Crazy Bright Particulars

The Dream of Chaucer

Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls revealsThat poetry is part of the real world,More like a metonym than metaphor.The way that poetry acts within the world(Given the sociability of language)Helps us engender knowledgeAnd take the vows of marriage thus: I do.So in this poem Chaucer quits the phantomsThat speculated in The House of FameBut never passed the mirrored walls of selfhood.

Chaucer's speaker tells us that he readsIncessantly, for pleasure and for learning,For lust and lore, and oftenest of love,A certeyn thing to learn,Since both philosophers and lovers seekAn order of knowledge outside the observer.The dream becomes a garden, nature governed,And then the second government of speech.

Perhaps the secret of the writer's artAlso intensifies a lover's making.Chaucer begins his poem with a proverb:The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne,Th'assay so hard, so sharp the conquerynge,The dredful joye alwey that slit so yerne:Al this I mene by Love …As if the poet were a gardenerPruning and grafting nature's plenitude.

The birds' debate and congressMix up color, class, and temperament,A loud uproarious turmoil nature strivesTo bring to order. All the lesser birdsMust wait until three proud male eagles sueThe formel egle for her hand; but sheRefuses to decide, which sparks a chaosOf squawks from those whose pairings she delays.Yet resolution triumphs,And abstract principle is reconciledWith all the crazy bright particulars.

The House of Fame's a poem trapped insideBare subjectivity. As he maturesChaucer seeks rather for the certeyn thingThat in the Parliament of Fowls uncoversA newfound realism: love and makingAre things intelligible in their own rightApart from sense perception, wish, illusion.What else is congress for? To forge a bondBetween the species and particulars;To posit erotic governanceTolerant of conflict and odd personsAt home within the quarrelsome wide world.

Thus Chaucer as a storyteller learnsTo relish the strangeness of his characters,The distance of the past, the rich concretenessOf moment, speech, locale.So married people honor the loved otherWho can't be reinscribed in one's own soul.The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.And Chaucer finds himself at last preparedTo sit and write the Canterbury Tales.

Adolescence

Mothers wonder at the sudden growth of secretsLike violets at the edge of the sturdy, highly visibleGarden-variety tulips planted at the walkway's border:Down-turned faces hidden in heart-shaped leaves,All volunteers, all unexpected.

That girl who looked like a young Dominique SandaI used to see you with so often, what happened?

Now she's not around. Tell me, that young manWith freckles and braces qualifying his Irish smile,Where has he gone? Or the sloe-eyed girl who weptWhen you left? And your love of music?Your extra pair of sneakers? Your innocence?

Lanceolate silence shadows the mysteries.Tigerish faces bend towards the earth's perfume.

Au revoir

Yesterday it was still summer, the farmer's fieldsBrimming with soy and corn, and along the edges whereWe walked, talking of time, Remembrance of Things Past,The great reflowering of late summer surrounded us,Coneflowers, Queen Anne's lace, teasle, goldenrod, clover,

As if chance sowed those flowerbeds, formal bordersAlong the paths of happenstance and wild evanescence.Today the wind is cold, shifting and reversing the leavesTo expose the pallid undersides like cirrus clouds, orTearing them, stormed from the branches like dappled snow.

You gave your parents a hug at the airport, stowed your heaviestSuitcases, hefted your bookbag, boarding the airplane west To study and roam the lakeside paths of distant ChicagoWhere early winter rushes in headlong, a random goddessWho ruffles the frozen streets with borders of floral snow.

October

The day before my birthday, close to dawn,One cricket was still singing in the trees,Our grove of gold black walnuts...