Everytime a Knot Is Undone, a God Is Released Read online

  EVERYTIME

  A KNOT IS

  UNDONE,

  A GOD

  IS

  RELEASED

  EVERYTIME

  A KNOT IS

  UNDONE,

  A GOD

  IS

  RELEASED

  COLLECTED AND NEW POEMS

  1974 - 2011

  BARBARA CHASE-RIBOUD

  Seven Stories Press

  NEW YORK • OAKLAND

  Copyright © 2014 by Barbara Chase-Riboud

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Chronology adapted, with permission, from John Vick, “Chronology,” in Carlos Basualdo, ed., Barbara Chase-Riboud: Te “Malcolm X” Steles, exh. cat. (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2013), pp. 109–19; © Philadelphia Museum of Art.

  Seven Stories Press

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  College professors and high school and middle school teachers may order free examination copies of Seven Stories Press titles. To order, visit http://www.sevenstories.com/contact or send a fax on school letterhead to (212) 226-1411.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Chase-Riboud, Barbara.

  [Poems. Selections]

  Everytime a knot is undone, a god is released : collected and new poems, 1974 - 2011 / Barbara Chase-Riboud.

  pages ; cm

  “Winner of the Carl Sandburg poetry prize.”

  I. Title.

  PS3553.H336A6 2014

  811’.54--dc23

  2014016604

  Printed in the USA

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Dedicated to Sergio Tosi and Maria Joseph Tomasi di Lampadusa

  In memoriam

  Contents

  I. Everytime a Knot is Undone, A God is Released, 2011

  II. Portrait of a Nude Woman as Cleopatra, 1984–1987

  III. Anna, 1974

  IV. From Memphis & Peking, 1965–1974

  V. White Porcelain, 1975–2000

  VI. Love Perfecting, 2002–2007

  VII. Letters, 1998–2008

  VIII. Autographs, 34 Bronze Poems 1974–2008

  IX. Te Lightness of My Whoredom, 2000–2009

  X. Keo Sirisomphone

  Chronology

  Index of first lines

  Index of poem titles

  I.

  EVERYTIME A KNOT IS UNDONE, A GOD IS RELEASED

  2011

  Everytime a Knot is Undone, a God is Released

  Rather than the eyes,

  It was the visions

  Which were often

  The climax of the Ceremony

  God is also a prophet

  For the ecstatic and the

  Maniac have fanatical powers.

  —Euripides

  The Bacchae 298-31

  I

  Euripides Toussaint glided forward

  On stilts which punched the soft sand

  After the drums stilled.

  He was naked except for

  An elaborate painted mask

  That was over life-sized and covered his face

  A mud encrusted wig of horsehair

  And wool hung down his back to his knees

  His yellow-framed pupils were

  Dilated with bhang,

  His head moved to the rhythm

  Of the tantara and the catalepsy.

  A chorus swelled around him of

  Women’s ululations and sibilations

  Which he imbibed like wine

  Head thrown back, he swallowed their

  Mass hysteria so that it animated him

  To new acrobatic heights

  When God enters a person in force

  He causes madness in him

  That can predict the future.

  Lifting his knees high and

  Stomping down the earth

  Splattering blood from a disgorged fowl

  Contaminating the congregation

  Splashing his upraised arms

  As he held high the carcass

  Still twitching in strangulation’s

  Throes above the mask allowing the liquid

  To stain his bare feet

  And spot shorn white feathers which

  Flutter amongst the instruments

  Falling like alien snowflakes to the ground,

  Floating like white humming birds

  Amongst the implements of sorcery and

  The rites laid out on hallowed earth.

  II

  The women’s bodies were shaking now,

  In other worldly trances and traumas

  Skirts lifted high in pagan figurations

  Composed ten thousand years

  Before the Christian Era

  Damsels derived from Mother Lucy

  And homines erecti in Eden

  Transformed by Novocain

  Into zombies: the living dead

  Cousins to vampires with the powers

  Of the undead elected before recorded

  Time and its conceit of pre-history.

  Those obedient to the King of the

  Underworld will show you

  Great kindness and will allow

  You to drink the waters of memory

  And you will be transplanted

  To a place far away, along

  The scared way taken by

  Other glorious mystics.

  —Orphic leaf from Hipponion

  What are you looking for here,

  In the new world

  In Brazil and Cuba, Haiti?

  Uruguay Argentina, Puerto Rico and

  The Dominican Republic,

  Louisiana and North Carolina?

  Wherever the Kingdom of Maria is

  That which no one expects

  The inaccessible or merely the unattainable

  Or is this a Catholic conversion

  A virgin as young and as fair as the

  Antichrist, the Love goddess Erzulie?

  III

  Or Gru, the god of war,

  Sakpata, the god of smallpox and sickness

  Or Hebieso, the god of fire.

  Euripides Toussaint shook his palm leaf

  Broom and his musical gourd

  Swelling with the milk of the Congo

  Bathing the goddess of fecundity

  Who abides in the Manui Ata Ocean which

  means “I squeeze my thighs”

  Producing a violent and transforming

  Orgasm in the women who relay in

  Ecstasy, tearing off their clothes falling

  Onto the beaten turf, chanting for sexual

  Release, rigid with cunt apoplexy as

  Desire becomes epileptic,

  Pushing out buttocks and breasts

  Opening knees, entering orifices and

  Virginian throughways like poisonous vipers,

  White as mourning

  Like the aura of possession

  Which speaks in tongues and searches

  For male and female transfiguration

  As their ululations become louder and louder

  Tongues stick to the roofs of mouths

  Spittle dribbles from lips like swallowed sperm,

  Answered prayers are drumbeats

  Transforming bodies into roaming zombies,

  Impervious to fire, sweat, tears,

  Oil and Holy Water, drunk o
n

  Rum, beer and cocaine shavings,

  Cocktails of secret cults and initiates

  Transmitting their mysteries to

  Memory’s knots.

  IV

  Those sealed and inscrutable lips

  Unparted without a word passed from

  The unalterable chain of the un-fathomable,

  Mouths iron clad against the treachery

  Of clan betrayal and the drums’ message

  With their antique remembrances of

  Centuries past, of other oceans and seas

  Of slaves and torture, suicide and rape

  No wonder the ex-colonials want to expunge

  The memory of vampirism, zombie worship

  Ritual sacrifice, fornication and the

  Penetration of women:

  The sacred prostitute placed on a litter

  In a supine position covered with

  Wild Fougere, orchids and lilies

  Who is wept over in regular lament

  Falling in childlike cadences,

  Satisfied with these false ceremonies of mourning,

  A lamp is brought and a priest

  Oils the throats of all those crying

  And then slits each throat, one by one,

  Murmuring in a slow whisper:

  “Do not fear initiates: God is here

  Though He is only sand

  Which flows in your bloodstream,

  For you, there will be

  Salvation from evil …”

  You bury one idol, you weep for

  One other, you remove one idol

  From the tomb

  —Firmicus Maturnus

  The Error of Pagan Religions 22-1-3

  Having seen the Mysterias,

  And the Revelations, I have

  Raised the dead numerous times

  —Mysteria-The Rites of Eleusinian

  from the Greek Myelin—to close the mouth

  V

  Euripides Toussaint still on his stilts,

  Genuflects to the knowledge that tells

  Us more than that which we actually see.

  That night, amongst the wailing women

  He serviced, he raised the dead once again

  Happy that he was among the men who had seen

  These things and had taken part in the

  Sacred rites and as a result would have

  A different destiny than those who had not

  When it was his turn to die he thought and he was

  Dead and gone down to darkness and gloom

  There would be a different ending,

  There would be a spring and next to it

  A river and next to that

  A white cypress and a purple coconut tree

  Where the souls of the dead

  Go to be resurrected and play instruments,

  Do not ever go near the spring

  For it is poisonous and brackish

  But go further ahead and you will

  Find fresh clear water

  Which runs into Memory’s swamp

  And there the dancing women stop cold

  Pull up their dresses, undress, recover flushed with sex

  Wondering if they have copulated with Euripides Toussaint

  But he reveals nothing passing for the undead

  The drums are quiet and night is navy blue

  As they return to their huts of earth, straw and mahogany

  Walking on foot, slowly, drunk on

  Nothing but air and music

  and Memory’s knot.

  VI

  Someone asked the exhausted Euripides

  Why he searched in the gloomy Shadows of Hell

  To which he replied, “I am the son of Earth,

  The guardian of the moon and the starry sky”

  (In this way, the women recognized his divine origin

  And that they had copulated with a God)

  “My throat is dry, I burn with thirst

  I feel myself on the edge of death

  Give me some fresh water.”

  “Because of you, the dead have risen

  Vampires walk the earth and zombies

  Of all races now roam amongst us”

  “Those alive when the moon rises

  Who are mortal, die of my kisses.” says

  Euripides drawing back and embracing

  One of the women who has fallen

  Behind the others and raises her up

  To his stilted height without touching her.

  She gives a shudder like falcon feathers,

  Settling on the perch of his arm and

  Offers her throat which he kisses

  Then drinks deeply from the Knot of

  Memory as he wrings the tilted neck

  And places it on the stilt as if it were a pike.

  Listening to the fading drums,

  Because the undead were loose

  To do as they pleased.

  Capri

  I possess a belvedere on Tiberius’ beloved Island,

  A great stand of Mediterranean Pines, Arcadians and fig trees

  Planted on the edge of the known world,

  From which you can see Africa,

  The terrain is rough and spiked with lavender,

  With edges that descend down to the blue grotto beneath,

  Of mauve rock, oleander, clover and cactus which

  Jut out like Cleopatra’s pouting lips.

  Generals and Roman spirits wander there,

  Mingling with Krupp’s ghost and his boys who once

  Before me owned this garden and sometimes I hear his

  Germanic Voice colliding in argument about the last

  Roman Empire and the lost i, 000-year Reich

  Strolling along Kupp’s Way and listening to

  The clash of armies framed by the glacier white horizon

  Where naval battles long past took place surrounded by

  Fire, smoke and manned galley slave ships.

  Below me is the eerie depth of the Blue Lagoon

  Where water spirits dwell and cough up white foam

  Filled with the sound of harps and bagpipes,

  Stringed intruments and conch shells, it is where

  I feel safest, as the emperor must have with his palace guards,

  Safe from the intrigues and assassination attempts of Imperial

  Rome surrounded by mercenaries and bodyguards.

  Fragrance groans under its own weight, lauding the air

  With a mulitiplicity of smells, butterflies and bees that

  Go mad and color fades defeated by another oriflamme

  Caressing like a lover’s hand, playing on skin

  Like melting sun and the frigid sea surf meeting

  In a volptuous embrace, each hiding the dagger of a murderer

  Under his cloak, bent on redefining the Empire

  Threatened by foreigners, immigrants and barbarian.

  Long ago someone offered to sell me this Eden,

  Over dinner in another dreamland; Hollywood,

  And as if in trance I raised my hand and nodded

  “I do” and betrothed myself to this place like a proxy bride

  Never having seen my bridegroom, taking it as my spouse,

  This swooning garden as sacred Fanum

  Where once lionesses roared and leopards pranced

  To the delectation of bloodied aristrocrats.

  All the famed and powerful of this world

  Passed by here absorbed like field mice:

  Cocteau, le Corbusier, Trotsky, Gorky, Gide,

  Picasso, and Oscar Wilde ignoring tourists,

  Invading this Bronze Age Island until the last boat load

  Sail for Naples at seven PM and the 21st century inhabitants

  Suddenly appear in the piazetta from their shuttered villas,

  Ready for their aperitif and the re-conquest of their island.

  At times I forget the allure of Kapros, the wild boar,
<
br />   In its insolence and insomnia, dreaming only of

  The fanaglioni rising from the sea and the emperor’s feast,

  And what I might have done if so many of its illustrious

  Had not already made this paradise their own,

  Its victories like breathing air, its defeats and destruction

  Only a passing breeze without a marker or anchor,

  A unique miracle, producing only beauty and the fear of loosing it.

  White swallows nest among the blossoming bougainvillea,

  Queen Anne lace amongst the shimmering dark green and violet,

  Storks nest in the ruins of Roman columns marching to the Cercosa

  As I take my walk amongst fluttering arteries of my life,

  Along the chafing Tyrrhenian Sea below, a dizzying leap,

  And beyond, two spectral rocks drenched in amber light

  Ground by centuries into the historical stillness of age,

  I though I saw Tiberius’ golden eagle fly east.

  Under the Caprician Chalk Moon

  Under the Caprician chalk moon,

  A white porcelain ribbon

  Named Krupp’s Way unravels itself

  Towards the Blue Grotto beneath,

  Carved into mountain and rock,

  It dances alone, flitting from

  Cliff to cliff cavorting

  Down the ravine in virginal white

  Emptiness, unallied, uninhabited

  Except for the frosted light,

  Wildly, sleeves and skirt lifted

  By legendary nautical winds

  Headscarf billowing behind,

  Leaving footsteps like Isadora Duncan,

  Stepping in and out of the shadows,

  Gliding, striding, bending, swaying,

  Weeping arms waving like date palms

  As they follow bodily movements

  Dangerous to perform with the

  Plunge into the churning sea,

  Only a pale protruding inch away

  Ready to devour the slightest

  Mistaken step, a path

  Off limits to pedestrians,

  Corseted with wire mesh to keep

  Falling stones from breaking limbs

  Instead of tumbling into the deep

  Purple waters almost a mile below,

  Only ghosts from the 20’s

  Dare to two-step to this clinging phantom music,