The depth of body.
The
depth of a hollow
animal belly
imagination
fills out to an agreeable convexity, &
the
tenderness in a bear drawing
like
a loom within stone.
Seesaw
pitch of breath & stasis:
my
heart pounding Take Heed halfway
up
the mountain to Chauvet’s entrance.
Frightened
to almost be stopped within minutes of the cave.
(Olson
in Hotel Steinplatz feeling
the
World Tree give way in his giant frame).
Is
that why Chauvet’s interior was tinged for me
with the rust of farewell?
Coffee
outside the equipment nook
after
the 40 minute climb:
4000
people, the guide Charles told us, have visited,
about
400 a year, or did he mean
about
400 will visit this year?
So
I’m not that special—
photo of the Methodist Hospital window
in the room where I was born, X’ed by my
father
in his “Baby’s Book of Events”.
Cradle
of art?
Roar
of images cascading the wall,
rows
of larger-than-life lion heads voracious for
a
vertical totem pole of bison heads.
90%
of Chauvet is virgin floor.
One
bear skull is enveloped in stalactitic casing,
a
polished white sarcophagus of sorts,
with
a stalagmite a foot high “growing” out of
the cranium dome,
as
if the skull sends up its opaque
shaft of words.
10%
of Chauvet appears to be metal walkway.
“charter’d
Thames” Nice to keep that much floor
virgin
but
it is as if this primordial labyrinth has been
jigsawed with streets. Meaning:
no
wandering, no “lost at sea” in being’s immensity.
Like
a huge solitary hanging fang, near the cave’s end:
a
Minotaur, with a drizzle of fingers,
drawn
on a large feline body drawn there earlier.
Some
panels boil with activity,
as
if they magnetized Cro-Magnon soul,
sucked
animal through Cro-Magnon bodies.
The
32,400 year old male rhino
in
horn clash with maybe a female
has
a fat, pointed erect phallus.
A
chaos of animals, like “a paradise of poets,”
one
masterly horse finger-painted in wall clay,
shaded so carefully
to
pull the outline boundaries in,
the
limestone shows through--
as
if nothing that special has happened since!
As
if man were an afterthought of a humanimal brew
still beating in my chest
like
a wedge of lions crafting a kill.
Asking
why certain spots were chosen for figures,
like
asking why lightning here, not there…
Here-not-there
coalesces into hermetic knots of
wiggling anti-cores,
as
if a solid helix were, this instant,
bursting
into univocal lanes
(the
metal walkway puns upon).
Why
are you here
right
up my nose,
as
if a tweezer carbon-dated, on the spot,
a
bit of my brain &
came
up with the abyss’s
invisible
but definite bottom:
death,
as a feline gush of misericordia,
beauty
& affinity, lined within the notion of being.
How
did I manage to walk that last 20 minutes
up the mountain?
Why
can’t I get over that pounding halo of
serpent breath,
haruspex
enigma … Breathe &
be grateful for
the
various ranges quilted within, &
the
many years with Caryl.
Thought
of her on that mountain side, panting…
Did
her devotion & utter decency
lift me on?
NOTE: See also the poem “Chauvet: Left Wall of End Chamber” in Reciprocal Distillations (Hot Whiskey
Press, 2007) reprinted in CE / The
Essential Poetry (1960-2015. With James O’Hern, I visited Chauvet Cave with
Jean-Marie Chauvet (one of the 1994 discoverers) on January 8, 2004. My
gratitude to Dominique Baffier for arranging our visit. Excellent color
photographs of the wall with the paintings addressed in my poem may be found in Chauvet Cave / The Art of Earliest Times, directed
by Jean Clottes (The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, 2003).
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