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| photo by Jennifer May |
Preface:
I presume to offer a glimpse of a
new Tarot. The major arcana of the deck are ordinary things of this world, and
the suits are not four but infinite, for there is no end to the counting
numbers, and no end to the things they can count. This deck is prefigured in a
story published half a century ago called “The Infinite Tarot,” where there was
talk of the Ace of Sewing Machines and such like. There are no such racy conjectures
in the present pack, of which after research and deliberation I offer to the
world only the Major Arcana, the Trumps. Of course there are many ordinary
things in this sacred world, but these seem to have special cogency, special
power to alert the mind to the sacredness of ordinary things. I use the Italian
title to honor the great primal images of Mantegna’s Tarocchi.
RK, January 2014
preliminary
advice:
to the querentwho seeks an answer from the cards
1.
But what are you looking for in all these pictures?
They’re all dead people by now,
the Husband, the Child,
the Nun, the Prophet lying
drunk beneath his tree,
the Tree, the Cellar Door,
the Dog. Dead or fallen
ruinous and sad. Are you sad?
Do you come to the cards
the way you’d drink some wine
or call a friend you haven’t seen
in years? Did you ever know him
anyhow? The images don’t lie
because the images don’t die.
2.
Did you know I’d be here
when you came in, a sly voice
no louder than a silken
dress on a thigh, a whisper
of light in the dingy trees
around your yard? Why
can’t you take care of anything?
Do you want to wind up
like me, a voice yearning,
yearning for ears, doesn’t
really matter, even yours?
3.
But I can tell you everything. You whisper to the cards,
they whisper to me, I whisper
to you. A lot of susurrus
to go round, mice in the pantry,
tiny endless appetites questing
like you for anything. Like me.
4.
Because I began out there like you then got trapped in it. I asked
and it answered, I leaned close
to hear every detail, and before
I knew it or could flee, the voice
became my own. And I’ve
been talking ever since. Now
what was it you wanted to know?
crosslegged on his table
in strong sunlight
finding old stitches
in an older coat.
He will unpiece it
and take each scrap and make a new coat
for a naked man.
Meantime he squints
at the fraying thread praying to the God
of seams and sewers,
Hera’s aunt,
the Spider Queen
of
who taught us
to connect.
And why not?
Magic lives between
the skin and the cloth, silk or hide
makes no matter.
Magic is all.
He unstitches and stitches afresh
in fine red thread—
under the table
wind is blowing
scraps of linen
here and there.
You and I are
just a week from being born.
A man holds it
in front of his chest but his eyes are not on it,
they look out at you,
viewer, querent,
whatever you are.
Unknown to him
or at least unnoticed there is a woman in the class
small, perfectly formed,
eyes open, rather beautiful
she is, and she’s looking
right at you too.
This is Melusina,
the elemental daughter of water and air,
you need her to live.
When the man has drunk his water,
all of it or only some she will still be there,
adrift before his eyes
and yours,
floating out from the image
into your world
or whatever you call it,
this thing around you.
And then he gives it to you.
He holds a hammer in his hand.
He holds a wounded sparrow in his hand. He holds a yardstick in his hand.
He holds a letter in his hand he hasn’t finished reading.
And never will.
He holds a key in his hand.
He holds an antique ormolu clock on his hand.
It tells old time.
He holds a book in his hand, it’s open, pages riffled by wind.
He holds a kitten curled up on his palm.
He holds a photo of a lost love in his hand.
He has forgotten her name.
He holds a mirror in his hand but does not look at it.
Who knows what he would see?
He holds an ear of corn half-eaten in his hand.
He holds a bottle perhaps of water in his hand.
He is sustained by the simplest things.
He holds a rifle in his hand.
Does he know how to use it? Not sure.
He holds a butterfly net in his hand.
He feels ridiculous but he loves things.
He holds his hand out and a dragonfly lands on it.
He holds his father’s cane in his hand.
He holds a map of
He holds a silk stocking draped across his wrist.
He holds a branch of holly in his hand.
He holds a wad of paper money in his hand.
He holds a pair of scissors in his hand.
He holds a bell in his hand.
He holds a dog-leash in his hand but no dog is in it.
He holds a wooden flute in his hand.
He holds a red ball in his hand.
He holds a kitchen strainer in his hand.
He holds a stone in his hand.
He holds nothing in his hand.
[note. The preceding excerpt
is from a remarkable new series of on-line poetry works, Metambesen, edited by
Charlotte Mandell & Robert Kelly & freely available on the internet. In
the words of the editors: “As citizens in the commonwealth of language,
we are anxious to make new work freely and easily available, using the swift
herald of the internet to bring readers chapbooks and other texts they can read
and download without cost.” Beyond that noble
& notable plan, my showing it here is a further tribute to Kelly himself,
who was a poet essential to my own formative years as a poet, a
time of transformations now a half century in the past. With him there was a brief time in which we
struggled together with the dimensions of ‘deep image’ as a strategy of
composition developed by us along with a cohort of contemporaries in New York
1 comment:
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