[and over
orange over black.
Bodies in a line of bodies
lined up to watch the sun rise fall silent.
Spectacle is what it says
it is. A sea garden dissolved within a beacon of forms.
The seal broken off.
*
Oyster shell in hand of a boy.
Hand the shells back to him they come back gray and black on white.
Small knotted pearls of flesh. Cupped hand of gray meat.
Not in his eyes he says it’s over not in his eyes but his hands.
Pale boy’s hands bearing no trace of black.
Gray husk meatless play of light on his hands.
*
(prayer well)
Refuge inside of it a column rises through black-tiered jewel of ocean.
Eyes shut or open opening into blue-green layers of sight.
The sun travels weightless over white sand refuge to what it leaves.
Without borders a slim space of light passing through the layers underneath.
Captive well capped light. A plume brown then black rising blue then brown.
No trace of their bodies when the rig is lifted like a tower into view.
What is redemption the cloud line of it rising then parting like prayer folds.
Stage by stage the serene story of living things below.
Green infused with brown blacking out the line
between death and life.
*
To share the day blue then gray in passing.
Soft civil bird bent low to ground finding sky and sun bleached.
This shine in place of white passed over mottled summer.
A zone of blue then orange opening out to sea lanes blackening far as the eye
[can see.
Sun when it sets black in the gray sky. Vigil in which characters speak
Against what they are seeing one speaks against half-pale reds in ocean sky
Gone black-sashed sky and sun bolted black to a black knot of oil.
Birds blackened foam-like waiting.
*
Bell buoys in motion beneath a cut-out moon.
Toothless black sky white sand coast hills no hills around the center of a
surface black tin scraping a plastic ledge.
Shivering heavy rains come down silver then white on black. Scarred lines
[of it.
Silver then black white surfaces blown open by white black hands.
Forged lanes of shiny black jettisoned to make memory a route of passing a
[phase
of unknowing. Bleached bones in a field of yellow sand winced leveraged
[back.
Laid end to end when the bags fill with them and are brought out put in
[a line.
As wind shears scatter salt grooves blackened newly tiered layers of black
[salt.
One’s history caught entangled marsh grasses
matted with death.
*
Marsh flowers stemmed slick.
Mute blaze field of wet flora
pressed into black. Sheathed
rib ends coarsened matted against hand-held silt.
Flown off wind
pelican beak wing forming one black ring.
Black pelican flight bright-edged wheel of stemmed flora
cut ice coral blaze.
*
In the visible sea locate the invisible sea imprisoned there.
Notes disappear written out dissolve blue gray as metal in hand softens.
Coral rose darkened funneling out blue then black squall sudden plume of
[gulls scattered.
Ledged sediment black conic silt uprising plume of salt whiteness as it burns
[out.
Echoes coloring the lines meeting boom barriers faint sound of their color.
A vessel
sinks from view reappears colorless splotch in rear of scene. Gull homes
[black window.
Orphic column of orange light burning at sea
brown plumes forested glow.
*
Flown low bright steps of oil in a line of orange.
Refuge attached to each broken trace networks of foam
broken open like cloistered blooms bright silver.
Rock surfaces submerged black green weighted down
waves crested rising against bolted shore.
*
Blue yellow sky and sun.
Bolted half piles of green white plastic.
Each lasting trace of black coating a surface of white green.
Buoy shell stern. Sun
clapped folds of crab shrimp sea turtle.
Netted pulled soft webbed shell.
Nubbed trace black silver needle beamed boat light.
Scarred bird-like no bird.
A scream softened settles downwind. Black
surface pluming beneath each edge of landscape
“swarming
with the changes that occur
living as and where we live.”
ANIMA MUNDI
And this is what the serpent told me. The one in my dreams. She appears on the site of an ancient Greek temple. The temple is in ruins, but the power of the place is palpable, running in electric currents through my body. Olive trees with their gentle presence cover the hillside. She slithers away through the warm grass and a deep voice cries out, “Why have you abandoned me?”
But the meaning of her cry wasn’t clear at first
I couldn’t read the red bird inside a tree of fire
its meaning wasn’t clear when the fire rose
inside a crown of red.
What came back years later?
The story of the snake reddening in wet grass
A boy inside the tale breathing its fire
Once again the tale told to others the tale
repeated until it becomes what it must
hold—
Like a bashful virgin being lavished with compliments, it tried to conceal its pride in its beauty, and, having made certain of captivating its lover, the snake coyly twisted round and gently, gracefully, glided away until swallowed up by a crack in the wall … I rose from my place, overwhelmed by the feeling that I was on the brink of a new world, a new destiny, or rather, if you wish, on the threshold of a new love.
*
Do you remember waking I don’t remember waking
by the sea in the serpent’s house I don’t remember the name of She
who led me there woke me by the sea in a serpent’s tale
black like ash flakes in my mouth I tasted her metallic flesh
I don’t remember waking by the sea near the serpent my Beloved
I was told nothing near the sea my beginnings
were like reddened wood in the fire where the spirits watched
for me one by one they came to watch my beginnings
in the forked place where the wood ran bloodless through our palms
I was led there in the infinite ash in the pale sky skin like a snake’s
pale surface my palms cut bloodied on their hard surfaces
their twisted forms elongating in the dark
(heard her say)
I gathered by water I was alone the days it took
black days to see her form by means of two tiny fangs like pearls
and a golden tongue like a twig of arak wood
it smiled at me and fastened its eyes on mine
in one fleeting commanding glance.
The thought of killing left me the thought of
meeting her tongue like a twig of arak wood
I felt a current a radiation from its eyes
ordering me to stay where I was.
I became the serpent’s bride
I saw her in the realm of reptiles
I tasted her flesh in the form of the djinns
I coupled my form to hers I was brought
beneath
the red ash winged like a cut piece of flesh
I was made to lie down until she fled at morning
There was not whispering in the trees
A house near my vision the days going past one
by one I didn’t count them I sat near the woodpile
and tasted fern and ash white palms struck
what the flames were what my body was
made visible against the light
Whenever a snake appears, you must think of a primordial feeling of fear. It is hidden and therefore dangerous. As animal it symbolizes something unconscious; it is the instinctive movement or tendency; it shows the way to the hidden treasure, or it guards the treasure.
*
What is forbidden?
Red wing dust birth what is forbidden
the snake’s forbiddenness inside
the red hand revealing itself to
sight potent night a stain reddening
working its way into consciousness
the hawk’s piercing eye from above
as the snake is a form of beginning
blended with red wings & clay
*
Lost everywhere without you I am black teeth black on a ring of cypress I am holy flesh of the goat pierced by fire I am the name it carries stained red black meat on a red flooded pyre.
*
(after Rumi)
And my branch of olive is bottomless
my ship steered under gray falcon-less skies my skin flecked
with ash one is returning one is forever not returning
And the root is a reed blossoming chain
Blood flows between the florets my mouth and gums bleed
to play its bony structure to hear itself in half measures
as if grieving as if in prayer to the goddess torn
limb from limb its heart eaten in the shade of cypress
And the origin of its secret was lament
And its reed a white palm of bone
And the reed’s sound an amulet of fire
lifted to the Heavens
telling of the road that runs with blood
telling the tales of Majnun’s passionate loves
The lover is a veil that roams without beginning or end
And their children were squandered edge to edge
Escaping its music the children
pled for their lives and did not return.
*
When I was a boy, thoughts born out of fear struck me in the face and told me I was a coward. That was because I was still bad at being afraid. Since then, however, I have learned to be afraid with real fear, fear that increases only when the force that engenders it increases. We have no idea of this force, except in our fear. For it is utterly inconceivable, so totally opposed to us, that our brain disintegrates at the point where we strain ourselves to think it.
Nothing is when light is nothing
upon the flesh of the seeker nothing can
alter wood formations built on sea’s inlet
And our skin is squeezed from within by black
coils of its being we are what it coils around
black speech in the mouth of a parrot
Let it endure us we are liable to say
Let it coil around our waist & begin the crossing
Let it settle around our torso’s blade of black coral
And seduce our mother from her depths
And hasten our father to his death
*
Let me die near your coiled being let me know fear of your metal black form of death my living wish Being afraid does not mean feeling my body shake or my heart beat … I want to experience the world as something to shun as black ghost of kin.
*
But the woman and man were blind
in his dream they were blind walking into
daylight turning to one then the other
blind voices crying out to one then the other
And god was outside their solitude apart from where they lay
And the man arose and knew in the distance
their house with columns and saw her move from its interior
Blind as she was blind to see herself moving from within
A bright stone the color of water moving beneath them
And the serpent moved through their days & nights
And he saw what it was came before there were two of them
A door opening on the right onto a garden and the figure of
Odysseus reflected back through waves of light
“Do you know where you are?”
“I am a stranger here and everything is strange to me.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“I am a stranger to you and to all who come after.”
*
As if bird & snake were messengers
One calling to the other in terror at dawn when the skies opened
And light poured forth upon them
Earth and light from above when the Heavens opened
And they saw themselves out of place
Orphans in each world
“My soul, my sister, from above …”
*
See what has left us what begins anew
as if in a dream of paradise we can never know.
NOTE. Eleonóra Babejová’s “She Will Wind Herself around You” (Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche 5: 3) and C. G. Jung’s The Red Book: Liber Novus were the sources for many of the references and quotations in this poem.
Wolf Interval
Gwyneth Merner
INTRODUCTION
HOW DOES THE READER ENTER a story? Through the mouth of the author, over her tongue and teeth, against her ridged palate. I believe it is the duty of the book artist to create a new mouth, a space to house the word. In our craft, there is no book more suitable to render the mouth than the Wolf Interval, a structure I designed in 1988 with the critical aid of C. R. Bailey.
For this project, you will need to tear down a 25-inch-by-38-inch sheet of paper into sixteen folios, 6¼ inch by 9½ inch, grain long. I recommend Hern, seventy pound, text weight, though if you plan to letterpress the content of your book, you may prefer a paper stock of heavier weight and equal quality. You will also require a bone folder (do not settle for synthetic), a palette knife, PVA glue, book board, paste paper, book cloth, waxed thread, and a curved needle.
INTENTIONS
The clear difference between craft and art is intention. It is fundamental that your books should demonstrate both the solid execution of craft and abundant forethought. To expose my intentions, exactly as you will leave the Coptic-sewn binding of your sample book open to scrutiny, I would like to invite you into a personal history, into the throat of a story. In our cross-scrutiny, we will see fine, tight loops or untidy knots, a waxed trap.
In 1987, when I was still an apprentice printmaker at Magpie Press in Montague, Massachusetts, I decided to bike to Sunderland to see an exhibit on mobile dwellings at a small, informal gallery in a private home. It was entitled “The Wolf Interval: New Impressions of Nomadism.” At the time, I had planned to purchase a vehicle that would serve as my home: something small, something that could be moved from plot to plot, and, foremost, affordable on my wages from a part-time job waiting tables at a vegetarian restaurant. As with any new project, I suffered from a kind of monomania—certainly a good trait for a book artist, but foolish when applied to other areas of my life. I suspected that the gallery visit would provide a break from the tiresome comparison of vehicle size, towing weight, engine horsepower, and added features like kitchens, bathrooms, and lofted bedding.
The gallery was in back of a white farmhouse on Route 47. It was close to the Connecticut River, which smelled of rust in early spring. The gallery owner, a sallow man with gray stubble and drooping lower eyelids, welcomed me and drew me through his living room (a sleeping orange cat on a couch, a hi-fi, and a wall of LPs), his small, impeccable kitchen (the scent of fried eggs) to a black-curtained doorway.
Each of the six vitrines had a small descriptive label in navy card stock adhered to the front pane of glass. The labels were numbered, and so—enjoying order and deliberateness—I followed the recommended sequence.
I leaned over the diorama of a campground forested with pines and plane trees. In the middle of a foam block made to mimic concrete, I saw a pole topped with the plastic head of a camel supporting two swings. The VW van, tinted in a shade of burnt sienna, was parked in a rectangle of combed sand at the edge of a round of artificial grass—an ideal camping spot. Its white pop-top was propped at an acute angle. In front of the van’s sliding side door were two lounge chairs upholstered in a minute floral print to match the paint. On a coffee table covered in yellow vinyl was an array of resin-sculpted foods: a baked chicken with a greased sheen, two green apples, two half-full cups of coffee, a bottle of white wine, and a plate of cheese slices with cut tomato.
1. Julio Cortázar and Carol Dunlop’s Volkswagen Kombi Van, 1982. Driven between Paris and Marseilles without leaving the autoroute in order to explore each rest area for multiple days and generate the expedition journal “Autonauts of the Cosmoroute.”
A dark green GMC truck with a white camper over its bed had been arranged in chalky, red powder, made to mimic dirt, and placed next to a pipe-organ cactus and a molded-plastic standard French poodle, sitting politely. The back of the camper had been sliced away to reveal the kitchenette with umber-colored appliances and a Formica fold-up table. On top of the table, roughly the size of a matchbook, was a black typewriter. I thought of the space of the book, the space of the author, the space of the informal home—I must have smiled.
2. John Steinbeck’s Rocinante, 1960. Steinbeck traveled in this camper truck, named after Don Quixote’s horse, while gathering material for “Travels With Charley.” Camper manufactured by the Wolverine Camper Company of Glaswin, MI.
The next mobile home was parked perpendicularly across seven parking spaces at the edge of a lot. It was surrounded by rows of boxy toy sedans in black, red, and blue. The vehicle itself was long, chrome, and shaped like a loaf of bread. On the door was a red logo, “Spartanette,” showing the featureless profile of a man in a winged hat. A line of ten light posts—eight pairs with the bulbs out, and the remaining twelve guttering—led to the two-dimensional facade of the Nugget Hotel. There were lights embedded in the wax-paper windows of the hotel and inside the Spartanette as well—everyone was preparing for bed.
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