Jacket # 9 - Henry Gould - poem

3

H.G. Edgar Degas, a connoisseur
of troubled families, disembarked Oct. 28th
in New Orleans. René, his wildcat brother
collected bug masks avec tout son coeur

for the grandest bal of all. 1873.
Feverishly, in févriere. The Missing Link
or Lord of Misrule. MAKE WAY FOR THE KING!
. . . robed in a brilliantly-hued Egyptian

frock, sparkling with jewels and fringed about
with gold, while at its front he wore a golden
breastplate, from whose burnished surface
the sun. . . Due west from this shrubby point

with a charming-rod in one hand Federal troops
disguised Arabian artillery and Egyptian spahis
Boeuf Gras, a steer decked with apples
daggers and pistols hidden eager for sport

Thus it is doubly difficult to write of this period
calmly the oft-encountered apparition of the
darker sharer of his name the haunted heart
chemical formula exhumed along with the letters

A courtesan, not old and yet no longer young
who shuns the sunlight that the illusion
Palmyre Bras-Coupé (Bluejay, solus
below the Armory) Nancanou

as Red Clay shrinks downstream with Zephyr
Listening Crane who swims in circles now
a message muffled through the balconies
of water whirlpools (holes in the floor,

so to speak) an underself (eddies were
rifts and cracks) deep under the earth, small
and great, but all deep (terraces, llamas)
hurrying to from that (mother-stream)

Edgar's eyesight worrisome steamy Louisiana
sun down Esplanade, where the statue simmered
(clay-foot Henry, the Great Compromiser)
a single tear seams down each cheek, slowly

the widow's fallen brow in the forest
Estelle miseries of the Middle Ages or
New Orleans reconstruction Col. Fred Ogden,
shoveleer a masque for the Beast

Butler did it in the Haunted House of
Mme Lalaurie Macarty extremes meet
in depravity (to St. Louis Cemetery
from the Pyrenees gored (azure, gules)

by sleek coachman or wild boar)
What an eventful day for France, may
I not say the world? And that I should be here
in the midst of it. This morning my husband

Edna on the bridge ready to swim forever
mischancing along the parapet
Edgar almost stumbling like a blind
terrapin into the arms of an earnest Victor

an arrested marriage Notre Dame de
de nursery Code Noir black arms, white
alabaster babes, and temblors
underneath the matrimonial

domain here below Nana's Milky Way
beneath the foursquare cupola in Paris where
Miss LaLa suspends herself comme un serpent
si elegante by her teeth au Cirque Fernando

and the basilica emerges stronger than before
where she walked each of the pieces fits
into the whole starry sky bulletproof
jackets of aramidic fibers arches and ribs

crisscross the interior 120,000 pieces could
be restored by 2001 the remaining six saints
recomposed by Easter used in other situations
both flexible and light, is five times more ductile

dovetailed many miles of cracks (more than
10,000 people are still living in 375 sq ft metal
container homes) St. Francis died (laminate
spring-loaded suspension rods) in 1226 remained

legible. Attests intact is the knowledge
(the birthplace of modern art from a formal
point of view) as the foreign master used
oil paints in the frescoes of six apostles

in the right transept. There: a prairie grid
of iron crossroad overlaid over greed priority
as the hand of Degas Republican Party
mingled these oils rigorous and proud

Railsplitter looming to the north with men
to the right and women left quadroon
maroon octaroon mulatto miscegenation
they called it beside Lake Pontchartrain

Edgar was his brother's guest heat, glare
made his eyes blur but he works a little
hand steady in the Cotton Office
distant his eye from the surly parade

distance in the eye like a Mississippi spar
hand steady mingling the heavy oils
flickering awhile dusk accumulating
like dark gilt of a wooden frame wraps

the wharf in a wave-embrace or
armature of hieroglyphs figure of Man
Woman swims in the dull mirror
a Venetian courtesan en pleine mer

The distance, the distance LaFarge
in Paradise or Bluejay with eye
in hand like a Maid of Orleans
oils merging crowd converging

rage at the feet of Henry Clay
moist in the delta steamboats like
weary swans (Mississippi mobbed
for weapons) by the sultry lake

and the still canal Degas
with his hand in the frame (dead
guys and fading Creole ladies)
going blind sagged

into a catenary arc one thin thread
one arching foot one drooping wing
one smile pensive painted drew
time into gypsy Cirque (odd wreath

11.27.99

4

G.W. Cable loosens the reins
the most hated man in New Orleans
a dwarf with oversize head and (lonelier,
loneliest) imagines Honoré Grandissime

the two of them together Honoré & Honoré
in a shaded, faded Crescent City mirror
free man of color and Creole half-brother
one loves Palmyre the other Aurora

shuffles the deck plays with the fetishes
now here, now there little waxen figurines
for telling fortunes of frozen cavaliers
and ladies waiting in porcelain shifts

a button here, there upstream, down
like Larry Bannock all year marshalling
his costume (une sous-chemise toute de la laine
avec un pistolet modeste) as Grand Chieftain

O how I hate ces ornements pesants et vains
the iron mask o'er Caesar's bronze breastplate
Egyptian hawk- and lion-headed gods downstream
the head of Orpheus (harmonious knave)

into the pyramid or chute of swamps beyond
the Gulf itself goes singing everything together
a multitudinous moist mudpie thewed
with desirable flesh and dubious

allegiances these scraps of ancestry all cloudy
with plaçage high snobbery (a form of animal
instinct) a private club extruding laminate
masquerade of seasoned merriment (in cold blood)

O heavy festival of farewell festive dusk
of the flesh bones gathering in Royal Street
for Unification or the why then Ile fit you
Cause of loyal sons agin the looming scud

of gray clouds from the north and west
washing across the empty air and the dim
mortuary light suffusing the midway
crossroads where bent telegraph poles sew

up the prairie with black catenary arcs
of lonesome lines like a grid of aqueducts
(a very different grid there at the spooky
crossroad something other than these crass

manipulations (caste of 7 bones
or armor-plated interest monopolies
of gilded pride masks of silver plaster
molded to the face or bogus coat of arms)

iron rail-splitter sepulchral voice
like a cicada speaking to an audience
of treetops only or a cold new meadow
of distant stars very distant severe and

severed like the iron shell
of a freight train lifted into its horn
into the wide spaces north
south west like the coracle of Charon

for you faithful fevered sons of rebellion
as to those confirmed to the painted memory
and its desire to protect these womenfolk
and widows comes this puny Presbyterian

scrivener loosens his cat-o'-nine-tail arch
and poisoned penciled-in thin tongue
against his own Confederacy trolling rogue
and bastard son of a mulatto blue-bellied char-

bored and unmarriageable Jane, no doubt
drifts his lax hand like a mellow doctored crow
across the sweaty brow of Honoré (wrecked wicked
double-dealer in their smokestacked, turbid

flesh) Vale Vale
from the Cabildo to the Esplanade
from balcony to Congo Square Naples
to Royal Street a catwalk, mon élève

along the headrail of St. Louis to the Nile
cockfights and jealousy upon the ramparts
duels sworn gloves thrown snarls of contempt
and roars of formalized hilarity in lines

beside the snaking riverbed they go
King Rex soaring for a day a Caesar
seated by his Natchez Princess
holding hands a plastered chariot

of candled dalliance like this can never die
Huzza Huzza pickpockets of the Pickwick Club
and other strutters flared in buckled hue
hobnob with bobcat wits veridical

phantoms of the Creole crème
bedecked and fulgent in the evening sun
observe that Cable and prepare a noose
for hobbling his fabled cautionary limp

in murk the linch-pin for his aspic
Afric mince the loup of loops
hung delicately from pools
of eyes of quadroon balls wee Caspar

secret hawser for our mooring
in the well-head well-hung dark
where we must play the manly cavalier
or die by a swarthy word in a little room

Thus they did mutter for his painful
painted phrase coagulant merging framed
by the muddy banks like a singular seraph
in a gondola with trump of feral baptism

for Florence or damnation by the levée
floats in supine water like the air
an eagle out of live-oak moss a ray
from the eye penetrates your sultry valley

raptor in excess or meek and homing
pigeon at the foot of Henry Clay
out of the rancid oil of anger lake
blind loss blind rage despair your

hemoglobin armory of iron hope
is fortitude all fortified forevermore
and cables held your coracle firmly
planted in the river now O pioneer

of liberty your watercolor of lush vines
and scented undergrowth bears rind
of ancient kindness where horses thunder
ghosts in the air your red and central nerve

11.28.99

Notes

(Hilaire Germaine) Edgar Degas, whose mother was born in New Orleans, visited that city for a few months over the winter of 1872-73, where his brother and other relatives were deeply involved both in the Mardi Gras carnival and in the (sometimes violent) struggles between Creole/post-Confederate factions and the federally-imposed Reconstruction government of that time. Degas did a number of paintings and sketches while there; an interesting monograph on the subject (from which some of this poem's material is drawn) is «Degas in New Orleans», by Christopher G. Benfey (Knopf, 1997).

George Washington Cable was one of the foremost Southern U.S. writers of the 19th-century. His stories, collected in «Old Creole Days» and his novel «The Grandissimes», depict his native New Orleans with subtlety and penetration (mixed with some sentimentality). He was reviled in his home town for supporting integration and exposing some of the hypocrisies of Louisiana culture, but his work was essential for the writers who succeeded him, from Kate Chopin to William Faulkner.

Henry Gould lives in Providence, RI, where he co-edits «Nedge». He co-edited & published an anthology in honor of poet/translator Edwin Honig titled «A Glass of Green Tea - With Honig» (available from Fordham University Press; the Contents list is available at the EPC site at Buffalo at http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/mags/nedge).
His poems & essays have appeared in «non», «Talisman», «Witz», and elsewhere. His "neo-sonnet" sequence «Island Road» can be found online at «Mudlark» (http://www.unf.edu/mudlark).

A book-length "countertop-epic" «Stubborn Grew» was published early in 2000 by Spuyten Duyvil Press, at http://www.spuytenduyvil.net/