Wonders

Image from pinterest.com

 

ancient and awesome

seven all told

astonishing hallmarks of

immature civilization

pretentious designs

grandeur wrought from

a deep squalid shame

the enslavement of enemies

chattel from bloodthirsty

conquest by deified tyrants

who dreamed as they died

they would own

the remainder of history

monuments made

fine of line and

aesthetic expression

yet wholly neglectful

of forces misjudged

tides of time and of men

ruthless ruinous perils

relentless of motion

securing the mists of forever

protecting those

far away precincts

those distant tomorrows

preserving an uncluttered

path to pristine possibilities

razing the structures of hubris

the damnable ego of memory

made to return to its state

of forgettable dust

Eiffel Tower

Painting by Karen Tarlton

iron wrought from rebellion
a pylon to gracefully pierce
the blue skin of the sky
an inaugural century carried
by elegant lattice and truss
to the heights of new history
footings embedded in blood
of the montagnard terror
that laid to their graves the
last members of ancien régime
disappeared by the guillotine
dead to all memory hidden
forever and future beneath
its tall prominent shadow

this tower proud symbol of
conflict resolved stands in
green martial fields where the
legions of Caesar rehearsed
subjugation of solipsist cities
where fascism fell of its fallacy
ancient and terribly modern
this tower as icon stands firm
alongside Marianne and the
tricolor filling republican hearts
of all Frenchmen embraced by
the spirit of violent uprise
and deadly reprisal the ethics
attending compelled revolution

liberté, égalité, fraternité,
ou la mort

Borderland

 

Detail of the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

 

 

finest monument in the land
Massachusetts fifty-fourth
volunteers under Robert Gould Shaw
first negro regiment forged
in the flames that flew from the
principled penstroke of Lincoln
distinguished in battle and
covered by glory immortalized in
bronze relief proudly marching
across poignant borderland
leaving behind profane chains
for a freedom graced future
what the sculptor never knew
was how unnecessarily wide
and besieged was that crossing
how painfully far lay that future

 

(original posted June 2013)

Athenaeum Iudicialis

 

United States Supreme Court Building – Western Facade

 

its great quarried mass

philosophical stone

turned by masterful hands

masonic majestic and

solemn of civic utility

bedrock borne principles

given their safekeep

a thwart against rampage

of time and men’s tides

sturdy secular temple

its pediments graved

by wise chisels of history

nationhood founded in law

freedom finding preserve

Grecian columns like

fingers of Pericles holding

aloft neoclassical frieze

to the east giving

justice as guardian of liberty

then to the west

equal justice under the law

thus do architects

mindful of message

in monuments

speak for the ages

to citizens torn in their

tending of sacred

quadrennial privilege

reminding that every

decision of active democracy

carries grave consequence

We Cry for Our Own

(Originally posted June 2013)
 
 

the first time
I sat on sloped grass in the dusk
near the apex and cried
full out spasms
spontaneous reflex
irrupting the middle of me
ripping long dormant grief
from my unwounded organs
depleting flat wailing
rang harsh in my voids

I’ve always been moved
by similar sites
but this delta of gabbro
calls only to mine
they were each and all mine
my own muddled half-mad generation
these cold chiseled names
who were killed in my place
stood where I could have been
stepped where I could have run
when the bullets or shrapnel
cut their lives down

these cold chiseled names
were killed in my place
leaving life and the journey to me
and in traveling it
at the apex
I cried

 

“Reflections” by Lee Teter

 

Cenotaph

 

Photo by Jeff Edwards

 

 

empty of all but my name

as it should be my dust has

no home rides the wind

that may someday blow

back through this tired

templar ornament letting

some grains of me settle

remembered by stonework

forgotten by flesh

for the language of deeds

won’t be spoken by tongues

that would rather taste time

 

 

From my books Inside the Smoke and Legacies (vol. 2)

Granite

 

Chapel of St Michael
Carved into Granite Outcrop
At Roche Rock, Cornwall, UK

 

 

born in hellfire

bedrock of continents

quarried and dressed

by muscular artisans

wanting to lend

timeless sense

to ephemeral life

something durable

left as a permanent

trace of brief transit

by beings organic

and conscious some

everlast evident

monument to an

invincible spirit

no matter how

wishful its quality

 

 

From my book Onionskin

Disarticulate History

“1st Minnesota at Gettysburg”
Painting by Don Troiani
From wikimedia.org

set piece arrangements

put army to army

formations of infantry

long-gunned and lined

face to face across fields

unaccustomed to death

the blue and the gray

dropped like flies under

withering mutual hail of

the cursed new minié ball

long bones and linkages

shattered and splintered

would macerate slowly

in battleground blood

till the sawbones

came round to his

grisly sworn duties

and made of young torn

ragged limbs ugly piles

the terrible waymarks

of principles pressed

to their ultimate conflict

and cost without daring

to leave us with proper

stone monuments

chiseled with arms and

with legs given up by

one lost generation to

a history fraught with

beleaguering consequence

Cleopatra’s Needles

Paris
Photo from Wikipedia.org

London
Photo from Wikipedia.org

New York
Photo from Wikipedia.org

expatriated obelisks

ancient stone spines

standing pagan theocracy

phallic designs

battle-graved with solemnity

pulled down by lines

run from three western capitals

trophies of kinds

emblematic of how power

always declines

**********************

could the vertical holes
our arrogant plunder
left in her sacred antiquity
be consequentially
chimneys that draught
hot internecine fires
now consuming
Egyptian tranquility

Old Man of the Mountain

(Reblogging this March post today, the tenth anniversary of his fall. He is New Hampshire’s official state emblem.)

Poesy plus Polemics

indigenous flannel

keeps quaint values warm

through long winters

of cultural excess

when naked aberrations

pretend to be norms

by dressing in denim

and bypassing phases

of social experiment

abrupt in their forgery

enticing conformity

by modeling

eye-catching stylings

of a makeshift morality

especially aimed

at suggestible youth

yet to acquire

sturdy virtues

the old man

made manifest

before his great fall

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