13 February 1689

Narratives of New Netherland
Historical Foot Notes

The Glorious Revolution

Today, all Stuart Kings
and pretenders are lost
in the factories of slave
traders, wool merchants
and gentlemen who husband
pleasure from the labor
of Human Beings.

In the archives of their frenzy
sandbars rage with fragmented
dancers drawn by Degas
into the sidewalk of New York.
Chalk dust from Dover batters
the old graves of common men.

Blood has not changed. Artistry
channels deviation as totem,
no, delusion of quick thought.

1989 is three hundred years
after the Houses of Orange
and Hanover came to govern
Great Britain and end Divine Right,
and the absolute rule of Kings
and Queens who by their oath
could murder without reason.

Ska Nee watches as Degas
chalks musical phrases into
limber bodies that flow with
oceans until lightning cracks
the earth and we pause
before the righteous are chosen.

Ska Nee restores what never happened.
In the Irish mode she dresses fate into maps
that spring with hands to reveal lies.
There can be no absolute truth.

In that vacant space where discovery
circles soldiers and sailors back
to the first woman and man vigorous
as they swim from New York to London.
Human Beings tease the character
of perfect rivers and valleys.
In Nevermore, Eden, Pavonia, Bristol,
London wagons return to Hudson River
for the fault to change patterns
of estuary and its commandments.

Physics is not grammar. Newton is not perfect.
Einstein failed but opened Pandora’s Box
and made her his woman after all.

They waited for tickets in the sun
outside Yankee Stadium while
assorted chicken hawks, grifters
sold warm bear and hot dogs

“History will end. It will stumble
from your kiss to finite world
We will bend lust and root it
as we explore the surface of hell.

Light speeds up too fast out of time in
an impossible axiom to throw magic
sticks into ceramic pots with fossils
scattered and preserved by chance.

We live while radioactive future
sunbathes in its own backyard.

The return will be bitter.
Manitou has grown inpatient
with Swannakens and their sunrise.

He broke their legs and saddled them
with impossible cliffs and imperfect waves.
Ska Nee could not set new heading
without John’s musket of adventure.




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