The Little Odyssey of Jason Quint, of Science, Doctor

Thomas McGrath

Betrayed by his five mechanic agents, falling

Captive to consciousness, he summons light

To all its duties, and assumes the world

Like a common penance. Rust on the green tongue burns

Like history’s corrosive on his living tree.

But all the monsters of his sleep’s dark sea

Are tame familiars in the morning sun.

He sees the nation browse across burnt miles

Of toast, toward the time-clock. Deafened, hears

A Gettysburg of breakfast food explode

Against the surd tympanum of the air.

The roads outside to No-and-Any Where

Trigger all space-time to a zero Now.

The punctual goddess blossoms on his brow—

Pragmatic emblem of the daylit need.

Now with his thought the rank and maundy world

(That lost between quanta and mechanic wave

All pulp and passion sprawls around the globe).

He stiffens, as a hand informs a glove,

And drags each lank potential into form.

Thus the hieratic arrow of his glance

Creates St. Sebastian Avenue Street Place—

All of sublunary circumstance

Crowds on the casual platform of his gaze.

Like money sealed in a pneumatic tube

He whirls beneath the city’s stony floor

To where the cold coordinates of work

Advance their cross-hairs on the target hour.

There surplus value’s mathematic flower

(All X squared Y squared like a tesseract

Or ghostly dirigible) grows unseen

Across the lean dimension of in fact.

Grows all unseen as Jason Quint pursues

The windy hazard of the Absolute

Through icy tundras, farther than the Horn,

Vaster than Asia in their wuthering snows.

The sweat of progress and humanity

Colors no litmus in those latitudes;

In a rustle of banknotes and casualty lists

The Bomb is shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

The quitting whistle lofts a flag of truce,

And all hope’s flutes and harpsichords compound

The lonely leisure. The Great Nocturnal Drift

Sets to its Deep. He walks the park. Profound

Unease returns to Quint. The sleepy lathes

Of hummingbirds machine the emerald

Of garden silence which his feet confuse.

The statues hoist, on labyrinthine paths,

The mineral grandeur of a public smile.

And the world goes blank, and heavy as a stone

Rolls into night. It is the human hour.

Imperfect. Lovers, food and politics

Command the air, and Jason Quint alone,

Clothed in abstraction, like a bush that burns

In the blind frequencies where none may pass,

Stalks through that only country of the poor—

The lamplit hour the quitting whistle mourns.

Imperfect. The stability of dextrous stars

Offers him comfort, but their light is cold.

A storm of sentiment, sudden as a cloud

Of migrant birds, sings in his head. Now stirs

The terrible friend, companion of his dreams,

With his emotional algebra of need and loss—

The hateful witness to his mortal part

And confirmation of his loneliness.

Rating:

Comment form:

To the Memory of the Household It Describes
This Poem is Dedicated by the Author

“As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits, which be Angels of Light, are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire: and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same.” —Cor. Agrippa, Occult Philosophy, Book I.ch. v.

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of Storm.”
EMERSON, The Snow Storm. The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.

Read Poem

Rating:

A Vision of Poesy by Henry Timrod

PART I

I
In a far country, and a distant age,
Ere sprites and fays had bade farewell to earth,
A boy was born of humble parentage;
The stars that shone upon his lonely birth
Did seem to promise sovereignty and fame—
Yet no tradition hath preserved his name.

II
’T is said that on the night when he was born,
A beauteous shape swept slowly through the room;
Its eyes broke on the infant like a morn,
And his cheek brightened like a rose in bloom;

Read Poem

Rating:

Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I
I weep for Adonais—he is dead!
Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!"

II
Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
When thy Son lay, pierc'd by the shaft which flies
In darkness? where was lorn Urania

Read Poem

Rating:

Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare.—
Confess. St. August. Earth, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood!
If our great Mother has imbued my soul
With aught of natural piety to feel
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;

Read Poem

Rating:

Autumn Shade by Edgar Bowers

1

The autumn shade is thin. Grey leaves lie faint
Where they will lie, and, where the thick green was,
Light stands up, like a presence, to the sky.
The trees seem merely shadows of its age.
From off the hill, I hear the logging crew,
The furious and indifferent saw, the slow
Response of heavy pine; and I recall

Read Poem

Rating:

Contemplations by Anne Bradstreet

1
Sometime now past in the Autumnal Tide,
When Phoebus wanted but one hour to bed,
The trees all richly clad, yet void of pride,
Were gilded o’re by his rich golden head.
Their leaves and fruits seem’d painted but was true
Of green, of red, of yellow, mixed hew,
Rapt were my senses at this delectable view.

2
I wist not what to wish, yet sure thought I,
If so much excellence abide below,
How excellent is he that dwells on high?
Whose power and beauty by his works we know.
Sure he is goodness, wisdom, glory, light,

Read Poem

Rating:

Heart’s Needle by W. D. Snodgrass

For Cynthia

When he would not return to fine garments and good food, to his houses and his people, Loingseachan told him, “Your father is dead.” “I’m sorry to hear it,” he said. “Your mother is dead,” said the lad. “All pity for me has gone out of the world.” “Your sister, too, is dead.” “The mild sun rests on every ditch,” he said; “a sister loves even though not loved.” “Suibhne, your daughter is dead.” “And an only daughter is the needle of the heart.” “And Suibhne, your little boy, who used to call you “Daddy”—he is dead.” “Aye,” said Suibhne, “that’s the drop that brings a man to the ground.”
He fell out of the yew tree; Loingseachan closed his arms around him and placed him in manacles.—AFTER THE MIDDLE-IRISH ROMANCE, THE MADNESS OF SUIBHNE

Read Poem

113

Rating:

Hyperion by John Keats

(excerpt) BOOK I
Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,

Read Poem

Rating:

On a View of Pasadena from the Hills by Yvor Winters

From the high terrace porch I watch the dawn.
No light appears, though dark has mostly gone,
Sunk from the cold and monstrous stone. The hills
Lie naked but not light. The darkness spills
Down the remoter gulleys; pooled, will stay
Too low to melt, not yet alive with day.
Below the windows, the lawn, matted deep
Under its close-cropped tips with dewy sleep,

Read Poem

Rating:

Comment form:

Similar Poems: