Paul Wittgenstein returned from war,
feeling half a man.
He had fought his nations’ battles
at the cost of his right hand.
The loss of an appendage
scars anyone, its true.
Paul was a pianist-.
With just one hand what could he do?

Paul Wittgenstein was fortunate
Having Ravel for a friend.
A confidante of Gershwin,
He said Paul would play again..
He wrote a sweet piano piece
To be played with just one hand.
If you close your eyes and listen
You would never guess his plan.
A composer of precision,
With a jazzy playful side,
His left handed concerto
Was one to make the angels cry

Paul Wittgenstein took to the stage
A sea of faces looking on.
He played the piece so brilliantly
None guessed his hand was gone.
Not until he left his seat
To bow to their applause
Some gasped in their astonishment,
But most just cheered and roared.



Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand is one of the most brilliant and important of 20th-century concertos for any instrument. Composed for Paul Wittgenstein, a pianist who lost his right arm during World War I, there is no way by simply listening that you would ever know its secret. Both of Ravel's concertos were heavily influenced by jazz--possibly also by his acquaintance with Gershwin--and successful performances must combine his customary precision with a certain ability to "swing" the tunes. --David Hurwitz

Our language can be seen as an ancient
City—pace Wittgenstein—who  
Surely meant a baptized city, for
The names come only with the blessing…

And even though he boards in Muzot, finds
A seat with a window so he can watch
The rain, a pad and pen and swollen eyes—
His naming is no longer for the living,
He knows that. Squatting, old, narrow-gauge trains:
He studies his reflection in the dark tunnels
In the glass: There is swelling, that
Awful puffiness, rust in the throat…
Mimetic passion, not rocket science.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
    I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
    To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
    To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
        While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
                In such an ecstasy!
    Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -
        To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thus Keats, who, he reminds himself, wrote:
the rude
Wasting of old Time -with a billowy main,
A sun, a shadow of a magnitude.
Yet still it rains; the rails, become archaic
Through the Goddard Pass,
His final way of seeing mountain peaks .
In 1926 as the snow melts…
He stops.
The correspondence…

Tsvetayeva has written:  
Your name is poetry! Exclaims:
Your name is poetry! But she always
Exclaims—
May I hail you like this!
Your baptism was the prologue to
The whole of you!

It even smells of death in this train. Dead mice
Under the seats. Why would Marina think
Of baptism here, his baptism?
Herr
Rilke, may I help you?
For baptism
Read death, read mort, but not for ‘mortal’, for
A mort is only played if some music
Is needed at the blessing. Mort:
A horn will sound announcing death,
A horn to announce a new beginning,
Of a life’s deep death in deep
Snow…wolves abound…and not a perfect trip
Through the Alps…

Marina Leukemia on his
Baptism into the ancient city:
Herr Rilke your very name
Is a poem. You are a phenomenon
Of nature. The poet who comes after you
Is you.

My dear, Rainer; my soul, my Maria,
My blood coagulates and sinks
Into the snow. I take to my heart:
One poet only lives, and now and then
Who bore him, and who bears him now, will meet.


And never meet. (There is one only) in
A lightning field, canaries in a cage—
How could we meet?
The world betrays us,
I know, for a field of fire, for poetry
Is correspondence from a great distance
Made only greater by our love.
Great honor, great poet,
(signed) Not for reading. Marina.

(July, 2009)

Father James took
you and Gareth
and George
postulant monks

to a convent
in Newport
he had mass to serve
and confessions

to hear
so you were all
shown into a parlour
with the smell

of home bake bread
and starched sheets
and a young nun
came in

carrying a tray
with teapot
and cups
and sugar bowl

and jug of milk
all in a dull white
and as she set
the tray down

on the table
her eyes moved
from each one of you
taking in no doubt

young novices
in the training
the plain clothes
the black and white

the neat cut hairs
the shaven chins
and then she smiled
and went her way

no wiggling of hips
or female sway
carrying the tray
and Gareth spoke

of Wittgenstein
and the Tractatus
Logico Philosophicus
while George took in

the tidiness
of the room
the ****** smell
the taste

of aging flesh
while you half listened
on Wittgenstein
and the scent

of passing youth
remembering
the young nun’s smile
awaiting truth.

You followed Julie
in and out
of book shops
along Charing Cross Road

watching
as she picked out
a book to view
a few pages

or run a thin finger
down the book’s spine
studying her face
as she took out

a Sartre or Wittgenstein
her eyes running
along the lines
mouthing the big words

she talking
of her parents
the doctors
how they were pretty much

shot out of the sky
when they discovered
she was stabled up
in some hospital wing

for drug plunging
or pill popping
and you should have seen
my mother’s face

she said
like daddy
had ****** her ****
she picked out

a book by Schopenhauer
the old philosopher’s face
on the cover
staring out

you searched her eyes
the depth of them
the colour
the changing hue

from what appeared
green to blue
and green again
or so it seemed

when have you got
to be back
in the hospital?
you asked

6pm or so
she muttered
pushing the book back
on the shelf

wiping her hands
on her jeans
her small ****
indicating their presence

as she moved
toward you
what are your parents
going do about you?

you asked
keep out of sight
of their posh friends
say I’m abroad

or someplace else
you noticed her lips
as she spoke
her tongue

moving over them
like some waking snake
then she moved on and out
of the shop

and along the road
you kept up beside her
sensing her hand
seeking yours

taking one
of your fingers
she put it
to her mouth

and gave a ****
and eyed you
sideways on
with that grin

she sometimes wore
that young middle class
English  girl
playing the *****.

Eliot, Wittgenstein, Melville
J.K. Rowling, James Joyce, Confucius
Possibly even Shakespeare (a good guess)

Teachers teach.
Professors profess.

I. You wrote no manuscripts but somehow, whenever I move to inch myself over the sofa, I can feel your soft blow indent me over the edge of this quiet. The quiet disquiets the quiet – is something you would have said over *******, over lamenting the death of a lamppost outside, over wanting to be stranded underneath the awning of a dilapidated canopy of trees outside. Over the slowdance and the turntable, over Belle and Sebastian.

II. I left the faucet running just in case you were to be awakened by a myoclonic ****. It helps to hear the sound of water gushing as it protrudes calmness. I would have intruded you, but your absence first lifted into the vacuity of rooms unspoken of. I inspected the impressions left on the bed and left the tousled sheets as they were. Questions discerned. Answers disarmed. Somewhere between inquiry and certainty, there is a body hauled right out of the alarming bedazzlement. We were both gutting each other as the light from the television spilled right onto our naked bodies, stuck in a fucklock. And then I got up to the slain body of the morning.

III. I muse you over Wittgenstein – separated by a makeshift bookshelf. I felt a revulsion for slender straps for watches. The face you wore that day was white. Now you’re as pale as a July tapestry.

IV. I bought new venetian blinds today.

V. Somewhere along the steep ***** I heard the machination of an arrival. The dogs were randy outside. It must be you, approaching. I fingered the slats to reveal a little source of Sun. It was the daily paper. I have forgotten all arrivals are the same.

VI. If I were to blueprint this house with my sentiments – we would be sleeping apart. Your bed, of cold metal. Mine, of sandalwood. Erasures last longer than revisions. I know your presence as the familiar clangor of the same instruments you use for preparations are the same ones fondled. Right after the investigation, your immaculate neglect transfers itself into a sly translation of perfume from a day’s work, winnowing my faculties.

VII. I made a blueprint of this house with my sentiments – you somewhere in the outskirts of town, I deep within the suburban. I have a question for balconies I do not want to answer. At what height should be a balcony situated? What if the scrumptious fall is but elevation?  Will the intensity of the Sun pulverize the very fixated shadow on the corner of my parched shoulder? If not, should I take the balcony down?

I wanted to revise the blueprint, but no. Erasures last longer than revision – I dream of cities expunged
when the day ends.

Only, Aitia tells us, she who claims
     credit in the annals f'good and ill,
        claim and blame, remaining both
           cause and effect.

Fectual efforting securing hope to evidence,
edification using squared and plumbed walls,
Luther's vision of the mighty fortress, Oral's
Christ 900 feet tall, not knocking
on the U.N. building, but holding
the financially afflicted
threatening to flop

City of Faith Medical Center, vision,
not apparition, Magi distinction, imagined
an image seen where only the imagination
can picture it, whatever it may become if done.

The Media mocked the vision, for being mental.
The Ecclesia mocked not the ancient seer's art.
The Faithful mocked the enemy of such prophecy.
---------------

------------
Uncle Toby spared a fly.
Ben wondered with one resurrected.
Who was the one in Wittgenstein's bottle?
-------------
**** the pesky rotters.
National Myths are sacred.
Allegiance before education, insist.

- peace planted from good seed
- **** to one is mustard to another

The economy of war,
the ecology of psyche maladaption
re developed fundamental certainty,

family safety, reliable local forces, home
feeling, full smile face felt at the recollection,

where the heart is, always, was the saying,
home, is there, at the very centermost pillar
holding all any actual hero stands under, bowed,

as Atlas actually holds up Uranus, the sphere
of heaven, from the inside, one must imagine,
from the old told tale
of how the Greeks agreed,
what to **** for, proudly
about the fickle pride
of contentious gods,

we become an aggregated immovable force.

Boom it's 1995, and Newt is teaching history.

Wall-builders Ministry, believing Ezra, yes,
who struck the deal with the old tale, yes,
we can serve as middle men, Nehemiah,
has a cadre under oath to the city, yes,
Jerusalem, since Melchizidek, we serve
the unspeakable name in which we trade
our hearts and minds for the hope of glory/

And all the money in the world, or else.

Dystopian Peace pass, hard climb,
milk and honey on the other side.

Id-entity
I'd imagin'd e'goes,
we'd say, or coulda said,
suppose we got a super ego

I am.
Being, we all agree, we
are, collectively imagined weforms,

whatsoever we agree to, and reality
confirms, ever where we look we see,
we have at some point past agreed, it's
this state, inner and outer, seening using
mortal impetus and wondering what if it

is perceived as proprioceptive, where is now
at the speed of thought we use to read

at a distance, spooky, single point per-
fection piercing all we ever infect
for war, inflaming the pierced
weform superior I, plural I,

we all respond, and I, and I,
we can take the land, ah,
we have imagined that

just and right, same rights used
to take away the buffalo, and make
the top soil blow away, just a hundred
years ago, many lifetimes, just now, not
yet so dim a product of proclaimed rights,

opposed, by possessors using first claims,
ignoring earlier infectious pride methodology,

to make believe, be sure your story
cannot be denied, be very sure,
your worth, on balance, trial
bit by bit, against the weight,
of a Morgan Silver Dollar,

sure, who could not throw such a dollar
across any river in Arizona, any little leaguer
who made the team, even some who didn't,

so what if George Washington did that, we
all could, but who would?

A silver dollar back then, really, who would
throw a dollar away?

-------------
Take my time, for yours,
use it to think some more

little lies, little foxes, cunning
creations of the collective mind,

loosed on mission, to spoil the vines.

Preventing sour grapes or sweet, suppose,
the nonsense can be seen as animation,
the symbolized reality seen so easy,

we live long after shadow puppet operas,
we live in days of Slime Rancher and D&D,
we live future lives, using literal magic, letters,

as I write, I know, I think cognate thoughts, same
as you, my unseen reader writing at tensest instant
as we converge in gaseous weform, mere words, once

upon just such a time as this, a holy sacred secret got
out and about in the Zeitgeist, via paper based media,
from Pergamum, the library there, where the evidence

was, ah, was, and if we knew now, what we could have
known then, as it ever is, we wistfully acknowledge,
ignorance serves to balance innocense, knowledge,
itself being likely that which your holy book forbids.

----------------------
Tiers,
terraced gardens,
told of to desert children,

first feel the letting, feel ef said,
effing effort letters feel form said,
as my momma read, to me, a story,

about a flat-bottom boat, on a river,
and I imagined that it must have been,

a good winter, for a river to float a boat,
with a good dozen men in it, but, as a boy, 'y
biggest river I ever saw was the Sandy in spring.

Tractors crossed it easy.

Well, dusty old memorabilia, tech too few kept,
100 meg Zip disc Bernoulli multi plane read writes

Holding the work of many days, months, years agone,

decay from inaction all the coherence gets unsticky

at the tensest instant, when the servers were down,
down near the base of the race to these weapons,
of mass construction, messaging face to face,
angelic, in spirit and function, letting letters
form words instantly transmitted and, if
we wish to, instantly translated, and

then, we slow, go into thick thought mode,
sticky wadded up threads of all we thought,

ought to have
known, having been
shown, this is the way…
'e, eh
says the spider to the fly, oh,
no,
Ich bin Wittgenstein, kommen Sie.

He spoke of love
And dead men’s ease,
Of those Degas paintings
And young dame’s knees,
He thought of logic

And Wittgenstein,
French food and Spanish wine,
Smoked cigars
And bedded ******
He spoke with girls

And college bores,
He kissed and laughed,
And occasionally bathed
With those he loved
And thought of much

Like him and her
And such and such
And others whose names
He’s quite forgotten
Whom he treated well

Or treated rotten
Or never treated at all
But let them fall
From grace of God
To whom he seldom prayed

And rarely trod.
He spoke of hate
And dead men’s grief
And waited death
And death’s relief.