Evora

In Evora there is a church
and the church was once a mosque
and the mosque was once a church
and the church was once a temple
in the time of the Romans

Behind the altar there is a false tomb
and beneath a Christian name there are thousands of years
of roots writhing through stone
and water echoes up vertebrae which must have been steps
and its light is the juice of emeralds

Now, consider the well that is my throat
and the pool that is my chest

What does one do when a well has been capped
for so many generations?
Is water safe in the stomach?

How did I become addicted to a self-imposed periphery,
its tithes, its prick and its poison?
Can all of this be unlearned in one generation,
one season, one summer?

My grandfathers and grandmothers
and their grandparents meet for the first time in me
I carry them to familiar places
I am their hands, their thighs, their nose,
their eyes, their lips, their teeth, their tongue

How did I become addicted to a self-imposed periphery,
its tithes, its prick and its poison?
Can all of this be unlearned in one generation,
one season, one summer?

I am the voice and the body now
and all that is closed will be opened
and all that hurts will be repaired
and all that sleeps without dreaming will be green again

In Evora there is a church
Inside the church there is a tomb
and inside the tomb there is a cistern
Inside the cistern there is water
and it’s light is the juice of emeralds



Evora [#58]
© 2000 Fammerée


* * * * *

“Evora” appears in Lessons of Water & Thirst,
a book of poems by Richard Fammerée.

* * * * *

Richard Fammerée
fammeree.com
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org


* * * * *

To experience the live performance of Evora
with music composed by the artist, please visit:
http://fammeree.com/Poetry_music.html
and listen to selection #1.

* * * * *

Photograph by Susan Aurinko

* * * * *

Evora
(Français)

A Evora il y a une église
et avant l'église il y avait une mosquée
et avant la mosquée une église
et bien avant encore un temple romain

Derrière l'autel il y a un faux tombeau
et sous un nom chrétien des centaines d'années
de racines s'enchevêtrent à travers la pierre
et l'eau résonne dans ces vertèbres qui devaient être des marches
et sa lumière est la sève des émeraudes.

A présent, imagine que le puits est ma gorge
et l'étang ma poitrine

Que fait-on quand la source est enfouie
sous tant de générations?
L'eau est-elle toujours intacte en son ventre ?

Comment me suis-je laissé aliéner par cette périphérie imposée,
ses dîmes, ses piqûres, ses poisons?
Tout cela peut-il être désappris en une génération,
une saison, un été?

Mes grands-pères et mes grands-mères
et leurs grands-parents se rencontrent en moi pour la première fois
Je les conduit dans des endroits qui leur sont familiers
Je suis leurs mains, leurs orteils, leur nez,
leurs yeux, leurs lèvres, leurs dents, leur langue

Comment me suis-je laissé aliéner par cette périphérie imposée,
ses dîmes, ses piqûres, ses poisons?
Tout cela peut-il être désappris en une génération,
une saison, un été?

Je suis la voix et le corps maintenant
et tout ce qui est fermé s'ouvrira
et toutes les blessures seront réparées
et tous ces sommeils reverdiront

A Evora il y a une église
et dans l'église il y a un tombeau
et dans le tombeau il y a une citerne
et dans la citerne il y a l'eau
et sa lumière est la sève des émeraudes



Evora [#58]
© 2000 Fammerée


* * * * *

Evora
(The story)

For once I should have listened to Zarathustra, Johnny (Jean-Claude
from Suresnes), Oceana or at least Slippers, fellow street musicians
outside of Shakespeare & Co. in Paris. Even the Irish singer with the
pregnant Dutch girlfriend--who collected for all of us on a good day--
knew better. But I was barely twenty years old. Instead of searching
for a discounted flight, I rode trains and buses south and soon realized
that (1) Marrakech would be much farther than my hand-drawn map
suggested and (2) winter was not a cooperative season in the Basque
region or Spain. Portugal lay anesthetized at the edge of the world,
only the wind recalling the resurrection of green in April and braying,
praying for its return.

Evora is a relatively small town which grew around a very prominent
cathedral. I surveyed pillars which appeared to be Roman; they were
smooth and cold to the touch and colder by the moment. The desire
for warmth awakened me from the spell of history as the tepid, watery
light continued to diminish. Fortunately, a guitar is a passport, and I
was welcomed into a family restaurant and their evening sessions of
songs and tales.

Five or six days later, an overnight bus was finally announced for
the Spanish border. The granddaughter who lived on the top story
of the moldy stone house informed me, then invited me to follow
her to the cathedral. I was led to the altar where her grandfather
was kneeling. Through her translation and angular movements he
requested that I help him remove a brass plate set into the marble
floor.

I knelt and examined the polished, reflecting testament. A long
name, a long cross, a dash separating two years--the most succinct,
evocative poem in any language.

Not sharing the Portuguese and Spanish enthusiasm for skeletal
remains of saints, I hesitated. My companions struggled. I closed
my eyes and prodded and pushed with my fingertips.

Gradually, eyes still closed, I felt a moistness, a freshness, a presence.
My fingers were bathed in a green light rising as a mist from the
sepulchre which held the remains or fragments of no perceptible body
other than the womb of earth.

The elder explained with foreign words and signs. The young girl
translated haltingly. I began to understand that this church had been
mosque and Saracen stronghold in the time of the Crusades; a church
again during the epoch of Charlemagne; a temple in the time of the
Romans; and the source of pure water, the source of life, the presence
of the Goddess in prehistory. The water was still pure after centuries,
as it had been in the beginning.

Through Spain, bus after bus, I searched the metaphor and realized
as we arrived to a trembling vista that is the sea between land, the
Mediterranean, I am that church. Each of us is that church, guardian
of the source for the portion of forever we call a life.

By the time I stepped into my first morning of Morocco, I had finished
this poem and its accompanying music.



Evora [#58]
© 2008 Fammerée


* * * * *

“Evora” appears in Lessons of Water & Thirst,
a book of poems by Richard Fammerée.

* * * * *

Richard Fammerée
fammeree.com
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org


* * * * *

To experience the live performance of Evora
with music composed by the artist, please visit:
http://fammeree.com/Poetry_music.html
and listen to selection #1.

* * * * *

Photograph by Susan Aurinko

* * * * *

Even a God

When all statues are relieved
of measure and divinity and fall or do whatever stone finally does,
that next morning, we shall have to live, even as orphans of white forms and brass
forms, without
reference
without
bracing,
bevel
and cut,
names without
verdigris, without pedestals and pigeons, however first
or last

True, I shall miss cold breasts and clean
hooves

When the hero on the horse is gone
I shall have to face the sky with eyes
that never close and a composure that challenges even a
god



Even a God [#57]
© 2010 Fammerée


* * * * *

Richard Fammerée
fammeree.com
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org


* * * * *

Photograph by Susan Aurinko

* * * * *

A little dusty and turning inwards

At a sudden sound my daughter asks, What is that?
convinced there is someone in the back garden;
but there is no one, only death standing in the tall snow
watching me through the window or perhaps,
perhaps, the house plant whose leaves are already
a little dusty and turning inwards.



A little dusty and turning inwards [#56]
© 2010 Fammerée


* * * * *

Richard Fammerée
fammeree.com
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org

An Argument for Eternity

A boy is holding a green button
A field is holding the boy
and three horses gazing and one
pony tittuping narrowly, narrowly, wanly
warily. The river Egress
is holding the field and a fish
for every tree, a leaf
for every fin

Fire holds the river; sky holds the fire

The button is all that remains
of a velvet Sunday
school dress, green as everything forever
of the earth, forgotten of the earth, forsaken
in the earth, each wish, each
petal

All that remains of the girl, first
girl and last: rain and cathedrals
indistinguishable;
inviolate, the light regardless and green
recumbent

The button is holding the boy, green
boy, tree boy, ignorant of Sundays and Sunday
schools, their god, their heaven, their claims
to April
He seeks one promise as they seek one God

and he is guardian of the button, hand-painted relic,
splinter of her sixth year, pilule, proof of
resurrection, the second emerald
extant

the promise of her
chalice above and below



An Argument for Eternity [#55]
© 2009 Fammerée


* * * * *

Richard Fammerée
fammeree.com
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org


* * * * *

Photograph by Fammerée

* * * * *

I Was This

I was this, I was that white
unwinding
reminding me of my aspirations, every destination
beyond the field of cows. Of crows.
The sun is the same and the gradation of green
from colors extinct (beyond viridian) to the absinthe
of the waving bank fed by the Lethe.
I lie down spotless, wing and wing and a body only beating to support wings.
I am before words,
before words were committed to the page,
before the page was married to thought,
before thought was narrowed to a line, a long, dead
line.



I Was This [#54]
© 2010 Fammerée


* * * * *

Richard Fammerée
fammeree.com
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org


* * * * *

Photograph by Spinella

* * * * *

Camera obscura

I could capture everything
with one hand

It was our last day
at the mouth
of the river and its turning

We visited the elongating woman
and her valiant child her stout blond boy
where spirits enter the world
uncoiling
the tree its swing
wooden and waiting
within its arc
a mother once a sad faithful woman
my mother
still attending from two frayed ropes

I captured it

I captured my daughter running
between water and violet
fire and viridian
emeralds and ancestors their green
day bed of reveries
a mythology of first days

I captured the mythology of first days

I captured the great tree
reigning
the river ensconcing
encoding
spirits approaching
poets remembering
silent blue sounds yellow in the air yellow
in my hands and nostrils

Of course I want to cry

I believed I owned all of this by virtue of recognition
and capture

Spirits in the cemetery did this
I’m fairly certain I purposely left
my shoes
on the beach take those malcontents lying
in the throat of earth behind
tongues of stone and names
and dates vanishing greedy
even without their bodies

The earth does not cleanse them
religions are wrong
They took the camera and will never return it
We are hidden
in their earth and ash in the earth
and ash of their hearts

for the earth is not theirs it never was as it is not ours

Fortunately the swing was a camera

Fortunately the sky is a camera

Fortunately I am the camera

my leg is the camera

There are other explanations
Someone in the airport
Some things never leave the island
shells and lava stones for example inanimate
intimate witnesses I suppose I too
will one day be kept behind

At this thought at night
to the rhythm of my breathing
and my wife’s breathing furrowing
with our few seeds breathing up and breathing
down while squirrels run
up and run down on the other side
of the dark glass hurrying
and hurrying for a few seeds
I review everything I can remember
our daughter the dazzling viridian
the mossy Arthurian the hurrying forward
and back the kicking and chasing the bright
blue ball the bright blue bowl of sky
she will remember and identify with
I pray
from a time when I was with her
at the mouth of the river



Camera obscura [#53]
© 2010 Fammerée


* * * * *

Richard Fammerée
fammeree.com
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org


* * * * *

Photograph by Fammerée

* * * * *

OK to Disconnect

I have been advised to protect myself
by inviting the aggressive and envious into light and spiritual
evolution

never attempting to protect myself with reactive anger or curses. Wencke of the Arctic Circle amid 320 droplets
of gold confirms, Curses always reflect back.

Send angels--she reappears--and see what happens--

Susan of Middle Earth and revolving blue lines greening toward their center, suggests to say, ‘Come into the light. Can you find a teacher or loved one to guide you?’ Most entities will vanish. If they have not, continue to lead them, protecting yourself with prayer in the presence of the Mother.

Rachel, once the wife of Jacob, unties knots, however tedious,
with fingers whose bones were born of Bethlehem. They will remember
and fashion a tiny crèche beneath a tenuous tree centuries later
as she chants in the ancient, difficult language of words braided
lyrically together. Thus east become west.

Carol of the Circle of Songs at the bower of all to be sung
braids fire and light. Thus west become east.

Eileen is the fifth element required by meditation. Somehow
she conjures and preserves images from the forever dark of the boy
who walked the valley of the shadow of death and feared no evil.

This is an offering, then, for the lone light in the all
darkness, circle within a circle within a circle within each
indecipherable consonant cryptic yet glimmering as the amethyst
belly of stone. In fact, it is written on nothing, on air.

So, flight. I move now in a medium of nothing and everything--
which is refreshing. Flight will teach me to walk again as I should have been taught as a child, in the days of reflecting, distorting red orbs--which can no longer follow
and disturb me.

I am no longer a walking remembrance.
You know who you are. Forgive me.
You know who you are. Do not come to me with stories of past lives or future debts.
I can no longer carry this.
It is yours now. I am disconnecting, and with each pull of fingers I envision feathers. My daughter
brings me an array of feathers. Dark, dark blue, true, true green and ravenous red.
She calls them leaves.

It is surprising that life becomes shallower and shallower.
This morning I saw Yeats float by, face up, a book pressed to his chest. His poetry, I imagine.
There were others, perhaps his colleagues. I did not recognize them. Some were
face down, dressed in somber colors only further darkened by water;
I had not slept well,
but, still, I did not search for myself among them.

I could not sleep those first nights in the teeth of the ravine
where the menaeds had left me.
Every time I moved my leg, I awoke, startled with pain.

You know who you. Each of you. I send you an invitation into light,
but the place on my back just above the right hip is no longer available to you.
I hear your footsteps hurrying forward and back, along earth and marble. In alarm
as I caulk the weeping hole with earth. The weeping hole with certainty; the bleeding
with a single curtain, call it compassion, for it is white and sheer;
the grieving
with practiced gratitude.

It should have been evident that anyone who loves me for what I do
but not for who I am, does not love me. This includes myself,
of course--for why else would I have encouraged lesser love

Take what you have. I shall ask for nothing in return, but I send you
forth from me as I send me forth from you into the remainder of all.

I have thirty-three years before me. I was told this multiple times
in the mirror. The face was not and may not be recognizable.
I have thirty-three years of work. And, now, that I recall my destiny--
my assignment, now that I have a certain direction
to walk, I shall walk.

Here is the chain that cripples:
Cynicism is a symptom of a lack of faith.
A lack of faith, of course, compounds cynicism and eases the corridor
into unhealthy, unjust behavior

The only remedy is truth

The chain--as all chains--begins in abuse

The circle continues to wrap about itself, ever widening until
Jacob finally Wrestles With God
24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."
      But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."
 27 The man asked him, "What is your name?"
      "Jacob," he answered.
 28 Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
 29 Jacob said, "Please tell me your name."
      But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there.
 30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared."
 31 The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. 32 Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob's hip was touched near the tendon. -Genesis 32



OK to Disconnect [#52]
© 2010 Fammerée


* * * * *

Richard Fammerée
fammeree.com
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org


* * * * *

Photograph by Fammerée

* * * * *