THE CHAOS OF CENTURIES

THE PLUNGE ~ Richard Wilson (2022)

THE CHAOS OF CENTURIES

“The centuries have a way of being male.”
         THE FIGURE OF THE YOUTH AS VIRILE POET
                                  ─Wallace Stevens
       i.
What is a hammock, James Wright, 
        (Rest In Peace), if not half 
A cocoon, or a Robinhood green Oldtown
	canoe perched on the strict,
Naturally wet stone lip of a deceptively 
        shallow waterfall, depicted 

In a wordless, chromatic poem, after
	all, anchored in dangerous
Fantasy and realistic bliss, prow 
	or stern of this traditional
Freshwater craft jutting over its
	ambiguous edge like

A huge hard-on, a naked cherub,
	evidently long in the tooth
Due to her huge bare buttocks and boobs,
	eyes locked on an obviously
Hypnotized canoeist, she motionlessly 
	flying, hence eternally

	ii.
Floating, dog-paddling, although her
	one hand is summoning him
To come a little further into mere sunlit
	air, all this depicted, I say,
By my friend Richard Wilson, artist,	
	Portland, Maine, whose work

Explores rigorous calm amid amusing
	peril. Triggers, even
Blonde horses—(Up, up, big Palominos!)—
	are often bid-me-to-love 
Symbols. Take James Wright’s “Lying 
	In a Hammock at William

Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.”
	We have, for courage, a “bronze
Butterfly asleep on the black trunk
	blowing like a leaf in green
Shadow.” Then from a ravine behind 
        an empty house, cowbells  
	
        iii.
Clanging “one by one.” (Wright was 
        married twice.) “The droppings 
Of last year’s horses”—hard to resist
        the S-word here, whether
He meant last year’s crap or last year’s 
         mares, stallions, geldings—while

“Between two pines”—let’s call them
	Yearning and Mourning,
“Blaze up into gold stones.” Really?
	After a year? This is dubious,
Unless we’re intended to imagine
	yesterday’s pastures of horsing

And whoring, or as Don Quijote told
	Sancho Panza, having
Hung up his lance and taken to bed,
	“There are no birds anymore
  In last year’s nests.” Is there such
	a bird as a “chicken hawk?”

	iv.
Wright writes how one “floated over” 
        his life’s twilight, now
Gathering and insisting on night’s
	darkness, as if the remorse
This invokes is not cowardice, but
	 a hyperbolic sneer

And summons to old age’s final
	“home.” Home! As if
E.T. stood for Erectile Triumph
	and Trouble, not
Extra Terrestrial existential
	nostalgia due to the future’s

Bleak truth. This is what’s seen by me
	in THE GOAT’S MIRROR. 
As Conrad says about his Lord Jim,
	“He was one of us.”
What is a hammock, James Wright,
	If not a canvas-cloth ravine?

KR, 6.5.2025

A MOMENT ~ Richard Wilson (2022)

[N.B., before THE PLUNGE (see high above), there was always A MOMENT.]

[F.Y.I.]

Lying in a Hammock 
at William Duffy’s Farm 
in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

James Wright (1927-1980)