BY JAN HAAG

INTRODUCTION + POETRY + ESSAYS + MUSIC + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART

The Desolation Poems

Poetic Forms Used in English

#67 ALCAICS II & III

2-28-98

Ah, brilliant sky, so red and so gently blue, clouds, careful pilots, wandering up and by bird flight, small rain and light and falling dew, let the fog seep from earth to clear view. Ah, bright bits, birds fly and wait high, turning to fogs, clouds not feathered, and yet let their shy wit still wander sky high, then dip deep down finding solace while others espy flames.

#68 OCTAMETER COUPLET

2-28-98

"'March: an Ode' [by Swinburne], is the only instance in the language
of a poem written in octameters." OED, "O" page 53

Do not worry over much or over tea. Listen to me. Listen to the sea. Carry your arms at rest and let God's nestlings be.

#69 CLERIHEWS

3-1-98

Did Bill Clinton,
earth's biggest one,
arrive at the top
only to flop?

Kenneth Starr is very far from the truth, malicious and somewhat uncouth, for indulging in sex, even for REX, is about as criminal as shuffling card decks Independent Council Starr listening to all that are willing to sing and sting misrepresents the bar. For indulging in sex, even for a presidented, is less criminal than laws being re-invented. Lewinsky was out to get him. She wanted sex on whatever limb, Weaned on TV no doubt, she badly misjudges what life is about. Even Peter Jennings must bow to TV's lurid need to wow, to do in the world's personages with teapot tempests puffed to outrageous. President Clinton must keep his pecker in even though his right to privacy is no sin. Imagine Hilary's chagrin when they win to find in her bed all those wimin! Dr. Lewinsky, give your daughter the key, advise her to back off from her spree. Have her come home, away from the "beast," or ship her to Nome or to Rome at the least. Chelsea Clinton, her visage plain, must feel enormous pain as she goes to bed each Stanford night thinking of her father's public and private plight.

#70 ELEGIACS

3-2-98

Pure grief, pure pain, pure greed, pure loss, saved from a life lust, never afraid, for the fear, horror can't get any worse, "Out, out!" you cry, wail: "Why!" Screech, plead, waiting to die. "Trust me," saith God, and dim terror makes you laugh. "What a curse!" Not perfect, not surfeit, not friendly, not out of gratitude, you flee. "O, dearest God, it is quite clear you're as helpless as me."

#71 CHORIAMBICS

3-3-98

Yesterday, the small cloud sailed the unplacid little lake and sea fetching rain as it had every right to do, absorbing up dew. Letting fall minute tears, fearing the hot desert as much as full sun, it floated far past tropical limits and sub tropical seas. It met with the thunder and lightning over the arctic ice. Freezing, flailing, it snowed down on the pole showing its little flakes.

#72 ITALIAN OCTAVE

3-3-98

Divine beauty, a little sorrow -- how proportions change as years go by. Laughter becomes companion, friend, and salts the fur of pain, hobbles memory, lights the Tao. Nature's rapid spring, fall do not allow among its rich colors the curse or burr of ice nor desert. Great planes of peace stir, gently enfolding beauty's divine now.

#73 GENETHLIACUM

3-5-98

A Genethliacum, be it noted, is an ode, an Occasional Poem honoring a birth. It can be nonce, strict, or any stanza form you please. It can be spelled Genethli- acon. Cum or con, a nativity is what you please. Possibility quite marks the event; and chance directs life toward expected death. Arrive and be. Today we see your mode and hope it will emerge no pain, much mirth. May health and wealth be yours from now, alpha right through omega. Blessings always be with you today and evermore. Don't shut the doors of trust. Remember love is meant with every bud, each new awakened breath. Between the arch and learned, strict, fair code come what may, be there to bear with the earth. Honor form and freedom. Influenza has its uses in learning to help you see what time is. And what a devastating mutt both time and stasis can become as they rent the air and pitch the battle back to Death.

#74 SHORT PARTICULAR MEASURE

3-6-98

The drive is long, the drive across the desert's five hundred dry miles blown by wind and sand whose giant hive crackles with heat more live then buzzing bees, anciently dinned like echos through the rocks mocking the silent locks where the detritus drifts filling mauve canyon trails, sans vox populi, sansthe mocks of birds dipping, falling, chilling the midnight frigid air. All is true, don't despair: the heat, the light, all growth and death, the bone thin, roaming mare skeletal against care. And yet! there's hot determined breath.

#75 CHANT ROYAL

3-7-98

I have a friend who likes to slip in in the dark to leave rare gifts -- last night a glass cup with a lip. Large, capacious, it gives off whiffs of my cardamom morning tea while I muse, thinking of the sea. My friend was a nun, and doubtless had fun in indulging selfless virtues and pure thoughts toward others. Her charm showed a sly wit to bless and treat all mankind as sisters. I, myself, have a stranger trip in not understanding quick rifts that my passions too often flip over to obsessions which shifts puzzle to adventurous spree. I walk the Tao to find the key to knowledge and deeper access. While plucking time's stream of the cress of nourishment, I skip sharp burrs which allows me to know, redress, and treat all mankind as sisters. The oceans rock though we may quip. The sea runs deep though we climb cliffs. The question is how can we rip from the grip of time and its drifts enough to see, enough to be willing to relinquish all free- dom with gaiety. One must stress gifts at night with proper address while beneath its fur the cat purrs and sleeps, refusing to oppress, and treat all mankind as sisters. My good tea is sweet as I sip. I abstain from coloring ifs, use cold water in which to dip and cool anger before it lifts up a stinging wasp or mad bee. Quite before you can justly see a noble reason for success with inclination to repress, I'll be there in all my warm furs heeling my old curs, motherless, and treat all mankind as sisters. So we live and learn at a clip with our great loves and lowly miffs, striving silently with each nip, hoping they won't turn into tiffs. I'm so pleased by the gift from thee I want to laugh, jump and cry "Gee!" But afraid to create a mess, I most carefully reassess, my motivation. My mind whirrs: now might I shout a great "Yes"? and treat all mankind as sisters. Divide thoughts into fifths, confess to be hip to any newness that she might propose who brothers good will and grace. Create much less and treat all mankind as sisters.

#76 BALLADE SUPREME

3-8-98

Under ice-cold, frosted spring dew close upon the ground, and quite white, the lawns appear like crystal glue -- a unity of snow. The rite which has metamorphosed the night, turned dark to light, cold, like the moon silvering, shimmering, a covered boon making buds withdraw while vines decline, will not, luckily, last past noon. The trees will grow, the sun will shine. The blossoms will have endured the blue melting of the sky from ink to light where, now with colors bright in hue, they will not hesitate to write of warmth, of joy, renewal, cite with heady scents and sheer clear tune the birds return, the lake's new loon. All spring, as one, serves up its wine. Even deep in the forest, soon the trees will grow, the sun will shine. And yet, in its heart, waits nature's cue, patient, safe, curled, hid out of sight, the hardened frost, the cold that's due when weather fails the tight strung kite and high winds blows across the site. Creatures, lizards, snakes on the dune make pattern's not unlike the rune. If cautiously, slowly read line by line in a mournful invocational croon: the trees will grow, the sun will shine. Shiva views the heart in a swoon. Digambara, nude as a 'coon he'll walkabout as sky clad Jain preening, loving, so that in June the trees will grow, the sun will shine.

#77 CYWYDD LLOSGYRNOG 3-9-98 The rain, the black night, the siren are not claimed by morning's garden, nor is the pen on its trips -- gliding so smoothly within each phrase, sour-powered and inky -- into pale parse-hidden pips.

#78 CYRCH A CHWTA

3-10-98

Gently tamp earth with your toe. Cultivate it with a hoe. When the sunlight starts to go finish the long, straight, green row. Bake an Irish Potato. Eat it with butter and slow. Eat heartily in the night with no light but the fire's glow.

#79 DECASTICH

3-11-98

Sic transit gloria mundi -- so passes the glory of the world -- one says to the pope and others, whether the tow is burnt or no. Woven of hemp or woven of jute from scutched and hackled fiber -- consider the sutra's warning, consider the Vedic creed. Burn with fire, worship the wind, and ponder Indra's pearl. Fly to the moon with laughter, slide down the sun's beam. Capture the gold, silver, majestic world prior to sic transit gloria mundi.

#80 DECIMA ITALIANA

3-11-98

The envoy of a broken heart may have skin as black as a pearl and the snowy teeth of a tart, ringlets that infinitely curl, ennui soliciting farewell. Dreams disturbed by quite random charms may thread rhinestones on daisy chains that plan to commit no harms. Retreat, regret, love's quite crazy, Who'll not agree sweetly: it's hell.

#81 ESPINELA

3-12-98

Between the trees the moon glows bright. It's spring and early morning comes lighter, sacrificing the night. The shock, blood of memories, hums. As a child listening to the drums in my heart, imaging the world of moons and nights and trees all burled, I'd curl deep in my bed to warm shivering fear against the storm and not wake until dawn's light pearled. Now in poetry I succor my heart in cool, restrictive form.

#82 HU-ROET SESTET

3-12-98

Down in the desert the tamarack blows, the rock is bare and the sand will cut and bruise the new wounds of creatures, sharp toothed, hungry, cruel. Let a wandering, lustful, stupid fool stand still in the rain when it comes. And it will come to kiss, nay bless the eye, the cloud, the mud, red as leather tanned in oozing fresh blood. It'll hug belief behind the throat, ruin the hot, blue sky, and bite the frogs and curse the dogs. O God, mount the slag heap, swing your toughening, wavering curves to surprise the important, the vain the heedless. Boast of palo verde, gentle, green-stemmed, blossomed yellow. The skirted desert remains quite mellow.

#83 ALEXANDRINE

3-13-98

Moon! moon caught in lace, in the spider webs of trees Black! black, black, flaunting charred debris against the sky Halo casting, glowing, glimmering, soothingly Silent -- O moon at four a.m. search my yawning Heart. Memorize my face behind the sharp angles Of branches dead through winter, waking in late spring.

#84 OCTAVE

3-14-98

The woman's lips blue-black, swollen and overfed, her body lumpish with undigested bread and desserts, retaining will enough to breathe in, sigh, and out, her drooping eyes closing down, the child with mucus running from its nose -- both ugly enough to be chosen for death in ancient India among people where only beauty was allowed to live -- She thwarts the child, the child screams, thrashes. She snatches a milk bottle from her over- flowing bag, sticks the nipple in its mouth determined food, force fed, her sole comfort will assuage the awful terror, the fire, the burning spite. It throws the bottle in- to -- slim, silent, regal, reading -- a man's lap. Milk beads on his trousers. He faintly smiles, delicately thrusts the bottle back at the frantic, no doubt, accidental former womb, and, politely, restrains himself, as I restrain myself from a shrill cry: "The child doesn't want the milk!" It's body writhes like a mutilated snake, tosses, slithers, gyrates, climbs from the soft, tired arms. Nipple again, again the toss. Caught. It screams, it whines, it sobs. "Put the milk in the God- damned sack!" I'd shout, but the bus turns into a different lane. "Aloha," I spy the exotic Hawaiian name on a Catholic street in the Northwest rain. The street, under repair has altered its barricade. The bus can stop closer to home. I rise. "Can I get off here?" Forgo the judge's role? "For an extra charge." We both laugh. "Thank you," I step from the bus. "Have a nice day." At last! Silence! Its spring! The fresh, silent air of the traffic's roar -- I start down hill. The stars of the forsythia stab high -- two, four feet above the Cascades. The jumping yellow jacks pull the bees and the quiet out of the innocent sky that lies nearby and beyond satiety's mountain.

#85 CANCIONE

3-15-98

Sleek, dark, always a snob, Liliana was beautiful, Italian with a Teutonic half, from Trento in the Dolomites, Fascist and Allies along the parental divide, secretive, witty, seductive and quite rich. She reasoned like a cloud of Italian bees. Prowling the streets of San Francisco, daring the rules of good sense, taste. She felt safest in the Castro, safer yet in dark Mission bars with pimps, prostitutes, Siliqua in drag than in the unutterable quiet whiteness of home: the Heights commanding that paradise the Gate, the gold, the Bay, the sky and islands. "Men in drag, acting out their fantasies," she said, "and Spanish lovers, will not murder me." With her buzzing, rich, visionary brain, she she developed salons of art, museums, she gave and gave her heart's blood. Then suddenly leaving paradise for Europe with a seed of greed, she returned a Colonialist. Empires to build! Money was not to her taste, she bicycled, wore sweats, ate always at home, but unobstructed institutes, foundations conflagrated her dreams. Born precocious, world- wise, she had escaped to adventure the earth as a girl, ended playing bridge, exercise machines, dominating waiters, surfeited with late blooming desires to be the richest of all, quite convinced, after a youth of art and architecture, banquets, Nazi banknotes in the attic trunks, that money was the root of all power to do. Odd progress for her: loving, enchanting, gifted, married to a thumb-sized mate who, until late in life, she kept camped in dolomite valleys outside her heart.

#86 ROUNDEL (Sketch)

3-16-98

Blueblack Nubian boy, piece of diamond dirt, unsuitable, and you can't leave him alone. Child in your care, love is unsuitable, child in your care, they would have you forebear to bear. Child in your care, did you rape him?as they say, or release him from melancholy, sleepless desire, eons of despair. Love! they prate, miscegenation they fear, death they insure. How old was Romeo? What age Juliet? Make up stories, live them down, forbid them love.

#86 ROUNDEL

3-16-98

Blueblack Nubian boy, piece of diamond dirt, child in her care, and she can't leave him to toy. Child in her care, they insist she forbear hurt, Blueblack Nubian boy. Youth in her care, love is unsuitable. Coy child who cares, dares love. Raped him, they say, the flirt, released from melancholy, his desire, joy. Shackle his despair! Girt up her love! They're curt, Make up stories, live them down, hide death's envoy: magnet and iron, blue bones and white gyrate, Blueblack Nubian boy.

#87 DESCORT

3-17-98

#88 ITALIAN SONNET

3-18-98

I miss the walk to the sea, the grassland, the small dam. I miss three or four lilies, white and vulnerable, marsh bred, like trees. I miss the picnic on peas, yellow, bland, with olive oil, onion, dill, mixed by hand. I miss the road's curve, the sky's soaring breeze, straining for the sound of the surf, the lees' smell, the surprise of the sun on the sand. I miss all this, but I don't miss thee, not the small hurts nor the great betrayals, the spiraling shroud of your proud disdain, nor the supreme vision you gave to me. The vast pleasure of morning's peace assails spring's world with the breaking blossom's wild reign.

#89 CROWN OF SONNETS

3-18 & 19-98

I miss the walk to the sea, the grassland, the small dam. I miss three or four lilies, white and vulnerable, marsh bred, like trees. I miss the picnic on peas, yellow, bland, with olive oil, onion, dill, mixed by hand. I miss the road's curve, the sky's soaring breeze, straining for the sound of the surf, the lees' smell, the surprise of the sun on the sand. I miss all this, but I don't miss thee, not the small hurts nor the great betrayals, the spiralling shroud of your proud disdain, nor the supreme vision you gave to me. The vast pleasure of morning's peace assails spring's world with the breaking blossom's wild reign.

Spring's world with the breaking blossom's wild reign in pink cherries' undulating foam, wakes me now from utter bondage to thee, shakes, breaks free in the violent wind, in the violent rain, in your bound heart, bound like mine, as the rein slips, and I find I know too well what brakes, what restraint of impulse hinders and rakes the claws sunk deep into our hearts of Cain. I watch the rhythm of your heart, clearly see the meter of your despair. What could I share with thee when we want each single soul's offering of dreams and consciously constructed, fine hewn, handmade, well wrought good to stand alone, to be supremely full.

To stand alone, to be supremely full like the wild cherry and the tame blue plum, each mathematically knows its sum, stands sky bound in wind like the crying gull, swoops, announces its joy, fears to mingle and flies away. Everything pain-dulled, dumb emptied and humbled becomes shy and numb. All gifts, glories, times eventually dull. except the sun, the wind, the rain. I miss the remembrance of pain but not the pain. The sun will shine again, the fall leaf fall. I miss fields of forget-me-nots, the bliss of blue beneath the trees, the dew-wet lane, the strain of trying to hear my heart's call.

The strain of trying to hear my heart's call when human drumming of superlative power dams my ear -- am I to forgive each ominous, thundering, awesome pall back in the world behind the silent wall of the quiet, gentle, anxious-to-live, tiny things that pass through a silent sieve lingering as after an awful squall. I miss the live oaks and the dead gold grass. I miss the mountains and the early mist. I miss the ocean and the sparkling bay. I miss the jungle sun's eternal brass I miss dreams in which I long to exist alone, to stray away each day I stay.

Alone, to stray away each day I stay my heart longs to vie with locked, deep secrets, remembrance, chaste melodies, hidden debts. Remorse I might have paid, you will not pay. Human to human we met that last day. The hut scented with mint, with no regrets. But lightning, the storm, the water in jets slashed my patience, dislodged the sodden hay. Accept my gifts, accept only mine, I begged of God, drowning Abel's easy voice. The clean, sharp, green smell, your quiet sober assurance: "It will stop." Your somber eye, your smile ill conceal a similar choice. God's teasing question ceased to be nobler.

God's teasing question ceased to be nobler, I long to choose my destiny, not yours. As the pale mushroom lays its unseen spores, as over the ocean the flying mer cries, "I have a destiny, don't abjure yours." I want to live free, forgo the chores, rise with the stiff, rose-colored quince on shores past incarnation's fallacies, bolder stronger, shouldering every serpent's hiss, every wild-honey-bound trip of the bee. When pressed, I will live free, I will live long, not fearing the silent power of bliss, nor the flight of birds, nor the sounding sea. I will live enough to create my song.

I will live enough to create my song out of the drumming, the music, the path from the sound to the sea, precise as math, as a groan ringing the forest's great gong. Gaze as the forsythia may, while wrong, steal for its jacks the light of the sun's bath exuberant, pushing the spring's mild wrath against the harsh winter lasting and strong. I remember the lake, the blue herons tall and frighteningly bold and demure, the maidenhair fern delicate and fanned on deep crumbling cliffs, near shaded barrens. My heart turned crystal, the motive was pure. I miss the walk to the sea, the grass land.

#90 SICILIAN SEPTET

3-20-98

My hands stop breakfast as I see the light. Undulating bright squares, incandescent, stain the curtain from the high, small window's site. Transfixed, my eye can not move nor repent. I fear even a hesitant loss might deprive me forever of the sun sent gift, challenge forever my remaining sight.

#91 SEXTILLA

3-21-98

I hold up my heart like a shield, its favors sheer and well steeled. My mind is a wall against grief. I live the beginning of night, saved by anticipating flight. Mercifully, my time is yet brief. The fountains of cherry blossoms cascade in the Arboretum's alleys of silver and gold sun light, reflecting the moon's pale froth with her clouds and her veils like moth wings wide on my bare escutcheon.

#92 EDDA -- FORNYROISLAG
OLD METER or OLD STORY MEASURE

3-22-98

Edda early exclaimed this form frothily forged and freely wrought a Sibyl's Vision, sibilant words charted Celtic clews post Gododdin

#93 EDDA -- MALAHATTR
SPEECH MEASURE

3-22-98

As virtuous Vedas unveiled India, Homer's heroics homogenized Greece, as Tao divinations diverted China, so Eddic edicts extolled the Norse.

#94 EDDA -- LJOOAHATTR
SONG MEASURE

3-22-98

Singing songs mild, sighing old tunes, tones in the untempered scale Eddic edifice, eons heroic, browsed in my Book of Oddi.

#95 HAAG'S AND BOGAN'S STANZAS

3-22-98

"No longer burn the hands that seized Small wreaths from branches scarcely green Wearily sleeps the hardy, lean Hunger that would not be appeased. The eyes that opened to white day Watch cloud that men may look upon: Leda forgets the wings of the swan; Danae has swept the gold away."

He answered: Man, to Sphinx's clue, claimed Queen Jocasta's marriage bed. With old Danaid fear he bled hubris and fault, storing up rue. Jocasta sang of possibil- ity, of precocious proto Tiy. Oedipus limped from home to flee perforated eyes watering his kill.

#96 SEXTILLA II

3-23-98

I was meek and demure and mild, with a heart quite joyous and wild, willing to forgo in life man's love which he declares, lauds and fans, vowing forever, asking trust, and leaving, of course, when he must. But when he returned with a quest and I, in all innocence, jest not -- insisted on being joyous, exultant, wild, myself -- the us dissolved in his panic, for he sought meek, mild, motherly, not me.

#97 SEXTILLA III

3-23-98

I saw perfection once in life; next time I couldn't see at all. Gradually the iron knife penetrated my fragile shawl of admiration, search to be, as an equal, betrothed to thee. Perfection thrived, perfection soared, Foolish, I began to live, became quite skillful, often gored, bled with grace, lost face to give unrequited love. Grew in strength, fought pain, joy when I was spurned at length.

#98 TRIPLET

3-24-98

When will high stamina desert Me totally -- to deal with the hell Man has made? I caw with the birds in lyrical flight. Swift through the mottled, illumined twilight, And weep. Knowing communality would destroy Me utterly, I remain as myself, Separately, Not yet embraced, drowned, in comfortable Ocean. Ah, to cease the torture of my Own mind, Seek dissolution, a singular death, Ah, to dissolve in the seas. Ah, the ease, The ease.

#99 SHORT COUPLET

3-25-98

The leaden largesse of fear abides deep in my gut and skillfully hides its origins in the mudane world. Overfed, overbred and fooled by gloomy psychic storms, proxy norms: Madonna on the foxy screen, day-glo, hybrid, un-natured tulips bend in trained curtsies to brawl for space and fame in flowered beds. Ah, hide their heads! They'll not hear the treads of bulb-snatchers under moonlight. Their voiceless throats screaming their plight staunch hope and lift pride as they'll be auctioned for a staggering fee. Next year the market will triple. Each man bets his gold and nipple. How can we justify such Ides in March? "Et tu?" -- hear horrid cries?