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SUSAN GEVIRTZ

STARRY MESSENGER

Greek

so they drove

over the flat sea

wheels spinning

momentum without charter

drove on

herding contrails

plane clouds

breed clouds

A control group of sky

or was it a sea road

drugged now

by the late morning sea

mechanism

nod repeat rescue

and stuff their mouths with bread

those in the sea’s backseat

babes of bait

///

Sea’s old face same as the first

the sky turbine cinemascope

the jet age guise

///

Prologue

[to be read in Aviation English]

A cadaver dog

and another dog

a talking corpse zipped up

for the duration in a

horsehair cocoon

and a baby just under

ripe out with the wash

remarkable spectacles

1, 2 & 3

So many ways to

count the sky

Call to prayer

minaret terminal control

///

“A Light in the Water”*

Thunderheads icebergs

A formation of geese

strike

equals crash

in Alaska / tailwind

toll

a go-around missed approach

we do not withstand

dominoes

falling

at V

*”You can activate a light in the water by pulling on one of the straps.”

--Stewardess, Delta flight, 1 Nov 06

///

Transponder, my friend

the surface of the Moon, innumerable

Fixed Stars, in Nebulae, and above all

in FOUR PLANETS

swiftly revolving

-over the maw of open ocean

they maintain huge swathes of sky

leanest miles

known to no one before the

Author recently perceived them

and decided that they should

be named

Waypoints

connect-the-dots

///

COVENANT

aviation security, LLC

Invocation:

Screener I D 101194

write for me dangerous drafts

new audience new collaborateur

help in perception

what we all crave

Let us go under

pseudonym

caught in the act

tethered

///

ASTRONOMICAL MESSAGE

Great indeed

to increase

the numerous host

of fixed stars

brain exercise for the hyperlexic

problems memorizing new facts

problems with automaticity

sweet on the cleft palate

of the first fall morning

of “what is far for?” “What daily life meant?”

diving board for other flights

icy sidewalk

-crack in the engine pylon-

as regular as season

most gratifying to the sight

the magnificent -final approach-

ghost ship

The subject itself

///

is indeed great

Great immense Great deserving

Great urgent

while the unaided eye of the passenger

takes her and his sky home

on deplaning

///

Invocation 13

not between beloved beholden but

not beheld behoove not betwixt not bestow

not in between not bequeath --not beheaded but

Given -- not

“created” “consumed” “reduced” “overthrown” phrases of the pseudology

ah poor victim of too much attention

who cometh

climb Who

remembers the 13^th century when

Mongols didn’t like the written word

and the 1^st thing they did when they conquered

was burn all

Black Ops

and the destruction of the museum 2003 AD

///

Brief History of the Sky: A Manual for Air Traffic Controllers

It is well known that brevity is essential to any discussion of the sky. Thus for the

sake of brevity we will divide the sky into its fractions: the Ptolemaic sky, the

afternoon sky, the weatherless sky, the seared sky of summer, the skewered sky of

winter tree tops, brother to the Titian sky, sister to the drawn-out sky, Father of the

perspectival sky, Mother to the smoke-stacked skyline of London in 1870. All of

these skies require further divisions into many more skies that can only briefly be

mentioned or barely even motioned at, here. The drenched sky whose light withers

seeing, skies of insomniacs plastered with sleep, little-known night skies for the

sake of pollination, navigating by fluorescent light the daunted night sky under

which urban cleaning occurs, Athena’s sky palace, the sky whose character alters

according to the ages of ice. This is to divide the sky into some of its many halves,

some of which contain a moon, and some of which understand the moon as a lamp

lit by the night-candler. The night sky as we now know it in major urban electrical

centers, is an infant sky. It has only watched us sleep, lorded over us, posed at

dark, for a mere century and a half, in a futile attempt to persuade its inhabitants to

buy the concept of rest. It is perhaps the briefest of all the brief skies in the history

of skies.

///

Why is any of this important to air traffic controllers? Because air traffic

controllers navigate many skies at once. There is the sky on the screen and that is

the fastest sky ever to burn --strung up by an umbilicus of connected dots: one dot

is the pilots voice, another the pilots eyes, another the air traffic controller’s voice

and the fourth leg is the air traffic controller’s eyes. All of these, far more than the

jet engine shoving air out of its path at such high speed that the plane creates its

own slipstream into which it proceeds forward, keep the plane up. And the sky is

kept up by the same means. There is no other time in history that the sky has been

kept up over the earth in this fashion.

///

INVOCATION 7

Speak pain of the many

headed beast whose hunger and

armor are equal

OF the appearance of guise

who above all overcome death

and appear in life a resurrection of the

insulting laws of the elements

Speak through sinew that binds

the senses to “that tree, that I am” --

I am to the widows peak and

mountain wake

the vivid insults of

vehemence results of the social tangle of the tidal [ideal

The inevitable sentence of fabulous refusal

on the bursting avenida of spring

///

Fresh from a night of robbery (of robbing houses)

my migraine medicine

Channel 9

“To the gate”

“Charlie Charlie 2 5 right”

“Charlie 8 just called for a push”

“304 to push alpha”

Commander first Officer, “I need that push tail left”

“One one thousand

eleven thousand

thirty six thousand for one three thousand”

“UA 89 we’re at fifteen thousand”

“UA 89 maintain one two six eight five two”

“Okay flight UA 89”

“Good afternoon What’s your mock speed?”

“250 unable to 80166”

“Okay United 250 stay at normal speed if you need us to go faster we’ll have to go down”

“UA 304 try to maintain ….”

“What’s your point mock….”

“We’re climbing 8030”

///

King of the Fixed Stars

“The months had fed the passion of the sun

And now his burning breath assailed the soil.

The tiger heats prowled through the fainting earth

All was licked up as by a lolling tongue.

The spring winds failed: the sky was set like bronze.”

--Sri Aurobindo, Savitri

concordance lyra “For overturn on the light-lifting wings of a dragonfly is not more swift”

--Simonides

No Wonder

“Wet your lips with wine now

for the dogstar, wheeling up the sky

brings back summer, the time all things….”

swerve

///

Brief History of the Sky, continued

Go fishing in the sky and you will find many methods and tools. Any, every sky, use to be suspended by shout. “Praise to the skies” -- the sky inhaled up, then named for breath become divine. Listen to the methods of the sky, tracking thought so close on its tail, shadowing the animal so that it is seen and feels itself discovered around each bend but not catchable not even a goal. The only point to strip away the bark get close to the quiet wake that covers one and the next as all prepositions drop out revealing what was once said. Those that remain in repose but overshadowed by examples of overshadowing: what is more verbose than a subject and predicate and yet they pare it down as if an x-ray could walk and talk: punctuation -- the constellations served up.

Each tale cracked the code but showed us that grammar itself could not be broken

Now they crack the code but show us that the sky itself is broken and remade daily

As constellations dim or lose their names, Doctors of air traffic control invite us to revisit the many moons of method. Each moon marks a time of day, night, country or century. According to the moon, they say. In accord with the moon, some say. The many hungry moons, is said.

///

Invocation 9

Speak Menemsyme of

contraction and its many cat plays

Speak the diction of pain its many

refusals to speak

Speak or show your teeth teeth

fang of condensation of ice’s seize

Ice ugly shepherd

blind water leads Drink tell tale told

Drink contraction ugly decorative remodel

ugly memory remodel

If each family is their own army

Then

Off in the distance Pretoria is a swimming pool

///

But “First I Dream”

--after Sor Juana

Pyramidal, doleful, mournful shadow _ _ _ _

[Cylindrical fruitful doleful clock

seasonal nurse

quizzical ghost

hour

shape kind of feel of

4 syllables attention attention thing

///

Falling Objects

If one gives us music

the other ear turns it to air

which to worship ear or air

In the dark before that is not it

rummaging for

an object

said where

the sun is the center --why doesn’t the moon fall out of the sky

well we wither

well we alter well

and unto alarm’s sunder

we edit so much

throwing bones outside

the casting circle

high winds on a man in a tower while the earth rushes through its errands

on a train moving 19 point five miles per second

But I who have tested the sun

///

rest with it

whose agreement is ours

while planets spin around us

a bird leaves its branch

outstripping worms to the west

in a flight for north and eastward worms

sees over these problems

dropping fast through rotation

as if orbit is not our venue

or supposition easy prey

to a bird hanging on for dear life

lets go for an instant

yet is not lost forever

sings gaily instead

a little anthem of rest

being heavy braves the elements

on hollow bones braves

our oldest ancestor

inertia

///

inherits stillness

how can there be such thing as

feather

fine print

package deal

how many spheres

where is our word

for the uncountable

In Fair And Graceful Exchange the earth

pays dues to the feudal moon

earthshine on the face

otherwise in debt’s shadow

///

How I loop the loop

When Bitterjuice the lion wraps its tail

around the sun we call it

eclipse

The three stars of Orion’s belt are zebras

failed hunting failed hunted the stars are

before us and may pursue

sun rise moon set spine bending tree falling

and so June

7,000 years ago

also called

the remains of that sky

air ruins

in Timbuktu

///

Night letters*

-- of gloves and masks

-coils of barbed wire

strung among the clouds- virtual crowns of thorns

-restricted firmament- halo

here runway whisperer

-in the clutches of wake-

Above the shrill voice of the cicada

turbo drones

cockpit to cabin calls

wish in noise inaudible

If conversation is

source

then dream is the outsourcing

people example

who only talk with food in their mouths

a language of warble

stranger water

has visited us here

suffocating under

gratitude’s burden

* Letters left in mosques to warn of impending violence

///

Luck

Camp Echo [at] Guantanamo [true]

is not our dozen

eggs made of wood

these our vitamins

Go down

down to the troubled

waters

waters made of wood

scavenge dust devil haze

legroom collateral cotton wool

VVVVVVVV Visibility

Amendment 2

stapled to vigilance

pseudonym

collaborator

my +

CAVOK

METAR

///

two brothers went

to dress security up

omni directional

tailwind

auto land

Blind city

seeing sky above

Spoilers so

the dominoes start falling

knots, miles, kilometers, -the quibla

shortest measure to Mecca-

tryst at latitude’s longitude

let us meet

at “fixes”

waypoints-in-space

///

SCROD

BOSOX

five letter monikers outfield’s reason

exit up

naked eye

///

______________________________________________________________________

Page Breaks are indicated with the following sign ///

-- All text in italics is from The Starry Messenger, by Galileo, Venice 1610

-- All text in dashes derived from Ask The Pilot, Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel, by Patrick Smith; Riverhead Books, New York, 2004.

STARRY MESSENGER is forthcoming in 2009 as the book AERODROME ORION & STARRY MESSENGER from Kelsey St Press, Berkeley, California.

Translated into Greek by Vassilis Manoussakis

Susan Gevirtz