POETRY PORCH: POETRY
 

 ROSACEAE by Julia Budenz
List of poems
***



LIFE 

In Honor of Celia Dubovoy 
b. Mexico 1942
Ph.D. Harvard 1974
d. Mexico 1977

Our cold winters.

Clump, clump, clump,
Crutches across the wooden floor.
Clip, clip, clip,
Crutches in the grip of gloveless fists
Through ice-gray January mornings.
Fungi are alive,
Won’t wait for you if you miss
One day in the lab.
Click, click, click, through January evenings,
Crutches across dark ice.

Leaning on your vitality.

The deep dark eyes,
The deep dark laugh,
The deep bright mind,
Its running leap,
Its fire.
 

***


 
 

BIRTHDAY CARD 

November 19, 1999
Catherine Biggs Carpenter

The dog walked at her side.
She, the friend, had stepped into November
With a step of spring,
Embroidering,
As the gardens died,
Blooms that even winter could not hide,
That even summer would remember.
 

***


 
 

BIRTHDAY CARD 

November 19, 1999
Helen Degen Cohen

 
She had been saved from the train
That changed the meaning of train,
Of camp, and of gas.

She, the child (was she five?),
Afraid among the flowers of the field,
Inhaled the fragrance of a breathable air.

She (was she sixty-five?), the woman with a woman’s song
Sung among the blossoms of the remnants of remembrance
         in November in a far farther field,
Breathed a sweetness into the breeze.
 

***


 
 

BIRTHDAY CARD 

November 19, 1999
Frederick Turner

There is a scientific paradise.
There you were born and there when I am old

May we not meet if age can make one wise?
The beech, our pointed book, is emerald

Already, ruby still, steel as fall skies,
Fresh with dawn’s silk threads, fine in foils of gold.

What is this being? in what place? what time?
Birth, growth, life in a paradise of rhyme.
 

***


 
 

A BIRTHDAY CARD 

December 16, 1999

Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Claudia Samuels (1945-1999)

I scrawl, I sing, an ABC.
Austen, Beethoven, Claudia
All were born in the cold
Of this same December day.
I script, I sing, the sixteenth of December.

ABC’s are letters.
ABC’s are notes.
ABC’s mark melody.
ABC’s spell speech.

ABC’s will multiply, compose
Words and chords,
Sentences and symphonies.

Claudia’s day has been a piano played.
Claudia’s life has been a new novel lived.
I hear her touches on the keys.
I hear her accents on the phone.

It is evening. We have asked for a booth.
Her hand holds the fork.
She would rather talk than eat. 

Of certain morsels thought may be constructed.
ABBA. ABAB. C.

There are tones, there is intonation,
In conversation as in music.

In her slim arm there is force.
There is force in her modulating voice.

Has she not been beater and builder of the tune?
Has she not been author, actor, agonist of the story?

How trim she was as she walked along the avenue,
Her straight, soft, blonde hair bouncing on her shoulders.

She has practiced for many hours.
She has analyzed every encounter.

Fingers, like the mind, may meditate.
She rehearses every phrase.

The sonata has been a silvery stream, a golden river.
The analysis can be a dam or a canal.

Analysis can be a dam. The dishes clatter.
The hand that holds the fork is still.

Ah, bitter chill descends.
D is this dark of December.
Austen, Beethoven, Claudia have departed.
D is this death.

E is the end.
F is finis.
F was February seventh
Of this fatal, failing, falling year.

Z is the zero where Claudia was.
Z is the zenith where Claudia is.
 

***


 
 

ANNIVERSARY 

April 13, 2000
In Memory of Nadya Aisenberg
September 29, 1928 - April 13, 1999

The weeping cherry weeps again in beauty,
Its tears white blossoms lovelier than snow,

Its flowering the flowing of a fountain
That falls more liltingly than fountains flow.

Shall we forgive the universe? She left us
And blooms in Aprils that we cannot know.

The tears are left to us. She weeps no longer.
We glimpse her loveliness. She blossomed so.
 

***


 
 

ANNIVERSARY 

May 12, 2000
In Memory of Daniel Von Dwornick
December 23, 1961 - May 12, 1994

Although about to take the road to Rome,
I was a voyager so feeble
I found myself unable
Even to drag
Even one bag
Down
Those steep, steep steps of the elevatorless
Apartment house. There were the many identical 
            closed doors.
I banged on that door. Daniel, can you,
Can you possibly, can you carry
These bags of mine to the imminent taxi?
How gratifying were his smile, his hands!
He grasped the handles gladly all
Together. It seemed in seconds,
Those bags sat, thank you, thank you, on Massachusetts 
            Avenue
Under March shadblow not yet in bloom.

My road one May led back from Rome.

Could he joke then?
To what dread den
Had Daniel been condemned? And when?
Never again.
Not to ascend or descend one stair.
Not to raise or shift one hand.
Not to lift a finger.
And can he laugh?
Without baggage he traveled
From Dan to Beersheba, to a Rome,
To the distant city, indistinct, glistering, from which,
Perhaps in March, perhaps in May or in December,
Yes, thank you, thank you, yes, in May, in its curing,
We catch his candor and his sweetness and his strength
In blossoms, it seems in seconds,
Whiter and more fragrant and more enduring.
 

***


 
 

MOTHER’S DAY CARD

May 14, 2000
Margaret Rodgers Budenz

Flora, child of Julia’s mind,
Claims Julia’s mother as her own.
Flora, standing all alone,
Aspires to be of Margaret’s kind.

I gaze
At these big blue skies
Bright as the big blue eyes
That have seen and are seen,
That gazed at, into, mine.

I stare
At these clear blue skies
Deep as the clear blue eyes
Of one whom I praise,
Whom I prize,

Wise
As Tiresias, visionary, seer,
Dear
As the Mother of the Muses, Memory,
Free
As Mind, bright, big, deep, clear.

I see
The azure standards of the iris rise
Through Mays
And Mays.

I hear
The savory and fragrant lullabies.
They flare 
And blaze.
 

***


 
 


BIRTHDAY CARD

June 13, 2000
Margaret Rodgers Budenz

 
The rarity of June
Is the breath of the rose.

The rarity of June
Is the breath of the robin.

In this simplicity
Is a complexity of perfection.

The rarity
Of June

Is the laughing of one
Who could have sobbed,

The caring of one
Who could have stopped,

The hard thinking
Of one who could have given in,

The soft singing
Of one who could have given up

The song that continues
In a not very tuneful world,

In the attuned hearing of the daughters,
In the acute listening of the friends,

In the breath of the self,
In a breath from the fragrant depths of the self,

In rare simplicity,
In complex perfection.
 

***


 
 

BIRTHDAY CARD

July 17, 2000
Louis Francis Urban Budenz
July 17, 1891 - April 27, 1972

Why did you have to answer when they asked?
Why did you have to tell them what you saw
With deep gray eyes?

Why could you not have hidden from them, masked
And cloaked, or closed lids, lips, to self’s deep law
And told them lies?

They hated you for what you saw and said.
They killed you slowly living, kill you dead.
Each father dies.

The daughter
Writes on water.

I am not she. I am dryadic power.
I am the proudest humble flower
Breathing in her umbrous bower.

Must I smell the slaughter?
Must I feel forlorn?
Must I cry if Julia cries?
If she mourns must I mourn?
And do I see you with her sight?

With the child’s wide eyes of blue
She looks at you.
She contemplates your view.

Four children glowed in those gray eyes.
One Margaret gleamed in these gray eyes.
A joke, a bit of wit, a pun,
In those gray eyes was sparkling fun.
The speech, O workers now unite,
In these gray eyes was blaze of fight.
Shakespeare, Pope, in those gray eyes
Was satisfaction and delight.

Can she forget the vision that she heard
When first she could distinguish word from word
And see through speech

Development from age to age,
Progression made from stage to stage,
From primal shore to final beach,
Rest after rage,
The garden growing on the battlefield,
The dance of all, the passing of the prize
From each to each,
From sage to sage?

Thus she interpreted the page,
Read the historiation of the shield.
Later was the tale told otherwise?

At the Last Judgment I will not have to blush.
Suddenly, unexpected, in a rush,
Again your voice is in her ear,
In utterance. I will not need to fear.
I will not want to groan.
I will not wait there trembling for the hush
Of those who wait to hear.
On earth already all my sins are known.

You spoke, and she remembers, smiles, and sighs.
I hope, pray, prophesy, hypothesize.

If they leave the cage
And if they reach . . . 

May secrets leap from the ice and reach our summer.

Slipping from the sickle or the hammer,
Shivers from the east a rosy shimmer.

May files and files surge, stream across the skies.

See the sun rise.
See day.
I see, I say,

You will again be born
In this world so worn,
Even on this dim earth,
In this radiant birth,
The recognition of your truth, your worth.

In rhyme,
Too dark a night,
A noon too light,
Is prose.

In time,
After the wilting, beyond the thorn,
Shy or bold,
Clad in velvet red or silken white,
Lavender satin, woven cloth of gold,
Veily cambric or ribbony lawn
Intimating a pink of dawn,
Subtle as poets’ poetry or bright
As your orations to the multitude,
In fairest, fiercest, dulcitude,
Blossom upon new blossom blooms on the rose.
 

***


 
 

ANNIVERSARY

October 6, 2000
Thetis and Peleus

Was it not April sixth?
It had to be the glister of October.
The truth may seem too sober,
But autumn in New England is a spring,
And I at home with gods beneath the sea
Looked up suddenly
To glimpse the monstrous bottom of the first
Vessel that ever cursed
A surface that was all liquidity,
To which I shot. Once there, unquivering,
My quizzing eyes I fixed
Upon the beauty of the mortal man
And breathing air began
Believing that great Zeus gave him to me.
 

***


 
 

DATING

Cynthia and Endymion

The night was tremulous
As spring. The night was sheer
As winter and as clear,
As warm as summer, as mysterious
As autumn and as dear.
Yes, it was April. From the dewy moon
I watched him sleeping on the starry grass.
His eyes were shut, alas.
But no, but very soon
They opened, and he looked out towards the skies.
I looked into his eyes.
 

***


 
 

TEMPER
And in this myth the stars are not too sharp,
The dew is not too damp,
The night not furnished with an angel’s harp
Nor clad in veil and guimpe.
Diana tends a lamp
That does not daze, dismay,
Rupture the dark, or scorch or torch the day,
Or drive the love away.
 

***


 
 

TEMPEST
The moon, invisible,
Was potent: close and full.
The tide rose high. The ocean rushed ashore.
My heart was merely sore,
I thought, when it and I were nearly nil.
How could I, drowning, hear a deafening roar
Or estimate the kill?
 

***


 
 

TEMPO
The moon underfoot,
The moon beneath a boot,

The moon round, white, and high,
The moon calm, quiet, lucid in the sky,

The moon in its brilliance,
The moon in its resilience,

The moon in the lackluster,
The moon in the backwater,

The moon in the backwash,
The moon in the Wabash,

The moon in the Hudson,
The moon in the ocean,

The moon in the Tiber,
The moon in the fiber

Of my body and my soul
Are partial, are the figments of a whole.

A whole moon slips from the cloud
And through the silent darkness shines aloud.
 

***


 
 

TESTING
There is a lunacy
That is a legacy.

There is a lunar beam
That validates this briefly luminous dream.

Was it that lovely thing for which I sighed
Or for the lovely thing it signified?

Was it the goddess gleaming overhead
Or the mortal in his bed?
 

***


 
 


WHETHER WEATHER
Have I been too hot
Or have I not?
Will I be too cold
Or only old?
Must it be snowstorm wet or sandstorm dry?
Is something silent smiling in the sky?

***


 
 

FREEZE AND FLOOD
Can one ask why?
Ask what?
Is this a constant?
Is this pathology?
She is not manic,
And it is not depression.
She deviates between phase and phase:
Aphasia and logorrhea.
Is she forced to reply
While the right word lies in hiding?
Must she keep riding
The wild horses of phrase and phrase
Down facile roads of transgression,
Up arduous paths of apology?
Must there be a 
Cold or hot
Instant:
Panic?
Can she be I?

***


 
 

PHOTOPHOBIA
For several weeks
A friend of mine
Couldn’t open her eyes.

She wasn’t sleepy.
They were like window shades
That wouldn’t go up.

Maybe they could feel
That the sunrise in her room
Was too bright for outside.

***


 
 

PHOTOPHILIA
That was twenty-five years,
Like weeks, ago,
If I remember.
I remember

That was Anne,
Her eyes now closed,
Or are they open?,
Forever.

Even in November
Let us love the light.
Amidst the bits of gilt, of gold,
It slants, it lasts,

Even in November.

***


 
 

ANNIVERSARY

November 4, 2000
In Memory of Anne Miller Whitman
February 6, 1937 - November 4, 1984

There is a very pure gold
Which is yours:
Perhaps the gold of oak leaves
Or of beech leaves.
Yet, for all their beauty,
That is an ending.
This is a beginning,
Even in November:
Fresh petals of a newly blooming rose.
They, too, offer goldenness.

That is almost the past.
This is nearly the future.

When I venerate the foliage,
When I bless the blossom,
I recognize,
I feel,
Each in its gleam of plenitude,
Each in its glimmer of incense.
I do not skip.
Yet I do not forget.

Here is the present.
There are a fullness and a fragrance
And a very pure light like yours,
Very like yours.

***


 
 

ANTHE

December 19, 2000

I do my sums.
A bitter winter comes.
The harsh dark looms.
This sweet still blooms.

This sweet still blooms.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

January 23, 2001

Is light less late?
Can noon refine the ice?
Does light a little longer linger?
What moment calls commuting crows back home?

Will summer come?
Will Thule bloom in the north?

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

January 25, 2001

Will summer come?
Will someone come?

My shoes slide slightly on a slope of snow.
The witchhazel sweetly feels the afternoon.
One sees some sun.

In the chill
This gilding,
This fingering,
Is a flowering
Of gold.

***


 
 


DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

February 13, 2001
Parentalia

First there were four: Deaumer,
Rodgers, Sullivan, Budenz.
Second, there were two; third, one.
Fourth, for me there is none
Of these. There is Virgil, Homer.
I, Baum, was born of plectrums, pens.
What is my family tree?
I am anthropoidal, other.
I am arboreal, aerial, free.
Who is my father, who my mother?
The one, the two, the four
To me are neither nor.
Yet their blood pulses in my veins
And her heart beats in my refrains.

***


 
 

BIRTHDAY CARD

Rome, March 13, 2001
Mariateresa Scotti

Here is a fountain. Here.
Here is the black depth of the pool.
Here is the white splash of the spray.

Here is a plum tree. Here.
Here is the black strength, the fortitude, of the bough.
Here is the white scent, the dulcitude, of the bloom.

Here is a garden. Here.
Here are dark violets purple and low in the grass of the valley.
Here are bright daffodils golden and high on the lawn 
           of the hill.

Here is a woman. Here.
Here is dark deep sorrow.
Here is bright and bursting joy.

Here is a life. Yes, here.
I reverence profundities of midnight,
Salute the brilliance of sweet dawn, strong noon.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Spy Wednesday, April 11, 2001

Grendelic dens,
With dreadful dents,
Iambic whens,
Ticks of trochaic whence,
As pens,
As vents,
As La Fontaines,
As arguments,
Upon my pulse to feel, beneath my lens
To hold, I must commence:

I knew that Ms. Budenz
Had failed to cross few fens
Till up before Ms. Budenz
Fates threw the red, not blue, fence.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Good Friday, April 13, 2001

Julia Budenz
Failed in prudence,
Failed in expeditious haste.

Flora Baum may
Hope, may essay,
To evade disastrous waste.

Poetry, too, observes a golden rule.
The writing must survive the happy fool
Who writes it. She will be erased.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Saturday, April 21, 2001

Julia Budenz,
Homo ludens,
To play, game, beauty, truth,
Desire, and dream stays leal.

I, Flora Baum,
Her vigilant Traum,
One day will render both
Jingle and ditty real.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Wednesday, April 25, 2001

I grieve at strange sly drops
Of poison that have turned
My Julia into an unexpected Cyclops.

She can take the alien grayness.
From her own bright voice I have learned
She is content if I may emulate Janus.

***


 
 

FLORALIA

April 28 - May 3, 2001
In Honor of Barbara Wismer McManus

Roman rosebuds open the close of April,
Gate to May. May opens in bursts of blossom
Rosy, gold, white, red in the green of springtime’s 
Garden and temple.

Flora, Rome’s grand goddess, is standing watching
Over rosebuds, over the grandest traffic
Girding hills where aureate speech and golden
Poetry flower.

Roman rosebuds last and outlast December.
Let the new year freeze and unfreeze the fountains:
Janus keeps watch, watching the roses, brilliant,
Blossoming, blooming.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Wednesday, June 6, 2001

Julia and Flora, she and I,
May both live or may both die
Or one find earth and one find sky
As either nullity or glory
Or alternate like Gemini
Or each now blanch, now bloom, like Kore.

***


 
 


ANTHE

June 7, 2001

She had to leave my authoress
Just when the roses bloomed.
The roses bloom.

The fragrance and the goldenness
Of her rosehood remained
Remain, remain.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Sunday, June 10, 2001

The one may leave for June in Thule,
Where touched by Orpheus the fiddles play.

The one may part for farthest parts
Where harps blend melodies of night and day.

Our lyres may lead to lands, to skies,
Over the rainbow, say.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Wednesday, June 13, 2001

Go in and out the window.
Go in and out. . . .
One leaves, one arrives.
One leaves, one is left.
Now stand and face your partner.
Now stand and face. . . .
But can they be heard
The harmonies of the harps?

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Saturday, June 16, 2001
Big Sister

Julia and Jo and Justine and Joanna
Are the 4 J’s and in some future were.

Fleet breeze of deepening summer night inquires
Whether the elms are emptiness or blur.

She who was first to come should be the first
To leave. She leaves me here to speak for her. 

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Sunday, June 17, 2001
Monumentum

If I, too, die, like Orpheus rent and scattered,
I will have climbed the shining Capitol
Like, with, the silent virgin, and I will
Have thought that in this universe that mattered.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Friday, June 22, 2001

The new comes on, the old goes on and on.
Does Julia flinch and screech: New blow, new blow?
Does Julia clench her teeth: Too slow, too slow?
Horror and rage and grief make pale, keep wan.
O may she play and play. The sunlit toy
I offer her is joy.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Saturday, June 23, 2001

When at last my author dances
Out to the absolute
All or nothing

I will have to take my chances
Though I will gamble for something:
Not to be mute.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Sunday, June 24, 2001
Forti Fortunae trans Tiberim
Nativité de saint Jean-Baptiste

This is no time for tears. There is not time.
There is not time to spend brief breath in sighing.
This tempo measures nectars, fragrances,
The golden droplets or the golden airs
Distilled from lindens, lifting from the lindens,
Descending and ascending from catalpas,
Flitting and filling from the honeysuckle,
Blown blowing from the rose, the rose, the rose.
A time of nectar is the time to dream
Ambrosia. Days grow short and night long grows.

***


 
 


DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Tuesday, June 26, 2001

Whether in those unmeasured, immensurable spaces,
Whether in those unnumbered, innumerable years,
Our fated futures and our fated places
Julia’s and mine
Diverge or entwine,
Are knit
Or split,
We are as one in something not our duty,
Not faith, not hope, not reasoning, not fears,
But self’s sound and the music of the spheres.
Wooed by the beauty of the infinite,
We move to an infinitude of beauty,
Infinite
Beauty.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Friday, June 29, 2001

Though I lose
All,

Though lovely hues
Of dusk crest terrible,

Though word, though thing, refuse
Yearning and call,

I choose
The beautiful.

O ancient Muse,
The rose blooms on the wall.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Tuesday, July 10, 2001

I tried
To forbid
Her to brood
And to dread.
If my author could
Be less dismayed
I might be less horrified,
Might dream of being glorified,
Might find myself as finally florified,
Arborified.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Thursday, July 12, 2001
Ludi Apollinares VII

About my Julia I guess
If death gets under her skin
That is because her skeleton
Has gotten close to the edge.
They say: And how her arms and legs are thin!

She seems quite happy to have them fatten her up.
She seems quite glad to gobble and to gulp.
She scrapes each dish.
She licks each lip.
She seems to love each crumb.
And how she seems to love to chew her cud!
But if she gives a finger, not a stick,
To be judged for succulence by a wicked witch
Hungry for something, someone, fat and rich,
That is because there is not very much
Of her on which to munch or lunch or sup.

Today, tomorrow,
Healer Apollo,
Who heals the bruises,
Is living still,
Aiming an arrow
Of good, not ill.
Now to her marrow
She seems to fill
With life’s own thrill.
If she hops from the hollow
Onto the hill
That is because she must follow
Leader Apollo,
Who loves the Muses,
And will.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Friday, July 13, 2001
Apollini

Finding the site
Of the temple she builds
The steady pillars,
Which shine and shimmer.
Finding the lyre
She finds her fingers
Strong on the strings
And very light.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Thursday, July 26, 2001

If surgery is purgatory,
Hospitals are hell.
Those journeys through the inferno
Are something my author earnestly,
Unlike dread Dante, attempts to forget.
Yet
Something she remembers was a heaven.

Was it the morphine?
Was it the mourning because I, too, was mortal
Because the only manuscript was lost?
Was it the general
Debt to death?
Non moriar sed vivam?
Less?
Or
More?

What were those passages
Out to, into, through the strange spaces,
Enlarging, enormous, enlarging,
In blacknesses, colorations, whites, enlarging,
Converging into one center, immense, minute,
Limitless, focused speck of light, of fire,
So dark that she might hide there,
Rest there forever,
So bright that she might abide there,
Gaze there unendingly,
So wide that she might stride there,
Discover everlastingly,
Action and stasis,
Satisfaction and excitement,
Abstraction and the plum tree,
The plum blossom,
The plum,
But not so easy, not so difficult,
Far beyond her, deep within her heart,
The awful attraction, 
Something
Worth dying for,
Something
Worth living for,
Instant and point long loved and largely loved,
Worthy to be eternal, infinite?

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Friday, July 27, 2001

What were those, my author’s, passages?
I do not know.
My passages perhaps
Cannot resemble hers.
Perhaps the final book will hold the answer.
Was there larger darkness?
Was there larger light?
Was the point sharper? Were the breadth and depth
And height more, much more, overwhelming?
Does the tree arise before my eyes?
Does the blossom scent my nostrils?
Does the fruit fall into my mouth?
I do not know.
I am only the poem.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Wednesday, August 1, 2001
Spei in Foro Holitorio

Darling Hope,
Dear goddess and revered,
How often above the rags, the dregs,
Of your temple and its pillars on the plot of grass 
              with the traffic
Of Roman nightfall rumbling, rattling, reeking, screeching, 
              spuming, spewing behind me
I recognized, however far,
In the untorn entity of the heavens
The smiling of the bright and silent star.

***


 
 


DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Sunday, August 5, 2001
Saluti
Saluting
Laura Benedetti
Catherine Biggs Carpenter
Mona Harrington
David Bradford Marshall
Elaine Gillis Storella

I live because the intellectuals,
Linguists, professors, writers, Kit and Laura
And Brad and Mona and Elaine, became
The shoppers, the chauffeurs, the laundresses,
The servants, of the author of my being.
I live because their perfect goodness serves
And salves and saves the one whose life saves mine.
I live because their brilliant goodness lives.

***


 
 

BIRTHDAY CARD

September 19, 2001
Nicholas Horsfall

How the great weaver wove,
How the great soldier strove,
Minerva through your ministry portrays.

Ships touch the yellow cove,
And yellow dawn the grove.
Erato works your works and plays your plays.

Now the best greatest Jove
With his resplendent mauve
Inscribes you in the sequence of his days.

***


 
 

BIRTHDAY CARD

October 15, 2001
Publius Vergilius Maro
October 15, 70 B.C.E. - September 21, 19 B.C.E.

This is yours.

From farthest Bactria to farthest Thule,
Where the golden mountains flame,
Where the golden ocean roars,

An emanation fiery, loud, and sweet,
An essence taut in sun and soft in shade,
A thing of tears, of triumph, and of fame,

Soars

Greatly. Shall I greet
You, love you, without blame
Upon the jagged peaks, the ragged shores,

Or shall I duly
Feel afraid,
Feel shame?

***


 
 

BIRTHDAY CARD

November 24, 2001
Joanna Maria Budenz Gallegos

Please find Book Five and kindly through each page
Leaf till you reach the day, the month, the age.

***


 
 

A BIRTHDAY CARD

December 16, 2001

Cookie
Virginia Walsh
Mother John Bernard, O.S.U.
Mrs. Albert Joseph Furtwangler
Ann Copeland

Ginny

Fingers touch the keys.
From mind, from heart,
In folds of red, in threads of gold,
In warmth of harvest, ocean’s cold,
Sonorities of notes, of chords,
Subtleties of strands of words,
Simmering with music and with story,
Shimmering with horror and with glory,
Reach through feeling and through art
Ear and eye and soul.
They touch, they please,
They make us whole.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

02/02/02

Is she a German? Or American?
Is she Frau Budenz? Is she Ms. Budenz?
Is she Greek, Roman, or an Irishman?
Which links or lacks will speech corral, cue, cleanse?
Unseen are Deaumer, Rodgers, Sullivan?
Unheard are lines of single undue pens?
Signatures and addresses fail to mend
What history and language falsely blend?
Insurers and physicians are the en-
Emies of health when finance is the friend?
The goundhog shudders blinking in the sun?
Who comes along insisting: Julia Budenz,
Two eyes to us are worth not five but two cents?
Who goes declaring: Julia M. Budenz,
Two eyes are worth the price of one new lens?
Is a trochaic finish feminine?
Is south a shimmer of insouciance?
Is north a port, a pole, a star, a trend?
Is she a subject? Or a citizen?
Is there a calm? Or is there turbulence?
Do the seas open? Does the ocean end?
Does light stay straight or ominously bend?

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

02/22/02
Cara Cognatio

Those old, known tones of Julia cum Budenz
Ring in her ear, in mine, as dear amens,
Bu is a beauty, denz a kin she kens.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

02/23/02
Terminalia

Let her be, have been, she who yens.
Let her be, have been, Miss Budenz.

Let her be, have been, homo rudens.
Let her be, have been, Fräulein Budenz.

Shall I go over the same old ground?

Beyond the bound,
Beyond the fence,
Beyond the sound,
Beyond the sense,
Arises something simple, something dense.
Freedom is found.

***


 
 


DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

02/24/02
Regifugium

Still there is something special, something vital.
She can accept, reject, create the title.

***


 
 

BIRTHDAY CARD

February 26, 2002
Justine Louise Budenz

Her red-gold hair is a crown,
And she is regal, a queen.
Along a London road we regard her advance,
Her threefold realm style, heart, intelligence.

Justy-Rusty, we said in jest
To the little princess back in the west.
Back flew a robin bringing tints
Of red, of gold, on beak, on breast.

The tiara does not rust.
Castle and bird and bridge do not fall down.
She says, It’s just Justine.
It is Justine the Just.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

March 1, 2002
Feriae Marti
Iunoni Lucinae

Julia Budenz can hear her choriamb
Strike up the march in which I, Flora, am.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

March 5, 2002

Councils of Pluto, Lucifer, and Satan send
Referrals and refuse them. She, expend-
Able, is too expensive, for that mon-
Ey unspent on that eye will fund that gun.
Birdless Avernus, watch. The vultures pend.
Styx, Acheron, Cocytus, hear and cease to run.

***


 
 

BIRTHDAY CARD

March 11, 2002
Josephine Theresa Budenz Palermo

As to her patients is the nurse,
As to her students the teacher,
As to her children the mother,
As to her mother the daughter,
As to her father the child,
As to her husband the wife,
As the mistress to her tended home,
As the lover to her vibrant life,
As the contemplative unto her turning world,
When all the being is fine, is full,
When all the thinking is deep, is whole,
When all the doing is done well, very well,
So is the dear sister to her sisters,
So to her friends is the good friend,
So is our Jo.

Arisen from the garden of March,
Sturdy and lovely stands the tree,
Contained, outreaching,
Multiple, one,
In bud, in bloom, in leaf, in fruit,
In brune, in rose, in gold, in green,
Verdurous,
Umbrous,
Lustrous,
Fair to the air,
Sparkling to heart’s sparkle,
Into the glisten of existence glistening.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Sunday, March 17, 2002

Is it St. Patrick’s Day, or is it Lent?
Spring may come early, Easter surely will.

The flower’s leaf is green, its center orange.
What part or party claims priority?

She, Julia Mairin Budenz,
Known as Miriam of the Lamb of God,

I, Flora Urania Baum,
Known as Julia Flora of the Tiber,

She, Julia Budenz, unknown
Adam of my garden and my life,

I, Flora Baum, bone
Of her bones and breathed and breathing breath of her breath,

Pray, play. It was not good to be alone.
The moon still feeling new, the equinox

Still waiting up ahead, she plays the harp
Backward, I pipe to futures yet unknown.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Monday, March 18, 2002

Ora aut labora. It would be better

To work rather than to pray,
To work rather than to play.

She passes the prison. She is a multiple debtor.

The snow falls on the hospitals,
The crocuses, the daffodils.

Cold, bold flakes fly, flutter. I fold the letter.

The doors of the hospital slide
Open and shut. She shoots inside.

More work would clinch a much more clenching fetter.

In her orisons I breathe,
In her lusions live.

Pray for the onlie, single, sole begetter.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

March 18, 2002
Afterward

I have just put the phone back down.

She finally had to decide.
Xalatan or surgery.
Dr. Chen and Dr. Chiu,
Each with a little frown,
Looked into big eyes, still blue,
One of which does not still see.
Nevertheless, she tried
To show why she was horrified
Because the drops might turn the iris brown.
She as a tiny girl who gazed wide-eyed,
She as a tiny girl who gazed blue-eyed,
Glimpsed the enormous world of World War Two.
But no,
She did not explain
It so.
The smaller things evoke a larger pain.

***


 
 


BIRTHDAY CARD

March 19, 2002
Minerva

What is the salutation? Ave? Vale?

Salve, strong, bright-eyed goddess. We have searched
The hills, the Caelian, the Aventine,
The Esquiline, the very Capitol,
And found and built and dedicated temples,
Your temples, and have contemplated there
Your glory. At your portals Flora, Julia,
Have kindled incense, mingled praise, petition.
Among your olives, pines, and cypresses
Fragrance like music, song like scent, ascend.
Tend my existence, Medical Minerva.
Blue-eyed Athena, guard her two blue eyes.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

March 20, 2002
Spring

Among buds that have bloomed
Sparsely above, below,
Damaged, doomed,
Through clouded threats of snow,
She dawdles into the vernal.
Will dark be lessened or eternal?

But me, remember me, I said,
Stretching up just now
Under the gemming bough
And squatting like a little child
Over the jewelled flower bed,
Beguiled.

***


 
 

ANNIVERSARY

March 21, 2002

Oh, how the beauty of his brown eyes,
Dark and soft and cool as evening,
Was hot in my heart.

We rowed across the lake through the evening.
The lakes of his nocturnal eyes
Held the deeper part.

It was a Thursday that year, too.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Spy Wednesday, March 27, 2002

Half blind, half dead, half sighted, half alive,
With one foot in and one out of the grave,
Among the have-nots not unlike a have,
Half out of while wholeheartedly in love,
Sentenced yet parsing clauses of reprieve,
Some subject noun presumably will move
Some finite verb to phrase and adjective,
Lifting the chessmen from the treasure trove.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Monday, April 1, 2002

Into the horror of the dark
Someone comes on wings of gold.
Is it an angel or a god?
It is the spirit of the oak.

Do not despair now. Stand robust. Endure.
The hour to trust is now not very far.
Not forever must you wait on hold.

***


 
 

BIRTHDAY CARD

March 11 - April 25, 2002
Torquato Tasso
March 11, 1544 - April 25, 1595

O Torquato, Torquato,
It is not that you are forgotten
On the happy natal day of March eleven

But that candles lit for birth
Into a life on earth
Begin to dim beneath the breath of heaven.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Tuesday, April 2, 2002

The shield of diamond, of adamant,
Magnificent and holy,
Flashes and gleams and glitters radiant
From Bactria to Thule.
Take the same and make the different.

***


 
 

ANTHE

May 7, 2002

How can the visitor, the visitant,
From Thule be so like
The gardens of Cambridge, Massachusetts,
Not far, here, here in plenitude
Of cherry blossoms, kwanzan, roseate, full,
Dogwoods white of gleam or pink of glimmer,
Lilacs answering sweetly to the swifts,
Forget-me-nots responding to the skies?
How can the gardens in their burgeoning
Be so like her?

***


 
 


ANTHE

May 8, 2002

Four thousand years ago
Venus with a flower
Healed the harmed Aeneas.

One thousand years ago
His angel with a flower
Cured the wounded Godfrey.

Anthe one year ago
To the warrioress laid low
Was the enduring friend,
The tireless nurse with will and skill to tend,
To fill once more with power,
Being herself the bright salvific flower.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Saturday, May 11, 2002

Did his brown eyes break my heart?
Was this an Italian opera?
This was life. This was a life.
The voice of the tenor rippled and rang impassioned.
Passionate his voice sank, set.
Who was I to disparage art?

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

June 1, 2002
Iunoni Monetae

Was it the timely hiss
Of the holy geese?

Was it from the temple
The monitory voice?

Would the Capitol fall
To the hidden, climbing, penetrating Gaul?

Did the city totter?
Then was history worse or better?

Where were you
On nine eleven?

Try the final book. Try that. Try this.
Or seek the center.

That went over. This will pass,
Too.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Sunday, June 2, 2002

Where days grow longer
Are evening’s shadows longer
As birds come fluttering?

If hell can end
Must heaven also end?
Must I go muttering

That we were born,
That we have lived,
That all was not infernal,

That above the thorn
The rose we have loved 
For a moment buds eternal?

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Monday, June 3, 2002
Venus passes 1.6° north of Jupiter

The evening’s stars grow bright
And brighter into night.

Trochee or iamb, Budenz or Budenz
Will be the written once the writing ends,
When weaving ceases and the text begins,
When once the author with the title blends.

Are the stars touching? Look!
Does she become the book?

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Wednesday, June 5, 2002
Semoni Sanco Dio Fidio in Colle

All in together, girls.
How do you like the weather, girls?
Through the haze,
Through the maze,
We find our days,
We find our pearls. 

Beyond the dearth
I appraise,
I praise,
The worth,
The mirth,
Of the blossoming earth.

Beyond the grays
I spy,
I gaze
With opening eye
At the opening sky.
The sun is, must be, getting high.

The rope
Does not stop.
It whirls.
It twirls.
I fly.
The poem does not lie.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Friday, June 7, 2002
Vesta aperitur

The cavern
Of a lunar whiteness
Edging out to, into,
A pink of dawn
Was the blossom
Of the rose.
At the entrance
One sensed,
Even while not daring to say,
What the bloom was inescapably saying,
The flower ineluctably stating,
Regarding the candor of the moon
Edging into, out to,
The rosiness of the farthest hearth,
The rosiness of an ultimate aurora,
The sanctum of celestial incandescence.

***


 
 


BIRTHDAY CARD

June 8, 2002
Julia Tseng Chen
Mother Angela, O.S.U.

Fifty years ago we met her.
She had reached us from very far away,

At home with land, with sea, with sky,
At home with spirit, at home with matter,

Benevolent volcano of joy,
Beneficent earthquake of laughter.

***


 
 

LETTER

June 9, 2002
Rose Shawfeng Wang
Mother Fidelis, O.S.U.

Rose, I found you again in Rome,
After, what was it?, half of seventy years?,

Your road from the east,
My road from the west,

Serenity still shining in your eyes,
Clarity in your mind,
Fire in your heart.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

June 11, 2002
Fortunae Reduci in Foro Boario

The crimson general, having returned,
Thanked the goddess.
Having returned, among the red poppies
I thanked her, too.
There I had had my vision.
There, in the exact light
Of the precise dusk,
Out of the dusk, the dust, the mess,
Altar and well and temple
Had returned. They had remained.

Why am I not there, too?

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

June 20, 2002
Summano ad Circum Maximum

Staring or stirring, I go on, go on,
Finding you almost, always seeking you,
Rome the eternal, rose the infinite.

***


 
 

DIARY OF FLORA BAUM

Sunday, June 23, 2002

As I approached the Common the clouds cleared.
The selfsame breeze was scent and light. I dared
Or thought I dared to comprehend in June
The golden linden and the golden moon.

***


 
 

EPITAPH

Stranger or friend, if the rose roaming over the stone sweetly blossoms
      Stop. Is it theirs, is it his? Could it be hers? Is it mine?

***


 
 

“Rosaceae” is Section Five of “Lyre, Harp, Violin,” which is Part Three of
          “Towards Farthest Thule,” which is Book Four of the poem in five 
          books, “The Gardens of Flora Baum,” by Julia Budenz. 

          Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002, by Julia Budenz. 

“Anniversary: April 13, 2000,” first appeared in the Forgiveness issue 
          of the Poetry Porch.
“Floralia” first appeared in Cloelia, Vol. 30, No. 1, Fall 2001.



“The Gardens of Flora Baum” has five books
By the Tree of Life
Towards a Greek Garden
Rome
Towards Farthest Thule
By the Tree of Knowledge
Book Four has three parts
Lay of the Last Monk
Sibyl
Lyre, Harp, Violin
Book Four, Part Three, has seven sections
Tam Lin
Oleaceae
Aceraceae
Sicut et Nos
Rosaceae
Fagaceae
King Orpheus
Book Four, Part Three, Section Five, includes allusions and references 
          to other sections, parts, and books, including Book Five

Book Four is to be finished after the completion of Book Three, of which 
          the long conclusion, “Vision,” is still being written

***


 
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