TC: Joseph Ceravolo: Ho Ho Ho Caribou

.

for Rosemary

I

Leaped at the caribou.

My son looked at the caribou.

The kangaroo leaped on the

fruit tree. I am a white


man and my children

are hungry

which is like paradise.

The doll is sleeping.


It lay down to creep into

the plate.


It was clean and flying.

II

Where you...the axes


are. Why is this home so

hard. So much


like the sent over the

courses below the home


having a porch.




Felt it on my gate in the place

where the caribous jumped

over. Where geese sons


and pouches of daughters look at

me and say "I'm hungry


daddy."

III

Not alone in the

gastrous desert. We are looking

at the caribous out in the water

swimming around. We


want to go in the ocean

along the dunes.

Where do we like?

Like little lice in the sand


we look into a fruit expanse.

Oh the sky is so cold.


We run into the water.

Lice in heaven.

IV

My heel. Ten o'clock the class.


Underwater fish

brush by us. Oh leg


not reaching!

The show is stopping

at the sky to drive in the

truck. Tell us where to


stop and eat. And

drink which comes to us out


in the sand is

at a star.


My pants are damp.

Is tonight treating us



but not reaching through the window.

V

Where is that bug going?


Why are your hips

rounded as the sand?


What is jewelry?

Baby sleeps. Sleeping on

the cliff is dangerous.

The television of all voice is


way far behind.

Do we flow nothing?


Where did you follow that bug

to?


See quick......is flying

VI

Caribou, what have I

done? see how her

heart moves like a little


bug......under my thumb.

Throw me deeply.


I am the floes.

Ho ho ho caribou,


light brown and wetness

caribou. I stink and


I know it.

"Screw you!...you're right."

VII

Everyone has seen us out

with the caribou but


no one has seen us out in

the car. You passed


beyond us.

We saw your knees


but the other night we

couldn't call you.


You were more far than a

widow feeling you.


Nothing has been terrible.

We are the people who have


been running with

animals.


More than when we run?

VIII

Tell us where o eat to stop and eat

The diner is never gonna come.



The forest things are passing.

I did drink my milk



like a mother of wolves.

Wolves on the desert



of ice cold love, of

fireproof breasts and the breast

I took like snow.

Following me



I love you

and I fall beyond



and I eat you like a

bow and arrow withering in the



desert.

IX

No one should be mean.

Making affection and all the green



winters wide awake.

Blubber is desert. Out on



the firm lake, o firm

and aboriginal kiss.



To dance, to hunt, to sing,

no one should be mean.



Not needing these things.

X

Like a flower, little light, you open

and we make believe



we die. We die all around

you like a snake in a



well and we come up out

of the warm well and



are born again out of dry

mammas, nourishing mammas, always



holding you as I

love you and am



revived inside you, but

die in you and am



never born again in

the same place; never



stop!

Ho Ho Ho Caribou: Joseph Ceravolo, from The Paris Review #44, 1968


Strolling reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) in the Kebnekaise valley, Lapland, Sweden: photo by Alexandre Buisse, 2007
Waterfall, Norde Isortoq, West Greenland: photo by Rene Moerkhoej, 2007
Peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus), Asturias, Spain: photo by Francisco M. Marzoa Alonso, 2005
Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss): photo by Ken Hammond/USDA (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture)
Herd of caribou (Rangifer tarandus), Arctic national Wildlife Refuge: photo by U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, 2008
Lemming (Lemmus lemmus), Norway: photo by Frode Inge Helland, 1987
Caribou (Rangifer tarandus), Suomi, near Ihari, Finland: photo by Lukas Riebling, 2005
Arctic fox (Alopex lagopus): photo by Marcel Burkhard, 2005
Cowberries (Vaccinium vitis-idaea): photo by Jonas Bergsten, 2006
Albino caribou (Rangifer tarandus) leading a train, Jämtland, Sweden: photo by oskarlin, 2005
Common cottongrass (Eriophorum scheuchzeri): photo by Franz Xaver, 1991

TC: Final Farewell

.

Great moment in Blade Runner where Roy
Batty is expiring, and talks
about how everything
he’s seen will die with him --
ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion,
sea-beams glittering before
the Tannhauser Gates.

Memory is like molten gold
burning its way through the skin.
It stops there. There is no transfer.
Nothing I have seen
will be remembered
beyond me.

That merciful cleaning
of the windows of creation
will be an excellent thing
my interests notwithstanding.

But then again I’ve never been
near Orion, or the Tannhauser Gates,
I’ve only been here.

Hong Kong Skyline: panoramic view: photo by Diliff, 2007
Ginza neon night rain: photo by Move Lachine, 2008

TC: Jim Dine: Old Me, Now

.

I was seventy-four in June...

Age talks about how long a person has existed. These self-portrait drawings are about how many times, I’ve regarded my face minutely and have corrected and erased to get the feeling I want to show most accurately. I now am able, after all this looking, to enlarge my head to become a field of form and chatter and for it to be compared to a vast forest or a limestone quarry, for instance.

Finally, lying is not an option nor is decoration. I am committed to setting the record straight. Don’t worry, I will.

-- from Jim Dine: Old Me, Now: Self-Portrait Drawings, 2008-2009

I am an old man. I avoid mirrors.

Pretty is pretty. But the truth is the truth. Often not pretty.

Instead of looking away from the unprettiness, Jim Dine has made the weight and pull of time into an instrument of vision.

The unrelenting honesty of self-perception is absolutely heroic. Take a hard look at On Ardmore Ave (2009). It will stare right through you.

Hard looking is the mode as well as the subject of this work.

The titles of the drawings tell the story.

Eyes Gone Over, Thin Red Lips, Old Rider, The Stain of Time, Staring in the Evening, Dark Song, Singing Hard Times, Faded Eyes in My Head.

There is a short film I once saw that presents Rembrandt's self-portraits in a swift slideshow, showing the features changing subtly with age as the artist, watching himself with unwavering truthfulness, grows old. Flesh and bone coalescing in an accelerated version of unforgiving meltdown, the unkind work of time upon the human face. It's very moving to see. And Old Me, Now made me think of it.

"Finally, lying is not an option, nor is decoration..."

This may well be no country for old men. Small wonder then that Jim Dine's book comes from a publisher in "The Old World". It speaks to us from Beyond the Limits of Positive Thinking.

Nothing is personal then
And everything is true
Including love's great circumambience
And the skull in the mirror

The mortal intimation
Of souls of beings long since lost
In a forgotten past
And the deep pink nescience

Of the thought evacuated tissue
Glaring back at you
Through the empty eyeholes
In the mask

The New Man: Jim Dine, 2009, from Old Me, Now: Steidl & Partners/Richard Gray Gallery, 2010 (photo by Arthur Aubry via Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago)
Paris After Aldo Died, 2009, from Old Me, Now: Steidl & Partners/Richard Gray Gallery, 2010 (photo by Arthur Aubry via Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago)

TC: Pam Brown: In the Blue Mountains

.

hoping for a place

deep in the shade

verandahs all around,

to contemplate

what brought us here

excerpt from "Worldly goods": True Thoughts, Pam Brown, Salt Publishing, 2008
Forest in the Blue Mountains: photos by Adam J.W.C., 2008

TC: Click

.

One may age ten years in ten minutes.
It's too quiet. I can hear the crickets,
It's like a music of the spheres in reverse,
A whack recursiveness of thinking,
Or is it just the night-clicking computer god
And what kind of iterative god is that?

Pascal had his pit, which went with him
Where'er he went, like a faithful dog,
Nor was he out of it. Infinity I can see
From here. It looks empty, unrelenting,
Cold. There is no respite from Being
And Number, a poet once told us that

When it was getting late for him
And night panic passed through his hair
Making it stand on end, the little he still
Had of it. I'll go to the wall, stand with it,
Let it be my friend, just to have something
That won't fall down. I feel giddy, said the clown.

I believe in a world. Is God or death more great?
This world is my world and will vanish with me
But while I click it goes on existing
In eternity -- to 2046 or
2666, or whene'er the chips melt down.
I've lost Memory writing this.

I've aged ridiculously in ten minutes,
Maybe ten years. Distance is closing in,
It's too quiet. I can hear the crickets
Singing God and death out of existence.
More power to them. Click.
The intricate circuits of a summer night.






Click: from The New World, Libellum Books, 2009
Under the Elms: Fairfield Porter, 1971-72 (Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts)

TC: Brecht: Die Opiumräucherin

.

You know a girl who loses herself nightly in the black smoke

Before long finds herself a zombie's nihil bride.
She can't be lowered later nor can she be uplifted.
Two out of three mornings she won't even seem alive.

Why try keeping her chin up, there's no longer the incentive.
Her nerve is gone, her hair and looks are shot.
Passing a shopwindow, she sees a stranger reflected.
Who's that person? Must be someone she's not.

The smoke inveigles itself into her blood, fogs her head.
She sleeps alone now to be closer to the soil
That's reeling her in on an invisible thread.

That she exists at all escapes her notice.
In the end she'd prefer invisibility, reserving
All her attentions for a girl's best friend.

Die Opiumräucherin: Bertolt Brecht, c. 1926; English version: TC, from Trans/Versions, Libellum Books, 2009
Shelf cloud over Moscow: photo by Chesnok, 2006
Rolling thunderstorm shelf cloud (Cumulonimbus arcus), Enschede, the Netherlands: photo by John Kerstholt, 2004

TC: A Une Jeune Fille

.

You might fill empty futures with your raging

Power. Everything is possible.

The story has not yet begun yet promises

Much. Having glimpsed the magic ring

On the captive's finger, the bright-eyed heroine

Might turn out to be you, making your way

Up mountains of difficulty to shining

Temples in which is kept alive that flame

Of truth which burns at the heart of the ark

Of the covenant of being you.

You might, in the forest, hear that falling tree.

You're young, you want to be free, but aren't yet.

You might walk the cow, ride the rocket ship.

You might book the flight, then jump out of the plane.

You might meet a boy named X. He might say

You don't know me, nor do I know you.

Portrait of a Young Venetian Woman: Albrecht Dürer, 1505 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)

Heinrike Dannecker: Christian Gottlieb Shick, 1802 (Nationalgalerie, Berlin)