Albert Flynn DeSilver: California Poets Part 8, Ten Poems
January 8th, 2025
California Poets: Part VIII
Albert Flynn DeSilver
Ten Poems
HADRIAN’S WALL
(Vallum Hadriani)
Animula, vagula, blandulaHospes comesque corporisQuae nunc abibis in locaPallidula, rigida, nudula,Nec, ut soles, dabis iocos.
Little soul, gentle and drifting,
guest and companion of my body,
now you will dwell below
in pallid places, stark and bare;
there you will abandon your play of yore.
But one moment still, let us gaze together
on these familiar shores, on these objects
which doubtless we shall not see again….
Let us try, if we can, to enter into death
with open eyes…
—Emperor Hadrian 138 AD (translated by Margurite Yourcenar)
Poetry transformed me: initiation into death itself will not carry me farther along into another world, than does a dusk of Virgil
—Emperor Hadrian (via Margurite Yourcenar)
MILECASTLE I
Days begin with the ringing
of a great bronze bell
built from our suffering, built
of blackness between
rank reminding, birthing
of sparks, tiny boats
afire in the blood, float
the burnt length of the throat
empty mouths burp up
charcoal holes who
sing forth such space, rape
under stars, broken
teeth, mirrors blooming
like spiked white flowers, our
only hour, where
our crying origins
arise
MILECASTLE II
My earliest memory, like a tomb
seated naked at the bottom
of a freshly dug
grave, making mud
pies with my fated Spanish
hands, nothing but pale
gray smoke and fog
above, a single white
gull scissoring through—
four black dirt
walls, memory’s suspended
emptiness beneath me—
somehow I was held
afloat in that pit,
nourished by wet earth,
planted by wind as if
a weak little seed,
polished by the promise
of the sun, to be both lit up
and burned to ash
an oblivious point
of starlight, hoping not
to be buried alive
by the soils
of age
and empire
MILECASTLE III
How to make a poem
from a history of rubble?
Stones piling up like words
heaped on stone, heaped on word
upon word, heaped on memory
upon memory, heaped on sun, heaped upon moon
fact run through the ringer, fact run aground,
through the agenda-grinder
of the mind, heaped upon fact
heaped upon bias, “my ass,” heaped upon
conditioning stuck to the mind like barnacles
stuck to the hull of the Mayflower,
run aground upon Dedham granite
(off the coast of Gloucester, say or Carthage, Solway Firth)
the weight of dead granite ideology—
Maximus of Tyre, Emperor Hadrian, my
measly Milecastle watchman. . .who
at the helm is headed toward Plymouth
Rock, headed toward Hadrian’s wall
trying to right this ship of state
running aground on the borderlands
of language. Watch those thoughts (rocks)
jut out (the Farallon Islands, Olson’s Babson Ledge,
that jagged shelf off Palmarola in the Tyrrhenian sea)
ideas and knowledge sharpening an edge
building up from ocean bottom birthing
a wall between us, between you and you—
oh how history sticks. History, his story,
what about hers—what about theirs,
between you and you, there is a field. . .
between yoni and lingam, between you and them
you and the universe, being beyond
“the measure of things,” here on the outer banks
mulling about in the “undone business” insisting
as it does, clank, clank, birthing itself ad infinitum,
spilling amniotic ink—just to see the sea before me
(the battered self) in woodland sky
looking up between Redwood trees stretching out
from my feet, to eternity and back, that Junco bird,
this instant, just her thought, her word
MILECASTLE IV
Ode to Northumbria in November
in seventy-three songs (miles, or so)—
I am but a storied man,
Sending out my soldiers (the world’s best)
to serve and protect the great empire
my volunteers from the Isle of Sicillia, used
to Augusta’s coastal waters, scrub lands of dry
straw, are sent to the frontier, the wet north lands
of Barbarian peasant castle kingdoms
no contest for the trained men of Rome, center
of the world. Here we meet the wild Barbarian
rife with Viking blood, minds of ice, hearts
of frost, light limping from tired eyes
bent by the tilt of frozen earth. . .
Terror, whose error, hate in their hearts, a wall
we shall build to keep such beasts
at bay, behind civilized lines, from here we shall
call forth the superior man, the superior race
celebrate the conqueror’s creed, be strong,
be strong in Roman song and deed!
MILECASTLE V
Cliffs of the Whin
Sill, be my barrier
be the land before me
how it ripples geologically
like the wavelets of an
indrawn tide (a great god
breathing) be the cleft
corrugations of one land
laughing, North of Hexham gap where two continents
collided some ungodly
time ago (a wink in an
emperor’s eye)
thrusting rock crusts
upwards, burping cobbles
for my masons to stack . . .
*
The smoke from a thousand
fires plumed into Northumberland skies
to fire the kilns, endless
men needed to burn stone
supply the blacksmiths
and quarrymen, their
sandpits, laborers laborers,
laborers, slaves, slaves and more
slaves—pitch your tent
behind a palisade
or wherever you can
muster, keep the men
in check, well fed and drunk
pack in the heavy
rock on ox carts, gather
the skilled mason-men
around the arches
work the flax ropes and pulleys
place the block
and tackle hoists, lift
the arch stones and hope
the rope don’t shear
under the weight of
Whin or lime stone
crux, if so chisel
me down with the rough
claws or quick nippers
to grip it; bullnoses, gougers,
nickers and punches to set rock,
quick, quick, we’ve got a wall
to build
MILECASTLE VI
Hadrian, oh Hadrian
I say it’s got to be a song, a canto,
a chorus of serrated
voices, a cup, a coup, a canticle
a ring upon a conquered land—
I think of the Greeks and get weepy
about the great chariot races,
Mt. Olympus, that wussy Jupiter we stole
as our god to claim, how our own games
came. . .gladly we built the Gladiator arena
at the coliseum, a field full of blood on Sundays
to cull the herd as it were
slay the slaves I say, but beef
up the arts and infrastructure.
I inherited the idea, don’t blame me
it was the Democrats, I mean the Republicans,
no the Republicrats with their stiff senate
rules, crazy hats. Hey who makes the rules
around here anyway? Oh, I do, all the undoing—
a fool who concentrates all the wealth
and power and water and meat in my small meaty
hands—notwithstanding, shall burn off
all ten fingers, burn off all ten toes
Oh how all I touch turns to
ash and dust
and so I will build monuments and walls
for you to remember me by,
because I can’t stand not to exist
I can’t stand it even after death,
in all its living terror, the wall—
when it’s gone all gone, and I’m gone
and what remains are my remains,
and the rain remains
eternity arising, with each wet
drop of life the tyranny and totality
of presence persists!
MILECASTLE VII
Of rock-clump built by time, lookout looking out
keeping time to tough duck flight-flap and wind whistle,
lemony clips of sunlit wings how they catch
the underside of feathers tracing the high divides,
the no-escape escarpments, cut off swales,
fields of vast purple heather, vales, sheep-swept
and clamoring over hill and dale, like stray white
thoughts. . .memories of the old country’s tawny
sea cliffs, ocean song, I ‘ve gone pasty-white with longing. . .
I watch gangs of men in angled armor
now clanging up slick slopes, disappearing, no hope
but in breathing through rain-beaten days, grasses,
glassy eyed, wet with sweat, look out, look out
see only bird and cloud clutter gather now
not another soul or animal for miles if ever, look
south to a fork of the river Tyne, names named by
Roman throats, twisting through lofty troughs,
keeping time to gale-light, fierce falcon wing,
the dreamiest of things
beat back boredom’s arrow, molasses hours, drenching
rain relentless wind, keep out, keep out repetitive steps
atop the stone turret, remember to keep those brute Barbarians,
Norse invaders, tax evaders at bay
keep in tact the Empire’s iron hand, a minute crack
in a ship’s hull can sink a great ship, shit, who’s coming?
A band of stags in the brush, a rush of quail flushing upwards,
a break in the clouds, loud shafts of sunlight breaching boredom’s slate
look out, look out, between old castled estates, light fading, fires out,
a wall of night nestles in. . .just shards of silver starlight now define
MILECASTLE VIII
I write to you from my Milecastle, my
castle-castle, my wall, my hall, my cell,
my tomb of pure arising. What looms in my feet
as I pace the cold stones, what catapults through
a loose mind at rest [an elegy to freedom
from the point of enclosure]
as the night knots up the dark, thief of my seeing
what has become of the angels within me?
they have scattered in the thin void of quick dark
I am left to my non-devices pressed to this emptiness
this weed-lot of thought, thicket of thorns
memories tangling up the land in unclaimed brambles,
a nighthawk shrieking in its sleep, multiple
animal nightmares or simply the truth of midnight being
a cry of longing, a lengthening. . .from my listening
grows an altar to this moment, in praise of the temporary
me a mere wave lapping up against time
this infinite instant—grave temple of the night
MILECASTLE IX
Here at the frontier
my warrior’s life
chalked up to flickers
of sleep on the heaths,
moon-less night
watch under thick
damp, a rare fist
of crisp stars
burning blue rings
around the hurried
clouds. . .
I count my days off with thin provisions
lists inked on sap wood; a rabbit or two, tough boar,
mead, gathered roots and berries, herbs
wild lettuces, spicy greens, barley stacks
keep track of shouting commands, rock clack, earth dug
slave drives. Make sure the jousts are sharp
spears pointed out. Off wall, see a rogue
Barbarian approach the wall, blast the bugle call
trigger a regiment of horses sent, inspire a
charge of men, then to see was just
a stray peasant chasing deer along
the north face of the wall. . .
Trying not to list the fraught tangle of my clawing
at my mind, missing my family my flotilla of lost loves
fastened to distant shores
MILECASTLE X
My first week up in the Milecastle, when
the first snows arrived and the frosts insisted,
we went inward hunched within our patchwork
of fox fur, leather, and thin skins. Built small
fires in the corner of our tower. That’s when
the Barbarians rushed us, in snow and ice,
they’re made of it, that and elongated dark.
We men of the Mediterranean made of
sun and warm volcanic stone, fresh from Vesuvius.
They had us caught cold off guard, drowsy
with frosted brows, bleary after days of wet sleet.
The wall was breeched by a rogue band
of fifty, took over the fifty first turret,
stabbed ten Roman men, pillaged our provisions,
tossed them off the south side of the wall
in a leathery heap. Word was slow, but when it came,
the legions rushed forth with a vengeance
seldom seen, surrounded them easily
from the outer flanks, reclaimed the turret.
No need to starve or burn them out,
the cavalry with a back force of legionnaires closed in
at close range stabbed and bludgeoned them
one by one with superior spears and clubs,
forced the last bunch to beat their own
mates to a pulp right before us. Just as
fifty black starlings burst forth
from the frozen elms, as if asking the emperor
to hear the thin screaming
from their wings
Author Bio:
Albert Flynn DeSilver is an internationally published poet and prose writer, speaker, and workshop leader. Albert received a BFA from the University of Colorado and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Albert worked as a California Poet in the Schools for more than a decade and served as Marin County California’s very first Poet Laureate from 2008-2010. He is the author of several books of poems including Letters to Early Street, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Review, Adventure Journal and more than 100 literary journals worldwide. Albert is also the author of the memoir Beamish Boy, which was named a “Best Book of 2012” by Kirkus Reviews. His latest nonfiction book, Writing as a Path to Awakening: A Year to Becoming an Excellent Writer and Living an Awakened Life—based on his popular writing workshops by the same name—was published by Sounds True in 2017. Albert is also a teacher and speaker having presented with U.S poet laureate Kay Ryan, bestselling authors' Cheryl Strayed, Elizabeth Gilbert, Maxine Hong Kingston and many others. Albert supports writers with private coaching and teaches writing at literary conferences nationally. More information about his work can be found at www.albertflynndesilver.com
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