to walk like a god
Over a carpet of color up to his precinct
That high hill, bald as a skull, around
Which hangs the necklace of the river;
A skull whose sockets are niched stone chambers
Corbelled in proper bronze age style.
Toothless, white-haired, the Old Hag stepped
Out of her wigwam and laughed like a child.
The stag bolted. The last leaf fell. Then she
Led the procession up to the walled temenos.
There she stood by the gate, two large stones.
One was the protomorphic amphibian.
The other was a simple grid of squares.
One this stone they stood up a quill, and each
Saw how the god casts its shadow across
The squares, and by this means knew the risk
Inherent in the god’s own passage,
The wobbling of the earth, and the mean
Between self-as-other and self-solitary.
Then she led them through the threshold.
Suddenly there were open vistas everywhere.
One could look out and see the land. The land!
Close to the north, a shorn ridge like a rampart
Shelters the vale ‘gainst the arctic onslaught;
To the south, the open flyways of the hawks;
To the west, the river cuts through the massif
Beyond which roams the wealth of the enemy,
Counted in hooves. But to the east, unseen in
Its trough, flows the Father of the Waters
The River called Connecticut, beyond which
Arise the sacred peaks of our ancestors.
What had been hidden now revealed itself.
That which most ancient became most new.
But what was revealed was soon lost to the sky.
They were all older than the hills, and newer
Than their own brains and breath. It was as if
The god had taken them up the hill to see
Where as men they dwell, and his own great arc.
Thus did they enter into the god’s own confrontation
With the unknown and the infinite. For this reason
Did they stand like a constellation in the sky,
Or like a ring of stones aligned to the horizon.
Hence their preference for a perceptual solitude
Which excluded nothing and in which they met
And came to know each other. For the same Force
That made the granite ridges waver as a mirage,
Thrust them like spears deep into the earth.
Youngest amongst them the old hag looked out
The furthest. Sharper than the arctic winds,
Swifter than a falcon, her gaze soared out
Over seven ridge lines to distant Monadnoch,
Sacred to all tribes. Like the mink in the hag’s coat
The mountain bristled with a sheen above which
Stood the thinner strands of her white hair,
Like the groves of white birth sparkling. In her eyes
Were the barren snowfields of the summit.
Then she turned to them and said:
”When I pass on, bury not this my body,
That dogs might dig them up.
But drag it to a far and lonely place
Where the she-wolf nurses her playful pups.
And when the bones are clean, detach this my skull,
And place it in the niche of the ceremonial chamber
That I might preside over my future generations.”
Still as stones they stood till the full moon
Of November. Then they prepared for the hunt.
Everything was packed on their backs and they climbed
Upstream, to a high inland wetland, a wasted place,
Where great oak and spruce rise like ghosts
Out of the mists over a still, black pond. On a ledge
They pitched their wigwams and hung their
Bearskins. Like the beaver, whose house has no doors,
They came in and out. At twilight the beavers
Swim slow circles to keep the pond from freezing.
So too did they guide their own attentions. Thwack!
The startled stag pauses, its ears flicking, flicking.
The men stand up, bows raised. The stag dives down
At them to distract, while doe and fawn leap clear.
The flight of an arrow is not as swift
As that god as he beats down through the trees.
But the heart of the stag is not made of iron.
Of the men, some take off their fancy doeskins,
Put down bows and quivers, and give chase.
Through the valleys and over the ridges
For a day and a night and a morning
They run together till at last the great stag
Collapses like a mountain on its fetlocks.
Its neck did not quiver, its mouth did not froth.
There was no terror in its eyes as the men
Approached, as if the beast knew that
Per virtue of its courage and its innocence,
It had been chosen to feed the clan that winter.
Word was sent back. The whole clan came up:
Species Homo Sapiens sapiens.
They did not wobble and they did not jabber.
They were not monkeys, which pick fruit for their
Bellies, not sharing; but more like wolves
Who gather around a carcass and who do share.
Seen from profile, the arteries of the brain
Are wrought in the pattern of the stag’s antlers,
Out of which humans carved hooks for fishing
And small serrated tips for hunting birds.
The jaw and teeth became combs for the women.
From its ribs were fashioned new runners
For their sleds; from the hide, new moccasins.
The blood itself was left steaming in the snow.
All night they feast while the wolves howl.
The nights grew longer, the old hag passed on.
But the fires of their feasts could be seen for ages.
Being godlike, they had no need to spin a myth:
They knew the dream to be but a dream.
One might say, being had a way with them.

The Poetry of John Paul Maynard

These poems were written between 1973 and 2008,