named for a supernatural virtue, and I, first-born, named after the daughter of Robert and `Feather' Gareth-Lawless in Frances Hodgson Burnett's First World War novel, Robin-`She was an intruder and a calamity, of course'-and, as if to right a precarious gender, after St. Francis Xavier, a Basque of Spanish Navarra, one of the first seven Jesuits devoted at Montmartre in 1 534, of Portuguese India, Ceylon, Malay, Kyoto, Yamaguchi, and of an island at one of the mouths of China, who, I was told, flew over the Mediterranean on an Arabian carpetthere, on the embankment, we could be heard whispering languages of the Great Depression, comforted by claims of fore-be-ers, Benjamin West and Harriet Beecher Stowe-
and I day-dreamed of a great stone face, immense in a forest, and of Bowdoin College, where Hawthorne went-when, finally, I got there in 19 58 with friends, I followed their exclamations, ahead of me in the Art Gallery, to Gilbert Stuart's portrait of Benjamin West-'spittin' image of you,' they said, never having heard those railroad whispers-perhaps for a moment, among friends, by that portraitist of George Washington, commissioned by Martha, on every U.S. $ i billhallucination or made-up comfort that you belonged to-
in Orchard, Idaho, strolling between water-tower and pumphouse-the orchard of the name out there in the folding horizons of hot summer-apple, plum, and black walnut struggling in the sagebrush, walnuts in their husks and dried apples strewn about the attic of the abandoned house-in the spring, the soil pock-marked by the rain, in early summer, pastel, cactus flowering, in the dry cistern, twining snakes in the sexual season-
the Blasers-wheresomever-on the restless horizons-sudden whirlwinds, roiling, you could run after or, turnabout, be chased by-their sand voices-there in a valley of the Portneuf River, a train station, a stop if you flagged one, a mountain, a narrow river meadow, grandmother and grandfather trying to hang on to Blaser, Idaho, now, according to the Rand McNally Commercial Atlas, with no population-she, sometime from Wales, had nothing to do with me, the wrong sort, who saw a hot piece of pie as the steaming mouth of a dragon and cried outhe, from Toulouse, he said-the lost Dauphin, he thoughtwhispering over the radio song-`tu es la creme de mon cafe, to es le pois de ma soupe'-who was a roadmaster on The Union Pacific, captain of a handcar, and a Mormon Bishop, who left a small house, his ritual underwear, a Book of Mormon, two volumes of genealogy back to Adam, where the Adam before Adam swims among dominated stars-who, on his deathbed, said, `say it in French'-'no, sound's wrong,' he rasped, and corrected my pronunciation with his musical, trilled is-where the Garonne flows-a mindment-
who, wary, only hinted to the Catholic boy about the Golden Bible, discovered in a certain mountain, near Manchester, New York, announced by the Angel Moroni, September 21, 1823, his countenance truly like lightning-last seen in my wandering, goldleafed and trumpeting on the roof of an art-deco temple, from my hotel window in Hollywood, i 982-the stone box, the sword and breastplate, Urim and Thummim, mysterious words for whatever were used to cast lots for God's meaning, aleph to tau-`It's true, I did taste a little honey on the tip of my stick, and, lo, I must die,' said Jonathan when he was up for sacrificing among the lotshints only of the thin gold plates, eight inches square, bound with three huge rings, covered by engraved `caractors,' which Joseph Smith's mother,
Lucy, said he and his wife, Emma, brought home on September 22, 1827-no one could look upon, except Joseph-but his mother was shown Urim and Thummim, two smooth three-cornered diamonds set in glass and the glasses set in silver bows-which became spectacles to read the gold plates by-
a sampling of the caractors, copied by Joseph Smith, was presented to Charles Anthon, professor of Greek and Latin at Columbia College and author of an important edition of Horace-my copy, a gift from Jack Spicer in 19.+8 -dated the 29th day of March, A.D. 1830, in the 54th year of the Independence of the United States of America-who replied that they
consisted of all kinds of crooked characters disposed in columns, and had evidently been prepared by some person who had before him at the time a book containing various alphabets. Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman letters inverted and placed sideways, were arranged in perpendicular columns, and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a circle divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks, and evidently copied after the Mexican calendar by Humboldt, but copied in such a way as not to betray the source whence it was derived.
then rumoured about that the golden plates were actually incised in ancient shorthand Egyptian, or, the phrase goes, in reformed Egyptian-before Champollion and the Rosetta Stone hit town by slow boat and the language mountain erupted-grandfather was silent about the four mummies and papyri that came into Joseph's hands in 18 3 5, including a Book of Abraham, translated by those spectacles, and a Book of Joseph of Egypt, untranslated-the discovery of the plurality of God in the word Elohim-the curse on red skin and black skin-the veil torn off government in 1 844-
The world is governed too much and there is not a nation or a dynasty now occupying the earth which acknowledges Almighty God as their lawgiver, and a crown won by blood, by blood must be maintained. I go emphatically, virtuously, and humanely, for Theodemocracy, whose God and the people hold the power to conduct the affairs of men in righteousness. We want the President ...
grandfather was silent too about Kirtland, Illinois, where Jehovah appeared, `eyes as a flame of fire,' and Moses, and Elias, and Elijah, giving all this into the hands of the United States-I needed Fawn Brody's wonderful book of 19 57, No Man Knows My History, to straighten out the territory and the map, which are not the same-where the original Eden wasIndependence, Missouri-and exactly where Cain killed AbelFar West, Missouri-homosexuals, the word not yet current in the covered wagons, became the progeny and progress of Cain
that intruder and calamity, way back there, was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1 925-coverlet arranged by his mother's teachers at the Sacred Heart Academy, Sisters Seraphina and Mary Madeleva, the latter published her poems, Knights Errant, in 1923, opening with a dedicatory poem 'To my favorite author, Dear God,'-at the back of it, advertisements for `Interesting New Verse'-Vachel Lindsay's Going-To-The-Sun, written during his `walking trip in the Rockies,' and A Child's Garden of Verse in Latin, `the spirit of Stevenson in the form of Horace'-five months later, the intruder was legitimated-at liberty in whirlwinds and in inimical languages-having a chat rest stopstwo machine sheds, painted white, now with two station names, Blaser East and Blaser West, Idaho-about a mile apart-padlocked-humming as mysteriously as Urim and Thummim, beside the railway tracks, following the Portneuf River
grandmother Sophia Nichols was telegrapher in Orcharddot-dash-spaces-sounds for translation, quick as the platinum points come together, quick as the mind Cana click for each letter arriving or going-by which Sophia Nichols kept food, shelter, clothing, and us together-by the coulee of her mind-`duty and love' she called these dotsdashes-spaces
once the rains were so heavy the water rose up the opposite embankment, nearly reaching the railbed, and stayed for days`a sea,' Sophia Nichols said, never having seen one, and it was wide and stretched along the tracks as far as I could see-we needed supplies from the commissary across there-Carnation condensed milk, I remember-and we plotted a way to cross that sea-the tin tub and a shingle, just the right size boat and paddle for me, we thought-round and round it went, being round, and drifted from shore meandering-she tossed me a broom, which luckily floated near enough to reach it-`see if you can touch bottom,' she said-I could-'so push,' she said-and I made it there circuitously, pulled my tub up on the beach, got the supplies, and returned-`circuitously Odyssean,' she said, having spent hours those rainy days telling me stories of Odysseus, which were, she said, homeward journeys of the soul-whatever you find that is, she seemed to say-the book she held as she talked was bound in red with a fierce, gold god impressed on the cover, who came at you, glistening windblown hair and zig-zagged lightning, Greek on the first page, then Palmer's translation and Wyeth's illustrations-`but your boat,' she said, `was m
ore like a gondola,' talking of Venice, where she'd never been, then of the Union Pacific coal cars, which are by transformation gondola cars and constellations
great grandmother reading Emerson-`over your head,' she said, then stopped me to read a passage out loud, glaring-to see if `anything sank in'-'The old Sphynx bit her thin lip,' I mumbled to myself-of this beloved mind, stirring the pot by the railway tracks, like a magic gypsy-and thoroughly confusing the Sphinx with Hawthorne's chimaera, wanting to be his Eustace Bright, but was, more likely, Primrose, or Squash Blossom, or Cowslip, or Dandelion-it had a body that neither Hawthorne nor I wanted to imagine, with three heads, a goat's, a lion's, a huge snake's, each of them flaming with fire and, then, a tail like a boa-constrictor-grandfather Auer explained that there were only bull-snakes `around here,' and pulled me away when the men caught a rattler and a bullsnake, dropped them into a fruit lug, covered with a screen, and bet on the outcome-when Emerson visited Brigham Young in Salt Lake City in 1871, he gave 'no sign of knowing who Emerson was'-but his secretary said, 'I have read many of your books'-sounds like great grandmother, who couldn't have known that Emerson on the way to San Francisco said, `But one would think after this Father Abraham could go no further.'-Rue, myrrh, and cummin for the Sphynx-
a neighbour in flowery pink gingham, puffed sleeves-one of 19 who lived in Orchard-I was into counting-leaned out of the sun, over the picket fence, and said, 'My,' leaving the expletive word God out, 'he has a big vocabulary'-
the rocking chair from their lost house in Salt Lake City, often talked about, had a painted leather back-the wandering Jew or nomad-whose marvellous, piercing eye followed everyone up and down the boxcar parlour-into corners, even under the library table, also from the lost house-eros of wandering-eros of being sought in every nook and cranny-that, so far as I'm concerned is where vocabulary begins-fierce eyed-dotdash-space-and syntax is later and difficult
sitting under the ironing board, learning songs, first The Star Spangled Banner in Latin-it didn't come out right and laughter came from the steam in the cloth-`for next time,' mother said-so we tried The Chicago Fire, but I wept-so we tried Hallelujah, I'm a bum, word perfect-then, letting the ironing wait, she took up her ukulele-Keep your seats awhile /And I will sing to you /Of a girl I used to love /And her name was Duck-Foot Sue/She was handsome and sublime /While wasted in the feet /Her beauty was all she had/ She was built like a North River shad /She was chief engineer in a Chinese laundry /Down in Kalamazoo / Her hair was indigo blue /She was gentle as a kangaroo /Her mother was a double-barrelled guy /With a double-barrelled squint in her eye /Her # i o feet could cover up the street /She had a mouth like a crack in a pie /She had a cheerful cemetery laugh /A face like a Mexican calf-so keep your seats awhile
and
one day, Sophia Nichols put up the lantern-too early in the morning for the flag to be seen-stopped the train, talked to the conductor, and put me aboard for Boise-just before my < 1 th birthday-to buy school clothes, especially underwear, at Falk's Department Store-the garden of the train station, surprising begonias and lilies I hadn't a word for-my first city-what was it, 5o,ooo-waking up-traffic sounds coming up hill-and going downhill, hearing bed springs, bacon frying, muffled voices of everybody's day-and another day I'd meet Kublai Khan and Marco Polo saying Cities also believe they are the work of the mind or of chance (Calvino) -that's the question you ask the city or the city asks you-wandering the parkmy first art gallery-landscapes sweeter than where I came from-until the stores opened, then lunched at The Mechanafe where six pieces of pie went by on a moving belt, tried them all, since it was all you could eat-and wandered back through the park, where I came upon a tent and a sign that read-new word-Chatauqua and welcome, so I went in where a frantic man went on and on about the stench and corruption of the
body-what you had between your legs-what you did with whatever it was-he seemed oddly at a loss for words just there-but whatever it was smoked with terror, a red rash, God's hatred, pustules, swelling, scabs, disfigurement, and then all this went inside, into the blood, up the spinal column, into a seething brain-I got the impression it was mucousand he said syphilis-a new word, later found to be the name of a shepherd-was the wages of sin-and sure enough, I caught it, crotch itch, running in the hot sun to catch my train, and when I got home, a red rash around my tight underwearand days passed, sneaking to the out-house, secretly curing it with mentholatum-brimstone and bale-fire, as words go, seemed glamorous to that-but no veiled voice there lulling my conscience to its music that I found in Joyce-out of Ecclesiasticus where I too knew it-Quasi cedrus exaltata sum in Libanon /there I grew like a cedar in Lebanon /like a cypress on the slope of Hermon /like a date palm in Gades /like roses planted in Jericho-Wisdom singing to herself among the verticals, thought to be heaven-and given 'by accommodation' to Mary, during the Mass of the Assumption of August i 5th-and sexual hallucinations, since the sexual is everywhere and thought to be immortal-as The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite tells us-they all run off into the bushes as she passes-Marco Polo said to Kublai Khan, the inferno of the living is not something that will be-you may become part of it or learn what in the midst of the inferno are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space (Calvino)
someone in the 17th century, after the displacement of the centre sank in, moved hell to the sun because, he said, there's more space there-
and the ashen boy
writes here of my cultural kitchen-I look into the mirror of a frying pan-and stand still in somebody's red-hot, iron shoes-I see all the god-lore spattering-I see Roman Catholic Pat Buchanan and fundamentalist Pat Robertson at the Republican Convention proposing a social future excluding homo-
sexuals and women's choice-Bush, preceded by a sinister cretin, as Christopher Hitchens calls him, at the centre of this political disgrace-many said it hadn't worked, so it didn't matterbut it did, this anthropological fraud-and it comes over the air here in Canada-on a mixed Vision TV station-John Hagee waving the Book around, slapping it down on a lectern-because it's a permanent human nature-Jack Van Impe explaining, to his wife Rexella and us, out of Daniel and Revelation- i oo are being trained in ritual sacrifice for the day the Temple is rebuilt in Jerusalem-smoke goes up, this time, in the name of Christ, he says-
The notion of God as the `unmoved mover' is derived from Aristotle, at least as far as Western thought is concerned. The notion of God as `eminently real' is a favourite doctrine of Christian theology. The combination of the two into the doctrine of an aboriginal, eminently real, transcendent creator, at whose fiat the world came into being, and whose imposed will it obeys, is the fallacy which has infused tragedy into the histories of Christianity and Mohametanism. (beloved Whitehead)
now, the players collapse into one another-into an ashen cosmography-their monotheism in tatters-exiting for something like six centuries-into the complexity of this `absolute' structure of desire-fluid rocks-as Michel de Certeau finds in The Mystic Fable,
This God who `comes out' but for a struggle to the death with his disappointing creation, a god outside of himself, on the boundary where he is exiled both from himself and from the world, furious with a desire lacking an object ... hatred at the very beginning of Deity,
whose lineaments are-
now, the players tumble like spiky weeds-over Craters of the Moon-they collapse into their own Will-stretch out in technology-do not recognize themselves-forgive themselves, unaware and repetitious-the `I' cannot exist thereit was glass in an impossible body-my lyric voice loose in ittattoos of an absolute language-old song-
here, plagues galore weave among us-aids, racism, homophobia, displacement and poverty, christianism with its political plans, the Vatican sending out `advisory letters' to the Bishops that it's okay to discriminate against gays in jobs, housing, and professions-wacky-and the murder of Dr. David Gunn, 'justification,' they say, 'as a pro-life casualty'-I see his sad, sad son listening-none of this in god-lore's hands-
I tell `you,' my love, these tales-fold a
ccording to foldmy chances-it may be
a crap game-hoping for a nick-7-or a natural< < -
on a startled day-the ashen boy-becomes-exodic
widely translated, world napkin, And perhaps, after all, there is no secret. We incline to think that the problem of the Universe is like the Freemason's mighty secret, so terrible to all children. It turns out, at last, to consist in a triangle, a mallet, and an apron,-nothing more! We incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets, and that He would like a little information upon certain points Himself. We mortals astonish Him as much as He us. But it is this Being of the matter; there lies the knot with which we choke ourselves. As soon as you say Me, a God, a Nature, so soon you jump off from your stool and hang from the beam. Yes, that word is the hangman. Take God out of the dictionary, and you would have Him in the street.
Melville to Hawthorne, 185 i
streets of saltimbancos, dressed as imperial rulers, as moral principles, as philosophical totalities-gods and heaps-
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