Blackbirds and Mice

by Brett Rutherford

When they were grown and old
it seemed a dream to them,
or an oft-repeated
fairy-tale, so real, so
many times retold it seemed
as though they lived it through.

All dressed in dun color,
children, drilled in stillness
by the elders’ warnings —
be quiet as mice, swift
as the flying bird a-light.
Speak not a word, or wolves
might catch and eat you up!

The game they played was called
“Blackbirds and Mice.” Each would
repeat those syllables
at night like a bed-time prayer,
a mantra in the dentist’s chair,
until they no longer remembered
what language they said it in.

Huddled in straw in a hay-truck,
they rode without a cry
or whimper. The game was,
once they were led on out
to a small and dark opening
squared in by timbers,
the game was: you are mice.

Each mouse-child was given
a tiny crust of bread.
The tall figure ahead of you
is the Mouse-King himself.
His light will go on before you.
Follow it until you come
to the mouse-hole’s exit.
Eat breadcrumbs along the way
and say to yourselves,
We are mice … just tiny mice.
Bread-crumbs we nibble
as quietly we march.
It may be dark around.
Follow the light ahead
to come out the other side.

Children too big to be mice
were taken to a hillside
where they were turned into blackbirds.
Up, up the green hill they went,
(not flying, for none knew how),
led by two parent birds,
wings fluttering — hard to see
as it was not yet dawn,
dark figures up and over,
helping one another
they scrambled silently.
No one spoke, for fear of owls,
and ever-watching hawks.

Bird flock up and over
on tiny bird-feet, up and over
the green hillock to a warm hut.
Porridge and warm milk
was served by a red-faced lady.
The mice had already arrived,
coal dust and soot all over them.
The Mouse King, beaming,
stood in the back and drank beer.

And this is how they all
remembered it:
“Blackbirds and Mice,”
(or “Mice and Blackbirds”?)
in a game of silence.

When they were grown and old
they went back to the old country,
were shown the coal-mine entry
so small it seemed made for dwarves,
peeked at the way in, then on
the hill’s other side, the way out.

They climbed the alpine meadow
where nuns had led the blackbirds,
habits fluttering, to the cottage
where they had breakfasted.
It was all real: the German mine,
the German hill, the Swiss cottage.

In 1940, they were mice and blackbirds.
Most never saw their parents again.
Some home-towns bombed, no longer existed.
Blackbirds and Mice, they learned
new words, but never forget
the all-stakes game of silent flight.

The Secret of the Lake

 

by Brett Rutherford

Edinboro Lake, PA 

Day after day the sodden sky refills the lake, quenches the thirsty graveyard with migrant tears returning to the eye that wept them.

The used and tattered rainclouds come here like derelicts, like old dogs homing, revisiting one place — one secret lake which has berthed all waters (sea to sky to drawing mountain peak in flash of storm-drop —  this unassuming kettle of liquid clouds, gray-black beneath   the lidded heavens, shimmers at night  under the nodding Dipper,  the stars that empty it  of excess rainfall.

Now I come back to you, wait for respite of thunder, tread mud, walk flooded grass to the neglected graveyard, hark to the wind waves at your overfilled edge, the lapping song of your careworn banks, the hollow silence of your glacier-ground heart.

Elms and maples stand sentry. The ground is a riot of toppled tombstones, limbs torn by gale or lightning thrust, fence pickets torn off by age or vandals. The winds — or cautious townsmen —  have removed the old gray trunk that hoarded the shore like a sentinel (how its unmoving spindle arms alarmed the midnight visitor! how ravens and owls perched there to read the runes of the waveforms, the prophecy of wind and season! how poets and lovers sought it, the artist’s brush absorbed it as silhouette defining the lake beyond!)

I miss that tree. If one of the graves should vanish I would not miss it so much as that withered guardian.

It was the life work of a living thing, an epic of cambium in heartwood. Its wisdom was sublimated from soil, drunk from the lake of all waters, tapped from the abundance of sunlight, shielded from frost and lightning fire. It made itself sculpture, transcended its own passing, a defiant singularity, useless, unwanted, beautiful.

I shed my clothes to wade in the lake, letting the chill-cold waters accept me, sinking until the rippled plane of water licks at my shoulders, pacing with caution the rubble and sand of the lakebed. Not for a decade have I touched these waters, communed with the throwaway songs of the bullfrogs, the chirl of crickets, the paper-thin presence of curious insects, the nudge of fishes at my knees, the velvet black flurry and sonar symphony of the bats.

Cars hiss by on the distant roadway. House lights blink out. Water goes lull, takes on the hues of blueberries ripening — black and gray and Prussian blue.  The loudest of sounds  is the breath in my lungs, my voice as I call to you, lake of my youth: Remember me.

I too have come back to this navel of the world, this womb of the waters, this quencher of age and weariness.

Finally, your secret is revealed to me in God’s Eye weave of the thread of time:

The Eries came here for a winter festival, carried a gourd with the old year’s sadness, weighted it with stone, canoed and dropped it at your quiet center,  singing—

Hear us, O Lake of Little Snows — Heed not the crane, the fish, the deceitful song of the serpent — Heed us, mother of tears and rivers. We bring you a gourd, the gourd our ancestors taught us to make. Surely you are hungry, O Lake. We have come many days to offer it,  suffered such dangers to please you!

Calmly the lake accepted the present. The gourd sank fast and never returned. In silence, the men returned to the shore, banked their canoes and shouted with glee:

Jiyathontek! O Konneahti! Onenh, wete-wenna-keragh-danyon! Hear us, O Lake of Little Snows! Today we have made the signs. Again you ate the gourd and the stone. You did not know the gourd was hollow. You did not ask what was in it! Do not inquire, O Lake our mother.  We have promised never to tell you!

The gourd had passed a year in the longhouse. Each mother who lost an infant held it until the stream of her tears had dried. The father who watched the forest trail for the sight of the hunting party clenched it and wept for his eldest son. (They spoke of wolves at the council fire.)

In years of war or famine the gourd was heavy. Women put beads or locks of hair inside it, stained it with rust and blueberry paint. Feeble ones took it when their memory failed; it calmed the mad to sleep beside it.

Unburdened now of the Gourd of Sorrows, the Eries leave the forgiving lake, wash off their paint, their red-brown faces young with laughter and courage, their eyes as bright as the ardent sun, their strong legs running, running.

 

Maker of Stones

 

by Brett Rutherford

     After Magritte and for Barbara A. Holland

So many years of war,
of plagues and masks,
of fluctuating identity —
we all live now
in Magritte canvases
where anything can happen
and does, and anyone might turn
from flesh into solid granite. 

Has all New England
dropped all its glacial
detritus of a sudden
onto Manhattan? What gives
with all this geology?

You, of all people,
a slant-wise Medusa,
seem able to summon stones,
rock-hurler, caller-up
of hidden pebbles,
summoner of quarry blocks
as easy as hailing a cab. 

Almost without a thought
you are one of those poets
whose thoughts reshape the city.
For each one of your silences,
as we stroll through the Village
some quarry leaves off
another oblong obstacle
to reasonable walking.

Blithely you move forward,
while I must up-and-over
a never-ending hike-trail.

 Is the coast now smooth in Maine?
Are Vermont’s fields
now friendly to the plow
since all the impediments
have come on south?

 I am used by now
to the gravel you hurl
as periods; the shards
of gneiss that mark
your exclamations
(thank goodness they are few);

 but the small boulders
that pile around us
in the outdoor cafe
each time you leave a sentence
unfinished, are good
for no one but the pigeons.
I am not sure the waiter
will even find us again.

 The chalkless slate slab
you put up in front of us
is good for privacy
when a Jehovah’s Witness
comes leaflet-laden
with Biblical boredom;

 but it is all too much
for those of us unwise
in the ways of labyrinths
or masonry, inept
at making the rocks go
where they will serve
some purpose.

 When I go home,
I find my friend Steven petrified,
stiff as a Pharaoh
on a basalt throne.
The bowl of apples are marbleized;
whatever he had cooked
is dust on a plate of sandstone.
What am I going to do with him?

 And now some castle,
which huddled squat
on some peak of the Pyrenees,

hangs like the Goodyear blimp
just over Central Park,
and the stones of the Ramble
decide to evacuate vertically,
rock-root and trees and all
to form a hedge around it.

 Was this your doing, too?
Living as you do, one foot
in the surreal, you smile at this.
I guess you expect a ladder,
at some point, descending,
and an engraved invitation
from whomever it is up there
who is still flesh-and-blood.

 “Imagine the view!” you tease me.
“I wonder what they wear,
and from what century
their customs derive.” 

While that aberrant hulk
hangs like a dream-balloon
for your discourse
with air and lap-tongued clouds,
with whomever you choose as company
for your non-Newtonian discourse,

I stand below, confound with physics
what my eye receives,
and wait, with folded arms
its eventual fall.

 

Ruins

 by Brett Rutherford

     Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Passing the gutted neighborhood I think of you.
Your soul is that abandoned factory whose panes
lie shattered on its concrete floors. The pigeons roost
inside the eaves where keystone — and conscience — once held
the bricks into a nobler form. A high fence surrounds
you needlessly, braided with thorns. Yet any would-be
trespasser can see the sky clean through your vacant
casements. Unhindered rain comes through the roof and makes
dim lakes, unrippled glass in which your machinery
hunches, islands in an archipelago of rust.

Your doors hang twisted, the locks no longer deceiving
the feral packs who come to spray obscenities
upon the inner lining of your empty skull.
Rats nest in every orifice and gnaw at you.
The pink squeal of baby rodents fills the raw night;
your ivy beard clogs with their comings and goings.
Today your name. inscribed on the weathered billboard
totters face down upon the veined macadam lot;
today the pimpled scavengers shall peel your walls
of the last of copper and brass and chrome and wire.
They make off in a pickup through a brazen gap
in your fenced perimeter. Love, no one laments
your debasement — like Zion of old, you are stripped
bare of your finery by an unforgiving god.
One last time I pass you in the Boston-bound bus,
remembering vaguely how I once thought I loved you
before the empire of your fatal charm collapsed,
before your edifice of seeming goodness dropped,
before your calamitous default — oh, how you fell! —
no one has wanted you since (small comfort to me)
as you languish for unpaid taxes of the heart.

 

At the Walls of Troy

 by Brett Rutherford

Have you found Troy? Colossal walls, impregnable,

once fashioned here to rise and fall a dozen times,

fell for their last, gate opened in fatal error.

Do your hear clash of arms, the din of bronze on bronze

(oh deadly iron, you slept then, as yet unor’d

beneath the blood-red earth, unknown to Hephaestus!)

How the chariots rolled, crushing the spent arrows,

driving the gore-spewn breastplates and skull’d helmets down

into the mire and muck of the ungrass’d field,

rolled right on in, to triumph after sleight’s success!

Dare you to stand without a shudder, where a god —

— Yea! even a goddess — reeled and bled out ichor

as Diomedes thrust and thrust impudent metal

with the clear sight of reason — the perfect warrior

granted of all men the vision to mark and wound

the very gods themselves as they sat invisible

beside their chosen heroes. Apollo stopped him:

woe to the hand that ever again hurled a spear

at an Olympian! If ever a warrior

asks why the gods should condone war, avert your eyes!

Did you find that high parapet from which the Greeks

hurled Priam’s last infant son to a bone-crush ruin

so that no son’s son would one day raid fair Hellas?

Do cries still echo here of the wail of the Trojan

women — some doomed to the swift sword or self-murder

vainly offering their jewelry as ransom —

some chosen, war’s prize, for transport and servitude,

already-raped captives whose usurp’d wombs erase

the name of Troy? A place with all its women gone

is a place for dogs and vultures, without a name.

Have you found Troy? ’Mid all this dust and ruin,

can you raise one ghost from all the thousand warships

to ask him the why of this past and present misery,

the cause for fighting and dying so far from home?

Agamemnon hears you not. Menelaus went pale

when stories of the great war were told in Sparta.

Some of that scattered gray ash might be Patroclus.

You, with bowed head, recited from Homer and wept

as ghosts gave shout and answered why they went:

To see again the radiant face of Helen.

8/21/2021

Night Thoughts

 by Brett Rutherford

after Goethe

Ye Stars above, I do not now envy you,
there in the selfsame beauty and glory
as ever on high — the hope of sailors
when hurricane and tempest roaring come,
the one last ask when God and men all fail
their shouted prayers, and when “Stars above!”
leaps up from heart-felt humbleness from one
who sees Polaris in the waterspout’s eye —
And there! And there! Star upon star arrayed
telling in their count and coming how far
the harbor, how near the perilous reef —

No! Stars do not love, and have never loved!
Those whom they save, they save indifferently.
Your circling spheres unvarying tick on,
dragging your plows through Heaven’s black furrows.
You are the same! The same! Yet though you whirl,
in depths beyond the number of zeroes
that are and ever will be inscribed there
in that line that is infinity’s arc
for you, almost-eternal hours have passed,
while I, by love distracted, looked not out
the window, nor up amid my moonless
dark amours, bereft of sense and starless
over two eyes, dark brows and a mere mouth —

All memory of night and of burning stars
forgot! Wind back for me, o starry vault
and fill my bitter thoughts with luminance,
you wise ones who, immortal, do not love,
and I shall trade with you my illusion,
that one for another should be dizzy
and stumble about in one’s own orbit,
imagining some astral collision
that would not be mutually deadly,
dragging along all your friends and neighbors
until the cosmos is a billiards game.

Ye stars then, say that you envy me not!
Say: Men do not love, and have never loved!

From Michael Drayton's Nimphidia (1627) - Fleeing from Puck

MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563-1631)

These two excerpts are from Michael Drayton’s 1627 short epic poem, Nimphidia, concerned entirely with the jealousy of Fairy King Oberon over Queen Mab’s supposed infidelity with one “Pigwiggin.” This poet friend of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson is a worthy Elizabethan, and the spells and curses and descriptions of fairy coaches and weaponry in Nimphidia are a delight. Drayton also wrote long narrative poems on English history, and a multi-volume topographic work, Polyolbion, describing the landscape and historical landmarks of Britain. For these two excerpts from Nimphidia, I have modernized some spellings (mostly leaving verbs alone) and I have here and there made silent corrections for clarity in a few lines that did not make sense to today’s reader.

Blaming the Fairies

This Palace standeth in the Air,

By Necromancy placed there,

That it no Tempests needs to fear,

     Which way so e’er it blow it.

And somewhat Southward tow’rd the Noon,

Whence lies a way up to the Moon,

And thence the Fayrie can as soon

     Pass to the earth below it.

The Walls of Spiders’ legs are made,

Well mortised and finely laid,

He was the master of his Trade

     Who curiously that built:

The Windows are the eyes of Cats,

And for the Roof, instead of Slats,

Is cover’d with the skins of Bats,

     With Moonshine that are gilt.

Hence Oberon him sport to make,

(Their rest when weary mortals take)

And none but only Fayries wake,

     Descendeth for his pleasure.

And Mab his merry Queen by night

Bestrides young Folks that lie upright, (1)

(In elder Times the Mare that hight) (2)

     Which plagues them out of measure.

Hence Shadows, seeming Idle shapes,

Of little frisking Elves and Apes,

To Earth do make their wanton scapes,

     As hope of pastime hastes them:

Which maids think on the Hearth they see,

When Fires well near consumed be,

Their dancing Hayes by two and three, (3)

     Just as their Fancy casts them.

These make our Girls their sluttery rue,

By pinching them both black and blue,

And put a penny in their shoe,

     The house for cleanly sweeping:

And in their courses make that Round,

In Meadows, and in Marshes found,

Of them so call’d the Fayrie ground,

     Of which they have the keeping.

Thus when a Child haps to be got,

Which after proves an Idiot,

When Folk perceive it thriveth not,

     The fault therein to smother:

Some silly doting brainless Calf,

That understands things by the half,

Say that the Fayrie left this Elfe.

Queen Mab Pursued by Puck

In comes Nimphidia, and doth cry,

My Sovereign for your safety fly,

For there is danger but too nigh,

     I posted to forewarn you:

The King hath sent Hobgoblin out,  (4)

To seek you all the Fields about,

And of your safety you may doubt,

     If he but once discern you.

When like an uproar in a Town,

Before them every thing went down,

Some tore a Ruff, and some a Gown,

     ’Gainst one another jostling:

They flew about like Chaff i’ the wind,

For haste some left their Masks behind;

Some could not stay their Gloves to find,

     There never was such bustling.

Forth ran they by a secret way,

Into a brake that near them lay;

Yet much they doubted there to stay,

    Lest Hob should hap to find them:

He had a sharp and piercing sight,

All one to him the day and night,

And therefore were resolved by flight,

 To leave this place behind them.

At length one chanc’d to find a Nut,

In th’ end of which a hole was cut,

Which lay upon a Hazel root,

     There scatt’red by a Squirrel:

Which out the kernel gotten had;

When quoth this Fay: dear Queen be glad,

Let Oberon be ne’er so mad,

     I’ll set you safe from peril.

Come all into this Nut (quoth she)

Come closely in, be rul’d by me,

Each one may here a chooser be,

     For room ye need not wrestle:

Nor need ye be together heaped;

So one by one therein they crept,

And lying down they soundly slept,

     And safe as in a Castle.

Nimphidia that this while doth watch,

Perceiv’d if Puck the Queen should catch

That he should be her over-match,

     Of which she well bethought her;

Found it must be some powerful Charm,

The Queen against him that must arm,

Or surely he would doe her harm,

     For thoroughly he had sought her.

And listening if she aught could hear,

That her might hinder, or might fear:

But finding still the coast was clear,

     Nor creature had descried her;

Each circumstance and having scanned,

She came thereby to understand,

Puck would be with them out of hand

     When to her Charm she hid her:

And first her Fern seed doth bestow,

The kernel of the Mistletoe:

And here and there as Puck should go,

     With terror to affright him:

She Night-shade strews to work him ill,

Therewith her Vervayne (5) and her Dill,

That hindreth Witches of their will,

     Of purpose to despite him.

Then sprinkles she the juice of Rue, (6)

That groweth underneath the Yew: (7)

With nine drops of the midnight dew,

     From Lunary distilling:

The Molewarp's (8) brain mixed therewithal;

And with the same the Pismire’s gall, (9)

For she in nothing short would fall;

     The Fayrie was so willing.

Then thrice under a Briar doth creep,

Which at both ends was rooted deep,

And over it three times she leaped;

     Her Magic much availing:

Then on Proserpina (10) doth call,

And so upon her spell doth fall,

Which here to you repeat I shall,

     Not in one tittle failing.

By the croaking of the Frog;

By the howling of the Dog;

By the crying of the Hog,

     Against the storm arising;

By the Evening Curfew bell;

By the doleful dying knell,

O let this my direful Spell,

     Hob, hinder thy surprising.

By the Mandrake’s (11) dreadful groans;

By the Lubrican’s (12) sad moans;

By the noise of dead men’s bones,

     In Charnel houses rattling:

By the hissing of the Snake,

The rustling of the fire-Drake, (13)

I charge thee thou this place forsake,

     Nor of Queene Mab be prattling.

By the Whirlwind’s hollow sound,

By the Thunder’s dreadful stound, (14)

Yells of Spirits under ground,

     I charge thee not to fear us:

By the Screech-owl’s dismal note,

By the Black Night-Raven’s throat,

I charge thee, Hob, to tear thy Coat

     With thorns if thou come near us,

Her Spell thus spoke she stepped aside,

And in a Chink herself doth hide,

To see thereof what would betide,

     For she alone doth mind him:

When presently she Puck espies,

And well she marked his gloating eyes,

How under every leaf he spies,

     In seeking still to find them.

But once the Circle got within,

The Charms to work do straight begin,

     And he was caught as in a Gin; (15)

For as he thus was busy,

A pain he in his Head-peace feels,

Against a stubbed Tree he reels,

And up went poor Hobgoblin’s heels,

     Alas his brain was dizzy.

At length upon his feet he gets,

Hobgoblin fumes, Hobgoblin frets,

And as again he forward sets,

     And through the Bushes scrambles;

A Stump doth trip him in his pace,

Down comes poor Hob upon his face,

And lamentably tore his case,

     Amongst the Briars and Brambles.

A plague upon Queen Mab, quoth he,

And all her Maids where e’er they be,

I think the Devil guided me,

     To seek her so provoked.

Where stumbling at a piece of Wood,

He fell into a ditch of mud,

Where to the very Chin he stood,

     In danger to be choked.

Now worse than e’er he was before:

Poor Puck doth yell, poor Puck doth roar;

That wak’d Queene Mab who doubted sore

     Some Treason had been wrought her:

Until Nimphidia told the Queen

What she had done, what she had seen,

Who then had well-near crack’d her spleen

     With very extreme laughter.

— Extracted and modernized from Nimphidia (1627).

NOTES

1 That lie upright. Persons who sleep on their backs rather than turned to the side are more subject to visitations by fairies, incubi, and succubi.

2 Mare that hight. That was called Nightmare.

3 Dancing the Haye. In a winding and sinuous movement, in this case flames or sparks weaving around in a burnt-out log or coal.

4 Hobgoblin. Another name for Puck; also Robin Good-fellow.

5 Vervayne. Verbena. Sacred leaves or twigs from laurel, olive, or myrtle.

6 Rue. Ruta graveolens, an evergreen with bitter leaves.

7 Yew. A tree with dark green foliage often planted in graveyards.

8 Molewarp or Mouldwarp. Old French and Teutonic name for the common

garden mole.

9 Pismire’s gall. A foul-smelling extract from an anthill, mostly formic acid.

10 Prosperpine, or Persephone. In this instance, in her guise as the wife of Pluto in

the underworld.

11 Mandrake. The root of the mandrake is shaped like a human body, and was

used in magic spells.

12 Lubrican. Leprechaun, from Irish luchorpan. An unhappy pygmy sprite, said to

be always engaged in an unsuccessful repair of a shoe, and to carry in its purse a

single shilling.

13 Fire-drake. Most likely a reference to the mythical salamander, a lizard-like

creature said to be capable of living in fire.

14 Stound. A violent noise, a shock, producing a state of amazement.

15 Gin. In this instances, a snare or net.

FROM THE FORTHCOMING ANTHOLOGY, TALES OF TERROR, SUPPLEMENT 1.

Child Hypnotist

I got in big trouble in seventh grade in Scottdale. I had sent away for a "teach yourself hypnosis" kit that consisted of a manual, and a rotating spiral gizmo that could be used as an object of focus for the hypnosis subject. The book made it clear, however, that no visual stimulus was needed, and that you can talk people into a hypnotic trance.

Early one morning in home-room, I was telling friends about my newly-acquired hypnosis skills, how, like Count Dracula, I could put people into a trance.

"You can't do that!" a friend challenged me.

Another friend chimed in, "You're just making that up. If you can hypnotize people, why don't you hypnotize the whole class?"

People began chiming in: "Hypnotize us! We want to be hypnotized! Hypnotize EVERYONE!"

So, not to be humiliated, I went to the teacher's desk. (She was nowhere to be seen and was in fact late for work...)

I started the session as the manual had instructed me.

Within two minutes, three seventh-grade girls were in a deep trance. The rest of the class sat in stunned silence as I gave the girls simple commands such as raising their arms, standing up, etc.

Just as I was about to do something more advanced, such as planting a post-hypnotic suggestion, or turning them rigid as a plank, the home-room teacher burst in and made a quick appraisal of the situation.

"You had better be able to wake them up!" she screeched.

"Easy!" I said. I addressed them and said, "I will count to three, and when I reach three, you will wake up. One --- two --- three."

Two of the girls woke up, looked around startled, and were laughed at by the rest of the class.

The third girl did not wake up. I repeated the command. She still did not wake up.

Panic and terror set in.

"Call an ambulance!" someone yelled.

"No," I explained. "She will just fall into a normal sleep and then she will wake up."

I do not know how long she slumbered, and how they arranged her so that she would not fall out of her seat ... for I spent the morning in the principal's office.

From that day forward I was regarded as a public menace ... someone to watch. Someone who knew forbidden things.

Home and Back

 by Brett Rutherford

Some were meant,
you guess, to stay behind,
and some were meant to flee.

At childhood’s end, the choice
is to stay and marry, dig deep
into the soil in recompense
for journeys not taken.

They seem to smile, sun-burnt
on their farm porch-fronts,
but their women dream of murder
as they roll the same dough
week in and out, years rounding
from christenings to funerals.

The children, rebuked, obey
their father’s orders, slapped
into compliance. Yet guns are ready,
for the hand that takes them first:
vengeance belongs to the one who breaks.

What does one say to them, “back home”?
What does your city mean to them
except a place they passed through
and shuddered at, uneas’d
at foreign tongues, brown faces?

How can one tell them
you belong to more than one city,
that you have stood on the world’s
underside, that strange hands
have touched you, and you liked it?
Walt Whitman’s poems are not known
to them. No Open Road lures them.
They only vote one way. No one
who is not like them matters.

You only come back
for the sake of the outlaw child.
You have placed dangerous books
in the town library.
You leave your poems, traces
in leaf and cloud, updraft
of raven and untamed hawk.
To one who does not belong here
you say: come home to Everywhere
and Nowhere. There you are free.

Your name has been erased here.
If you write, your letters drop
into some hole, unanswered.
Mars is your home, and Paris,
Rome and the battlements of Troy,
gazebo amid the pines in China —
New York and Providence,
Boston and the Golden Gate,
Pittsburgh of bridge and ravine,
your homes and havens —
oh, everywhere but here.

Autumn on Pluto: A Tone Poem

We just finished recording my tone poem, "Autumn on Pluto," which conflates the icy and remote planet with Hades, the land of the dead from Greek myth. In this imaginary version of the ninth planet, the god Hades/Pluto and the entire underworld of the human dead live on.

The opening theme is the Plutonian anthem. Next comes the departure of Persephone on her annual trip back to earth, and the sad voice of Hades expressing his regret at her departure (bassoon solo). Next is a portrayal of a vast, dark forest of tangled trees, which are cornelian cherries (the food of the dead), but grown to a Titanic size. The leaves of the trees are black obsidian, with razor-sharp edges. Finally, the Plutonian anthem is restated, but in an icier and colder mode as the dreary realm of the dead prepares for winter.

The piece is in B Minor, with the central section depicting the forest in F-Sharp Minor. It then returns to B Minor for the conclusion.

It is scored for three synthesizer voices, plus four French horns, a bassoon, timpani, and 12 cellos.

This was recorded in a desanctified church in Pittsburgh with members of the Squirrel Hill Symphony conducted by Meng Qiu-Lei.

Play Autumn on Pluto

The Isle of Achilles

 

Reading Homer closely and deeply is a life-changing experience. It provides you with an alternate life so deeply conveyed and so passionately described that you feel as though you have lived it. The only engagement with art with equal emotion that I know of, is the experience of opera. Just remembering some key incidents in Homer can bring me to a point where I can hardly speak the words, so overcome with emotion am I.

Robert Bridges wrote this elegant and haunting poem about the island where a shrine to Achilles brought many visitors, who made sacrifices there in hopes of receiving a sign or a vision from the world's greatest hero. The 1899 poem also made a brave and explicit approbation of the love between Achilles and his fellow warrior Patroclus, rather a strong statement just four years after the Oscar Wilde trial.

Bridges' English is exquisite, and the poem leaves me breathless. I wish I had written this, but Bridges seems to have squeezed from Greek sources just about the last words that can be said about this subject. His Greek quote is from Euripides' Andromache.

ROBERT BRIDGES (1844-1930)

THE ISLE OF ACHILLES
 
(FROM THE GREEK)
 
Τὁν φἱλτατὁν σοι παἱδ' ἑμοἱ τ', Ἁχιλλἑα
ὑψει δὑμους ναἱοντα νησιωτικοὑς
Δευκἡν κατ' ἁκτἡν ἑντὁς Εὑξεἱνου πὁρου. 
Eur. And. 1250.
 
Voyaging northwards by the western strand
Of the Euxine sea we came to where the land
Sinks low in salt morass and wooded plain:
Here mighty Ister pushes to the main,
Forking his turbid flood in channels three
To plough the sands wherewith he chokes the sea.{360}

Against his middle arm, not many a mile
In the offing of black water is the isle
Named of Achilles, or as Leukê known,
Which tender Thetis, counselling alone
With her wise sire beneath the ocean-wave
Unto her child's departed spirit gave,
Where he might still his love and fame enjoy,
Through the vain Danaan cause fordone at Troy.
Thither Achilles passed, and long fulfill'd
His earthly lot, as the high gods had will'd,
Far from the rivalries of men, from strife,
From arms, from woman's love and toil of life.
Now of his lone abode I will unfold
What there I saw, or was by others told.

There is in truth a temple on the isle;
Therein a wooden statue of rude style
And workmanship antique with helm of lead:
Else all is desert, uninhabited;
Only a few goats browse the wind-swept rocks,
And oft the stragglers of their starving flocks
Are caught and sacrificed by whomsoe'er,
Whoever of chance or purpose hither fare:
About the fence lie strewn their bleaching bones.

But in the temple jewels and precious stones,
Upheapt with golden rings and vials lie,
Thankofferings to Achilles, and thereby,
Written or scratch'd upon the walls in view,
Inscriptions, with the givers' names thereto,
Some in Romaic character, some Greek,
As each man in the tongue that he might speak
Wrote verse of praise, or prayer for good to come,
To Achilles most, but to Patroclus some;
For those who strongly would Achilles move
Approach him by the pathway of his love.

Thousands of birds frequent the sheltering shrine,
The dippers and the swimmers of the brine,
Sea-mew and gull and diving cormorant,
Fishers that on the high cliff make their haunt
Sheer inaccessible, and sun themselves
Huddled arow upon the narrow shelves:—
And surely no like wonder e'er hath been
As that such birds should keep the temple clean;
But thus they do: at earliest dawn of day
They flock to sea and in the waters play,
And when they well have wet their plumage light,
Back to the sanctuary they take flight
Splashing the walls and columns with fresh brine,
Till all the stone doth fairly drip and shine,
When off again they skim asea for more
And soon returning sprinkle steps and floor,
And sweep all cleanly with their wide-spread wings.


From other men I have learnt further things.
If any of free purpose, thus they tell,
Sail'd hither to consult the oracle,—
For oracle there was,—they sacrificed
Such victims as they brought, if such sufficed,
And some they slew, some to the god set free:
But they who driven from their course at sea
Chanced on the isle, took of the goats thereon
And pray'd Achilles to accept his own.
Then made they a gift, and when they had offer'd once,
If to their question there was no response,
They added to the gift and asked again;
Yea twice and more, until the god should deign
Answer to give, their offering they renew'd;
Whereby great riches to the shrine ensued.
And when both sacrifice and gifts were made
They worship'd at the shrine, and as they pray'd
Sailors aver that often hath been seen
A man like to a god, of warrior mien,
A beauteous form of figure swift and strong;
Down on his shoulders his light hair hung long
And his full armour was enchast with gold:
While some, who with their eyes might nought behold,
Say that with music strange the air was stir'd;
And some there are, who have both seen and heard:
And if a man wish to be favour'd more,
He need but spend one night upon the shore;
To him in sleep Achilles will appear
And lead him to his tent, and with good cheer
Show him all friendliness that men desire;
Patroclus pours the wine, and he his lyre
Takes from the pole and plays the strains thereon
Which Cheiron taught him first on Pelion.


These things I tell as they were told to me,
Nor do I question but it well may be:
For sure I am that, if man ever was,
Achilles was a hero, both because
Of his high birth and beauty, his country's call,
His valour of soul, his early death withal,
For Homer's praise, the crown of human art;
And that above all praise he had at heart
A gentler passion in her sovran sway,
And when his love died threw his life away.

 

From New Poems (1899). Published in final form in Poetical Works of Robert Bridges. (1936) London: Oxford University Press. Revised edition 1953, 1964, pp.359-362.

Illustration from Wikimedia Commons: Sosias (potter, signed). Painting attributed to the Sosias Painter (name piece for Beazley, overriding attribution) or the Kleophrades Painter (Robertson) or Euthymides (Ohly-Dumm) - Photograph by user Bibi Saint-Pol, 2008. 

The God Who Uses Cats As Slippers

by Brett Rutherford

The god who uses cats as slippers
has invaded my dreams.

Two yellow dogs vanish
behind a saguaro cactus
and after much humping
and whining emerge again
as two pale boys.

Four sway-back cats
with enormous tails
hide in a gully.
They do not want to become shoes.

The god who uses cats as slippers
goes to the top of the pyramid.
Tourists in fast cars
race where the blood once ran.
Beer-cans clog
the sun's birth-canal.

The terrible old man —
oh, he is mad!
is still trapped in a room
whose door I suddenly open.

The god who uses cats as slippers
pushes my hand away
and slams the door.

“Bad for us all if he ever gets loose,”
the god mumbles.
The locks are only secured
with strings and beads.

Two Aztec boys,
ghosts, certainly,
white-skinned as though
they had been dipped in flour,

now want to play
with our grandson.
What harm?
They know a good ball game.
The walled-in garden was once
an Aztec or Mayan ball-court.

My obsidian knife is missing.

There is swampy ground
at the end of the garden.
If the ball goes there
it is better not to chase it.

Someone invisible
has eaten the salad.

An unwanted guest goes out
and is never seen again.
The god who uses cats as slippers
tells me, “The hills are hungry.”

The room I sleep in
is large, with many windows,
sun-track by day,
moon-track by night,
tricksters the comets
and teasing meteors.

The man locked up
is a famous lawyer.
His vanishing brought
a centuries-long lawsuit
between two heirs
of the Conquistadors
to a sudden halt,
to the great relief
of the local Indians.

The god who uses cats as slippers
is fond of mole and tequila.
He squats at the top
of his ancient pyramid
awaiting the outcome
of the ball-game.
White legs-brown legs,
white arms-brown arms
a blur as afternoon sun
grows tired and sinks
into its far-off sea-bed.

What do the winners win?
What do the losers lose?

My obsidian knife is missing.

PRELIMINARY SPANISH VERSION:

Sueño azteca

 El dios que usa gatos 
como pantuflos
ha invadido en mis sueños.

 Dos perros amarillos se esconden
detrás de un cactus saguaro
y despues de mucho follar
y los lloriqueos 
emergen de nuevo
en forma de dos chicos pálidos.

 Cuatro gatos jorobados
con colas enormes
esconderse en un barranco.
No quieren convertirse en zapatos.

 El dios que usa a los gatos
como pantuflos
va a la cima de la pirámide.
Turistas en autos veloces
carrera donde una vez corrió la sangre.
Atasco de latas de cerveza
el canal de parto del sol.

 El terrible anciano —
¡Oh, está loco!
todavía está atrapado 
en una cámara
cuya puerta abro de repente.

 El dios que usa a los gatos 
como pantuflos
aleja mi mano
y cierra la puerta.

 “Será malo para todos 
si alguna vez se suelta,”
murmura el dios.
Las cerraduras
solo están aseguradas
con hilos y cuentas.

 Dos chicos aztecas,
fantasmas, ciertamente,
de piel blanca
como si los habían bañado 
en harina,
ahora quiero jugar
con nuestro nieto.

¿Qué daño?
Saben un buen juego de pelota.
El jardín amurallado fue una vez
una cancha de pelota azteca o maya.

 ¿Dónde está mi cuchillo de obsidiana? 
¡Ah, lo he perdido!

 Hay terreno pantanoso
al final del jardín.
Si la pelota va ahí
es mejor no perseguirlo.

 La ensalada ha desaparecido.
Alguien invisible se lo ha comido. 

Un invitado no deseado sale
y nunca se vuelve a ver.
El dios que usa a los gatos 
como pantuflos me dice: 
“Las colinas tienen hambre.”

 La habitación en la que duermo
es grande, con muchas ventanas,
pista de sol de día,
rastro de la luna por la noche,
embaucadores los cometas
y meteoros molestos.

 El hombre encerrado
es un abogado famoso.
Su desaparición provocó 
una demanda de siglos 
entre dos herederos 
de los conquistadores,
a una parada repentina,
para el gran alivio
de los indios locales.

 El dios que usa a los gatos
como pantuflos
le gusta el mole y el tequila.
Se pone en cuclillas en la cima
de su antigua pirámide
esperando el resultado
del juego de pelota.

 Patas blancas — patas marrones,
brazos blancos — brazos marrones
son un borrón 
mientras el sol de la tarde
se cansa y se hunde
en su lejano lecho marino.

 ¿Qué ganan los ganadores?
¿Qué pierden los perdedores?

 ¿Dónde está mi cuchillo de obsidiana?
¡Ah, lo he perdido!

 

The Future of the Book

by Brett Rutherford

Sometime in 1988 or 1989, I talked to a writers' group, The Rhode Island Writers' Circle, about the future of the book, and what I expected to see happen in book publishing. This was back when the Adobe Acrobat PDF format was becoming the world standard for document publishing, making it possible to design a book, and then to view or print it on any device. It's interesting to see what I predicted 30 years ago, against what has and has not not happened. I was still working as a journalist and as a consultant to publishers at that time, and had not yet started my "back to school" adventure.

Every fact you know today about books, their production, their publication, their distribution and their sales will be only history in less than ten years. Every one of us will have access to a personal library bigger than the Great Library of Alexandria, from our homes, and costing us nothing. Universities will lose their "monopolies" over the storage, preservation and dissemination of printed knowledge. All the rare and obscure and out of print books you want will be available in virtual copies you can read on a thin sheet of plastic no heavier than a magazine, in full color. The portable plastic book will be an appliance that you carry to school, into the bathtub and, yes, even to the beach. You can read War and Peace while listening to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, with your headphones connected to your portable book.

Yes, new ink-on-paper books will still exist. They will be luxury items -- coffee table art books, gift books, photography books, commemorative and historical books. But for all the books that the multitudes crave for instant gratification -- Tom Clancy novels, Steven King tremblies, political exposes, and celebrity gossip, half of us will read these things without killing a tree, while others will continue on their merry way paying $40 to $90 for a single book. Meantime, printing plants are already shutting down, paper mills are closing, and the squirrels and bald eagles are rejoicing. By my estimate, 500 North American printing presses are shut down every month, and not replaced by new capacity. And even though there are some 15,700 magazines published today, and more books published every year than ever before, the press runs are shorter and shorter. I have heard one estimate from book printers that 80% of all books now how have runs under 1,000 copies. This means that most book distribution is either local to the author, or is being done by on-line or mail order.

The generation that comes after ours will have no interest in reading or owning books or periodicals on paper. Only the old and eccentric will haunt used bookstores. The physical books on the shelves at libraries will dwindle since virtual copies of most old books will be readily available. No waiting lists, no overdue books, etc.

Traditional book publishers, consumed by media giants, will go down screaming. They will bolster their profits short term by banking all their annual profits on a few bestsellers, whose authors will gamer 80% of all the money paid to authors. For all other books, the original art for every new book will exist as a virtual or e-book, and either a bookstore or an on-line service like Amazon will process orders for single copies of books for those stubborn enough to want a physical book. The book publishers will throw up their hands in despair and become multimedia entertainment companies. War and Peace in print will be in a gift box with the DVD of the mini-series. Most copies of the "mid-range" books printed will continue to wind up sold as "remainders," which I regard as a pre-planned way to achieve break-even on printing costs. Authors receive NO royalties on all those books sold in the remainder bins or from remainder catalogs.

Where do writers fit in all this? There will be fewer large publishers, fewer magazines that pay, fewer opportunities for writers seeking to have others publish them. There is little incentive in the real world for a Random House to publish a book that will sell 2,000 copies. Yet paradoxically, the new technologies that are transforming "the book" are going to give writers more power than they have had at any time in history. If the word "publish" means "to send abroad," every writer has power to publish his or her work undreamt of by our ancestors. Imagine the Bronte sisters with a web site and e-mail. Imagine Emily Dickinson peddling a book she designed herself on Amazon.com. Imagine Walt Whitman updating "Songs of Myself' in a daily poetry blog. Imagine every word you have ever written and will write, and every word everyone in this room has ever written or will write, contained on a disk that costs 29 cents to make.

The act of publishing, and the mere fact that one person writes and another publishes, is the result of the fact that few authors are rich enough to produce their own books, and that the means of production -- design, paper, ink, binding, printing presses, bindery equipment-- are scarce and expensive. The physical book is one of Western civilization's two greatest inventions (the other is the modem piano), and it is complex enough to daunt most people. Even the making of a shabby paperback makes most people quail. Publishers, and the printers who do the actual labor for them, have always banked on their monopoly over the means of production. Only they could efficiently and profitably design, produce, and distribute books. Booksellers were those grubby people at the bottom of the food chain who put the books out in front of the great unwashed.

The production of books was complicated and involved a long list of craftspeople. Designers, typesetters, platemakers and engravers, printers, binders. The materials consumed were staggering: metal type, film, plates, paper, ink, glue, varnish, cloth, leather. The machines included cameras, linotypes, phototypesetters, computers, stat machines, plate burners, presses, folding machines, a whole medley of case binding devices, and ominous guillotine cutters. It was a maze of conveyor belts, knives, folders, rotating drums, gears and a hundred places where something could go wrong -- and something often did. The consumption of natural resources to make books and magazines the traditional way is staggering, and our descendants will judge us mad.

In all this, all the author did was write down the words - first on a typewriter, and later, onto a disk inserted in a PC or Mac. That was it. Authors sat around like spinsters waiting to be married off - a few were summoned, but the rest languished. And as for money, the bookstores and book distributors ands publishers, and the IRS, got theirs, while most authors -- well, you know the story ...

Since 1985, when desktop publishing hit the personal computer, all that has changed. The author now has the power and ability to take his or her work, typeset it, design it, illustrate it, and make it up into a "virtual book." What you view on the screen is exactly what you would see in the physical book. That author's book can be instantly turned into the futuristic e-book, or given to a printer who produces as few or as many books as you want. The same original can also be sold to any traditional publisher foolhardy enough to publish the work.

All the creative steps in making a book have now been transferred back into the author's control, if the author is willing to learn some of the basics of how to transform a raw manuscript into a book. Many of the "rules" developed during the days of metal type and hand presses are still good rules today because they produce beautiful and highly legible pages.

The biggest breakthrough in the last ten years has been the worldwide adoption of Adobe's Acrobat, or Portable Document Format (PDF). By now, probably 100 million copies of Adobe's document reader software have been downloaded. It's free, and the ability to read PDFs is now built into many web browsers. What this means is that I can design a book here in Providence, and someone in Nairobi or Beijing can view and read my book, line for line, character for character and dot for dot. The printing industry is throwing away all its old photographic and mechanical production methods and is saying to publishers, "Just give us the PDF and we'll print it."

Open Source software is also bringing design and typesetting power to everyone. It used to cost about $1,000 to get into the desktop publishing arena. Now it's just a few hundred dollars, or nearly free if you use Open Source software, created by computer fanatics and distributed free on the Internet. Simply put, if you have a computer, you can make your own book.