Jesse Ball - The Village on Horseback - Prose and Verse, 2003-2008

No notion I had then, such as is in me now—

what it can mean to wake a thing that’s past.

Cardinal Piccate, famed priest-turned-skeptic of the 15th century:

we are somehow present at his denunciation. The pope

declares the excommunication to a crowd of hundreds

who have gathered in the papal gardens. A peculiar hand gesture

accompanies the statement. This gesture is much imitated

later that day and in the days to follow. Would that I could say

it was just the opening of a hand, or a gathering

of fingertips this way. No, you must observe it for yourself,

or read Cartoccio’s treatise on the matter. Later popes

resigned themselves to its loss as a tool of governance, so difficult

was it to master. But even now the sentence is being repeated.

Piccate, with his braided beard, his sun-scalded brow, is led off in chains.

Unbeknownst to the guards, you and I follow to his estate

on the hills outside Rome. He is put inside the main building,

with all his household and all its attendant creatures.

Hoisted above this building on scaffolding huge caul- drons tip

inevitably sealing the house in four-foot-thick

impenetrable hot wax. This was apparently

common practice. Skeptical thought must be dealt with

entirely or not at all, so says the Manual of Kings

and we who would rule must learn their fluid lessons.

To that end there is preserved, in a vault beneath the Vatican,

the house-entire of Cardinal Piccate, still sealed, hermetically,

poised in its last obdurate skepticism, caught beneath a lens

broad as a careful century.

The view from outside is stunning,

Cartoccio wrote, though it can in no way be compared

to that view achieved from the inaccessible interior.

A boundary. Laughter in the spanning rooms

I am forced to attend, one by one.

How attached they are, these unlikely places

one to another, street to gateway,

gateway to stair, stair to corridor

and from there — hidden rooms

and cluttered portals.

They say, I sang a song and you were in it

but you left just as I began. How I believe them.

It is a terribly hot summer

and from beneath this shading tree

there is a song just faintly, prompted

by my heel, each factored place singing out

when I have crossed some bordering veil.

But now I have my hearing,

and a group of men come into view,

walking with the theater, livelihood and jest.

Theirs was the tune I heard. Never to belong

to me, save in swayed refrain, or in the manner

of a berth laid by, as it was spoken to me

by the grand ship incidence, that said,

This is the tunnel through which the water flows

and I will bear you as water is borne: in a bucket, in a pan,

or loose throughout the drowning sea.

A slightly pale tinge to the day,

as if even now it were being remembered.

By way of introduction, I use a soft white handkerchief

to polish the lens of my spyglass.

Afterwards we spy on your enemies.

Shall we attack them one by one

in the supposed safety of their beds?

A child on an invisible donkey demands your attention,

but you go right past him during an autumn day

one hundred years from now.

I appear at times to children when they go alone too long,

saying — sister, brother, how has it been with you? Dim forests,

balked women, these have sown signposts, not children

upon the broad aisles. For it is in belief that our progress

has long been halted. Tell me, what momentum stirs us

but truth and avoidance. Oh, long night’s approach

upon a warning. Long day, day all through afternoon

and the men who watch beneath the wooden shelters! I say

go to them, speak there, speak your fill. But then — how little

there is to say. I demand of you, the things you thought last night.

Tell us, you must tell us. You must tell us and grow old.

I saw you on that windy day when you were

as yet of no account, roaming the streets in a borrowed coat,

practicing the deft touch, the brief smile, and the slight collision

that are THE PICKPOCKET’s FEW FRIENDS.

The town was so small you could only glance at it out

the window of a moving train.

The Corinthian Ambulant Turtle is named for its tripartite crown, a growth of horn to which scientists are troubled to ascribe utility. The Corinthian is the largest of the box turtles, being an incredible five feet in length, from tip of rear claw to sharp forebeak. It is noted for its dissimilarity to much of placid turtlekind. In nature it is perhaps closest to the brutal snapping turtles of North America, which are quite capable of snapping a small branch in two, particularly if that branch is being poked at them by an unctuous child. The Corinthian subsists upon a diet of Vruvkii nuts from the Vruvkii tree. These grow on the slopes of the Limbok Mountains east of the Urals. It is difficult to say whether it is the fault of the Vruvkii tree or the Corinthian Ambulant that neither have spread across foreign geographies. Certainly should one do so, the other would follow. The tree cannot spread, for its seed is carried within the nigh impenetrable Vruvkii nuts. And the turtle cannot spread, for on what would it subsist, were it to pass beyond its precious orchards of Vruvkii? In scientific tests, Russian researchers have managed to break the nuts, but it required the persistent use of a steam drill. Only the irresistible jaws of the Corinthian Ambulant Turtle can break the nut clean as by a whim and, digesting the tender nut, release the Vruvkii seed into the soil along with its own fecal matter. In terms of literary and historical significance, the Corinthian Ambulant has known both. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is menaced by one of these beasts while out picnicking as a child. And none other than the famous Rasputin was known to keep one at his side at all times. That turtle, nicknamed Levkar Klevar, meaning, Head Lost in the Clouds, can be seen in pictures from the period. Canning’s Momentary History of the Occident’s Orient includes a passage devoted purely to this marvelous beast:

It was with trepidation, then, that I stretched out my gloved hand to pet the thing. For had it not that same day snapped the Countess M.’s arm off at the elbow? The priest assured me there would be no repetition of such untowardity. I can report that its crown is quite hard. Were I not gloved I might have scratched the skin of my fingers on one of the many jagged edges that press forth. Though I cannot agree with Rasputin that it, rather than the lion, is king of beasts, I can say with some authority, it is certainly a king, though of what, I know not.

Some having posited a lion, others must posit the lion having victims.

These victims in turn must posit things, things that are lost within the lion’s grim and enfolding city, that belly-land of growth and indolence.