At the windows, the wind, the wind. Il nombre roots backwards to reason.
Ninematches. Can we get a better last line for Cal, please?
Leonardo's Bicycle
Like Ceres trying to free her daughter
Before Jove clipped her, a queen card, to the spokes
Of light and dark, where she still flaps, stiff and sore,
You're married to one condition.
You could leave the island whose shore
You circle distractedly, your feet
Bleeding from its cut-tin-can-lid sharpness,
If you swam out beyond your three-chord
Grammar, as Scarlatti flew like a prince,
On a weave-it-as-you-ride-it carpet, "into
Remotest tonal regions," being a
Specialist in investigative harmony.
Leonardo drew a
bicicletta
Of wood and metal, sleeker than his deck-
Umbrella flying machine. Why should he
build it?
It was born intact, outlandish, as idea.
(Besides, the wheels could turn neither right
Nor left, they went straight as a dream, with that
Kind of determination and perfection.)
Do you see? You could practice a certain
Stationary vibration, like a bicycle
Just leaned against a wall, and still make
A revolution, cliff-browed like Beethoven's,
Whose forms stand as solid as Haydn's
But whose heart was clouded with the genius
Of taking drama to be normal—as it was
For Proserpine, who, given a whirl,
Uttered now phlox, now roots,
Quite as if an impatient hand
Should draw and erase, draw and erase
An imperfectly penciled bicycle wheel.
Which freed Ceres to hear Arethusa's tale
Of terrified pursuit: how, after she hung
Her clothes on a yielding willow bough
And dived into the stream, she felt the god's
Lung-deep breath sweep through her hair
And screamed. Whereupon the goddess Ortygia
Doused the whole scene in fog, leaving
The god to thrash about blind in white night
While he felt for her salmon calves, her otter back.
But then she became a cataract; she lived
A dramatic life. As you would if you turned
So deaf a child's shriek from the street
Could make you smile over your meal,
Which as usual you eat alone, dipping a heel
Of bread into your soup, before you hear again,
Vivace e con brio, the silver wheels
Of a rondo no tricky instruments are riding,
Like water plunging down a cliff
On an imaginary island,
As tears fall in the realms of drama,
Where nymphs take off their clothes and die.
-- Cal Bedient
