Offices
by Dennis M. Hammes
SCRAWLMARK PUBLISHING
Moorhead, Minnesota
The FISHHOOK Group
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OFFICES
SCRAWLMARK PUBLISHING
Moorhead, Minnesota
The FISHHOOK Group
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Offices
Copyright ©1991
by FISHHOOK and Dennis M. Hammes
All rights reserved.
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Scrawlmark Catalog #DMHOFFIC.ZIP
ISBN:
LCC Cat. Nr.:
Scrawlmark Publishing
1016 South Third Street
Moorhead, Minnesota 56560-3355
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for
Msr. Francis Baskerville, OSB, d.1968
and
John Berryman, Ph.D., d.1972
"People accuse the men of God of being
clever and avaricious, when we are merely being
obedient."
-- John Henry, Cardinal Newman
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Matins
The earth sags in its gimbals. (Where they bear
On illustrators' pietins in the sky,
They tilt.) Eased south by equinox, I dare
New lilacs, mayflies, the expanding hand
Of honeysuckle; competent to spawn
A plow-shared world with room enough for dancing,
And still succumb to plums and plead the dancing
Fireflies. Terpsychore! The bear
Turns somersaults, while walleyes dance their spawn;
Casseiopea's chair wheels round the sky;
Legend allows Andromeda's waved hand.
They call that dancing! -- and the great Kildare
Dispenses aspirin, so if we would dare
Be counted cool, attend the pills. Dancing
The early bed butters no clocks. Backhand
The Book of Verses, tongue the Bread. No bear
Who tastes fall fruit stays standing. Fish smack sky
To suck the fly. The earth consumes its spawn.
But though I am the autocratic spawn
Of gravid gravel, shall I never dare
To more than grovel to the track-tricked sky?
Shall earth that's plotted for the plum and dancing
Back its share? The cosmos does not bear --
It only spawns and leaves a share at hand.
I wield a share while carried in its hand :
Potentate, and yet the tractor's pawn,
My canon appetite; a dancing bear.
Each solstice, I have watched a white world dare
The whirling atoms rise from frost to dancing
While stars poured milk to prodigal the sky.
The force that fathered (some say mad) Nijinsky
Was more than organ, brass; and I would hand
Such madness if I hold my atoms dancing
For reasons other than to sack my spawn --
Or do, and still accept the cosmic dare
Though earth may grind its gimbals where they bear.
Fish smack their sky. The stars consume their spawn.
My pen and candle hand the night a dare
While mama Cass goes dancing with the bear.
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Prime
Come, Juggler! Show us to old Bertrans' cell
And there we'll see the what we can become.
Despair lay us to rest, thinking to be born
To the next stroke, we lose instead them all
Along with all who lay too much on sleep
And damn them to a cockadoodle clang.
Then for opponent for a worthy clang
We'll fight our sleep. If there be any cell
Or any part that cross the bound of sleep
The bit shall tell the rest what is to come,
And if that bit reiterate the all
Who shall resent that he was ever born?
But juggling too begets the almost-born
Who, half awake and with a horrid clang
Encounter sleep that will encounter all
Or shut them in the island of the cell
To pray communion that will never come
Before we lay us once again to sleep.
Then what kind master wouldn't rather sleep
Than furnish mouth to everything that's born
To cockadoodle at what would become,
Or damn it to that minimum of clang
That latch it in the safety of the cell
To suck thumb to admit it is at all?
We cannot bury man for that is all
And all they do who counter pain with sleep
Or shut them in the castle of the cell.
Our fight without a worthy must be borne,
And Adam out the everinfant clang
Until it learn its name and what be come.
For day and cockadoodle both be come
The crafty sword will still, leave sleeping all
That wish their novice hear the sword gone clang
Among a people who would rather sleep
For pouting that their sleep were ever born
And they to have to learn whatever sell
That this malignant cell learn to become
The end of what is born, the end of all
Who come from sleep with such a horrid clang.
__________
1. Juggler... Bertrans. Bertrans de Born, Provencal poet,
mercenary baron, political gadfly ca. Richard I.
He later isolated himself on his estate, which he
defended mainly by manipulating mistrust among those
set against him, and died in bed of old age.
Papiols is his jongleur.
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Lauds
How shall we scratch our belly this today
Whose three-dot therefore: is the present ground?
In all those charges of 'a Grand Design'
What architect whose so obedient
Kaleidoscope produced him any music?
But any one whose care would name him happy.
All things give voice who will proclaim me happy;
Let roar concerti that admired today
From any ancient that could dream but music
When his obedience saw the present ground
Spring forth his fruit, obedient
To all this most kaleidoscope design.
And jealousy have any black design
It shall not stand nor overthrow our happy
Coalition, you, and I obedient
Yesterday, tomorrow, and today
But not as those who merely stand the ground
Like troops whose scouts would bring them up with music.
Nor are we but a cockadoodle music,
I who wake and you who but design
The camps of mushrooms, where the nomad ground
Makes bid to once again become me, happy
With the fact that it should be today
And all such miracle yield to what's obedient.
O most kaleidoscope! Obedient
To your least clang and miracle of music,
Let all our dancing single this today
With our ears' most superior design
To let me dance and let you see you happy
With whatever straw the canon ground!
And when my day shall find me in the ground
-- My Dear, that is no place to be obedient ! --
Let my obedience find you ever happy
-- Who would have planned to be aware of music ! --
That all my next continue our design
As I accept its portion in today,
And when today kaleidoscope the ground
And our design but find me more obedient
Once again to music, say me happy.
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Tierce
My dawncracked Simeon can now rejoice
His having seen his still-unspoken infant
Singing his unfinished lust for song,
He who shall now be cursed with finding voice
To grant his peace... And this shall sing
When those whose ears refute unspoken speech
Greet every crack of dawn with simian speech
And speech with cracks that make him to rejoice
That tries to teach an animal to sing,
Believing he is gifted with an infant!
Yet any ready child who tries the voice
Will exercise the syllables to song
If not to joy; and he shall pray that song
To soothe the savage simian whose speech
Repeats the word enough to pass for voice.
And it do not, the simian rejoice
To well-prepare the lashes for the infant
Who dares prepare the Simeon to sing
Until the ears of their own damage sing
One omnipresent overtone, and song
Will guide and guard the everhearing infant
Upon the rocks of simulars of speech:
Let all the congregation come rejoice
The new reiteration of the voice.
May that eternal dark that is still voice
That taught the surly simian to sing
Hear now my prayer: I, Simeon, rejoice
The singing Ludwig could not hear his song
Capitulated into parrot speech
And tribes of noises fighting in an infant
Language. For this tongue is but an infant
Filled and pulled with surliness of voice
Restocking Eden with a simian speech
Until the leaking, blue-shot pulsing
Tabernacle sound all hunger's daysong:
But for this speech give thanks, for this rejoice:
"Rejoice" means "joy again," and in this infant
All there is of song: that growing voice
Will crack again through singing to joy's speech.
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Sext
The sun stands high that burned away the peach
From curls the younger light would not resolve;
The stone discolored, art and callus try
To comb your shade with yet another stroke.
Forgive my tresspasses: the sun rehearse
To make such circumstance of a mere entrance.
And having made, how many men entrance
A moment from the give and get of speech
To watch what one more minute will enhearse?
Time damns us all. What fog may not dissolve
Of stone that tender at our mayfly stroke,
Old Elgin bullies barflies to betry.
The law have what the law is fit to try.
Justice that blind but try itself a trance
That fits out sight, securing in a stroke
From every king the infant sight impeach
That must have edicts for the king to solve,
The inoffensive carriage of the hearse.
Let be this stone then my eyes' only hearse,
That if they could not love, saw fit to try,
Or not with inspiration, then resolve,
That out of this once clay you make an entrance
So its sun the very stone bloom peach
And circumstance that drive a man to stroke.
But let the job not see the final stroke
That it may not rehearse the waiting hearse,
Nor yet allow the final stroke impeach
The waiting work, nor all the rest betry,
But so continue in a doing trance
The doing might our final stroke absolve.
The sexton call me from that blind resolve
That noons my eyes from aiming every stroke,
Or wake me also from that Janus trance
Whose staring at the cradle and the hearse
Must hammer its thumb to have a tool to try,
Unshaping what the blow cannot impeach,
And evening peach the morning light resolve
And evening wait to try the final stroke
Though half a life must unrehearse its entrance.
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Nones
More rare than fingers fashioned by the sword
Or callused by the cursing of their tools
Is love that chafes to bursting on its words
To supple at itself, its own salt jewel
Make fit like leather form it never felt
Though that smooth skin wear but the primal fault.
The having none with whom to share the fault
Has had more singers fall upon the sword
Than on the lyre to say what beauty felt
In breathing man; then do not fault the tools
For having made a sandbox of a jewel
When wandering wonders trickle out of words.
You do not know me. Twenty years of words
Callused to cursive pattern for the fault
Of wasting twenty years on that fouled jewel
And all my men who thought to take the sword
Was but to take up residence as tools
Have robbed my voice and rubbed my curls to felt,
And what Victory recall what the stone felt
Before it rubbed the alphabet and words
Of prig Pygmalion's cocky box of tools?
To make our dwelling on an ancient fault
Of being none until the careful sword
Found and defended here and there a jewel
Was in itself enough to wreak a jewel,
But fast forgot what its creation felt
As boys are left forgotten by the sword.
This is why we leave the sharpened words,
But is it theirs, the lawyers', or your fault
That you confound the product and the tools?
You knew the fitting out, unbeaten tools,
While these are tired of me, nor wear the jewel
By which we loved us, but these boys' same fault
Is dumb of how our Menelaus felt
When fit forgot him for some fitting words;
Nothing I bring, but the unbeaten sword.
The sword is the most general of tools
And not my words unfaced our wedding jewel,
But not since Aulis have I felt such fault.
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Vespers
The dark comes slowly down upon our lark --
An upstart thought to sparrow your baton,
But having had the power of any thought
To redirect the whole, and "by Thy Word" --
And as I kneel to set the evening brand
In this day we were met, and we are meet.
And what we meet, we, friends, will ever meet
To hear the seven-noted meadowlark
Nor spend our birthright to besmear a brand
No matter that we wear the red baton.
Sit we then to say the supper's word,
Let others spendthrift what our love has thought,
Or keep a pig for all their art and thought,
Or run but half of this our daily meet,
Or fall to wayside at the final word,
They had the ears to hear, and let them lark
So did not hear us catch up the baton
Who carried in our games' initial brand.
I have no reason then to change my brand
But ring your changes in my every thought
And need not carry twice the same baton --
As well sit twice to our same drink and meat
Or make of singing as the meadowlark --
But spend my evening easy with thy word.
And being sanctuary for thy word
Is to be easy, fire up my brand
And think about our day out on our lark
And how it is that our most highest thought
Demands no more of one than he can meet
Nor that he run to carry the baton.
Though we're accused of waving the baton
Who only are obedient to thy word,
Thy word be dignified. And it will meet
And touch the core of being like a brand
Whether it come astride the faintest thought
Or bellow like the evening meadowlark,
And it's a lark to carry your baton
And be obedient in thought and word
And light the evening brand with what we meet.
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Compline
And though the tulips sleep, there shall be spring,
And April, timor mortis, cruel to peace
And cowardice. But where shall be our singing
When none of voice will make its song itself,
None sing the center, the sum that is art,
Our mouth become the dragonfly again?
And what reflect our singing, when again
Our eyes are but the garnishments of spring
And gratitude become their only art?
The word breed the seedling of my peace
But not myself, what song shall make itself
When I am not, and it cursed with my singing?
Rare deity! who squalls the sword to singing
Against its fear of swords shall fear again
The singing of that sword against itself
When swords have done with turning up the spring
To aging pieties, that peep of peace
And pule that plowshares ever turned their art!
What gratitude shall that expect that art
The eater of the singer and the singing?
Rare deity! Then pray thy parts for peace
When still arms will not sing, and chant again
The leaves of me to pacify what spring
When my peace is become beside itself!
Peace it is, that does not see it. Self
We are not, save what learn the lonely art
That knows what's lost by sleeping into spring,
And what is kept, nor struts to ancient singing
That prods the emptied flesh to jerk again
With song pretended, twitching in its peace.
And I will leak into the teeming peace
That has not me, and so starves on itself
It strut me forth, but empty once again,
And petulant with sleep. Cherish the art:
That we are ever, only I am singing,
And that is ever murdered by thy spring.
And the stars sleep again, I fear not spring:
Though Thou art nothing I'm, and we are peace
And past itself, shall come my sword and singing.
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Interstitial Office
quia conturbas me,
deus meus?
If the silver tongue returning
Up the beach of darkness crawl,
Shaken by a little learning
Scribbled at a wailing wall,
Children beacon, belfries butter
Up the stairs youth will not stand,
And the stones of nighttime putter
All the law-pavillioned land,
That the silver hairlines churning
From the virgin nipple fall
To a weak and weary yearning,
Juniper and olive ball,
And the empty hearts whose stutter
Cannot spring the sagging clocks
Cry the molded candle gutter
Even as it slips the blocks,
Watch one hour what woodlands burning
Shade without consuming call :
Maples ringing out their turning
And the mushroom fool them all.
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Index of First Lines
Compline And though the tulips sleep, there shall be spring,
Prime Come, Juggler! Show us to old Bertrans' cell
Lauds How shall we scratch our belly this today
Office If the silver tongue returning
Nones More rare than fingers fashioned by the sword
Tierce My dawncracked Simeon can now rejoice
Vespers The dark comes slowly down upon our lark --
Matins The earth sags in its gimbals. (Where they bear
Sext The sun stands high that burned away the peach
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