.

For Dorothy

I have at times sat silent in this chair
And furtively cast looks about the room
Admiring, or to jot a mental note
Of someone’s beauty—eyes or shape or hair.

But you were silent also, and my stare
Evoked from you no comment or a glance.
There was some purer strain, some mystic charm
That held my interest, but I did not dare

To drop a hint that you and I might care
To speak. Instead I cherished what I saw:
Something dimly bright—a votive candle
That burns in a distant recess, far and rare.

.

.

Satan’s Consolation of Adam

Softly, softly steal away all hopes
That were not of her, and her fleshly love.
The heaven-visions fade and angels flee
Leaving behind the sanction of her lips.

There is no mercy, nor divine forgiveness—
Only the final forfeit of all life
Beyond the pulsing tenderness of now,
Beyond the silken softness of her breasts.

There is no wisdom, neither are there words:
Only the soundless savor of new fruit
Living within the arbor of her flesh
Blessed with the gift Come eat of me, and live…

Let silence hover dreamlike over all
The empty chapels of old faith and hope:
Old gardens now, the mossy ruins that serve
No more the service of forgotten gods.

.

.

The Conquest of Mexico

The steep, tiered pyramid of sacrifice
Is washed in heart’s blood, and the noonday heat
Can barely dry it all; the stones are slick.
The high priest raises his obsidian knife
And skulls are piled in mounds, like well-stacked bricks.

The Spanish Dons, with morions and matchlocks,
In a flurry of their crisp Castilian
Decree the sacramental elevation—
The substitution of the Lamb of God:
Vicarious, almost bloodless, and mimetic.

.

.

Joseph S. Salemi has published five books of poetry, and his poems, translations and scholarly articles have appeared in over one hundred publications world-wide.  He is the editor of the literary magazine TRINACRIA and writes for Expansive Poetry On-line. He teaches in the Department of Humanities at New York University and in the Department of Classical Languages at Hunter College.

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28 Responses

  1. Jeremiah Johnson

    “Satan’s Consolation” – So temptingly sweet to grieve in this fashion. From a friend, it would seem comforting, and I like how you only highlight the underlying insidiousness with the title.

    I can’t think of Satan communicating with Adam without this poem coming to mind:

    https://poets.org/poem/conundrum-workshops

    P.S. – I thought Evans’ Reynolds pic was perfect for “For Dorothy”

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Kipling’s poem about the conundrum of the workshops is a true poet’s scoff at the ideological need to shackle “Art” (always with a capital A) to some preconceived ideological agenda or doctrinal orthodoxy.

      Reply
  2. Rohini

    All amazing, provocative poems. The image evoked by: ‘Something dimly bright—a votive candle/ That burns in a distant recess, far and rare.’ For me, beautiful.

    Reply
  3. C.B. Anderson

    The first poem, with its sandwich stanzas, is surely flank verse on RhYmE bread.

    The second poem is difficult to nail down and might be the most evocative poem I have ever read. I’ve read it several times now, and the feelings just don’t go away.

    In the third poem, there we have it! — the true conquest of Mexico wasn’t so much about the Spanish military.

    My opinions are provisional and subject to revision.

    Reply
  4. Joseph S. Salemi

    Many thanks, Kip, and you’re right about that “flank verse.” I was having trouble and decided on an AxxA rhyme scheme. I think it turned out pretty well.

    The second poem is one of my brief dramatic monologues from unexpected characters. What would the Devil say to Adam after the fall of man? How would he console the guy? What would the Devil’s viewpoint be? The “her” with her fleshly love and silk-soft breasts is Eve; the “arbor” of her flesh is the new garden where Adam must dwell now; and the gift of “Come eat of me, and live” is Eve’s siren-song when she presents him with the forbidden fruit. The last quatrain is a kind of dirge for man’s lost religious stature, but in the mouth of the Devil it’s really saying “Forget all that stuff now… it’s over and done with.” Paradise is now just “old gardens.”

    The last poem is indeed about a religious conquest rather than a military one. The Spanish Dons have morions and matchlocks, but the real change is from a truly bloody sacrifice of humans to the vicarious sacrifice of Christ, which is seen mimetically, but is still actually bloody because of the transubstantiation of the altar wine to His blood.

    Reply
  5. Margaret Coats

    I admire the quiet ending and the distancing as “For Dorothy” ends. These give the reader a sense of the entire scene (including the speaker) as something worth closer attention. “Satan’s Consolation” offers two truths about the Father of Lies. He always presents his way as best because he can make it seem the most up to date, and he is a purveyor of dreams properly called fantasies. “The Conquest of Mexico” contrasts the value of blood in contrasting cultures. For this, it is important to mention that, at first, the Spanish with weapons decree the almost bloodless sacrifice. As Bishop David Arias said long ago in his book, The Spanish Roots of America, the dons had a single motive that is always dual: conquest and conversion. You show it well in few words, Joseph.

    Reply
  6. Sally Cook

    Joe, I have never seen such poems from you, or such mysticism. Of them all I prefer the one about Dorothy – unresolved longing; beautiful shining. Mysticism. The last two lines say it all for me.
    Are these recent works? I hardly know what to say – You have moved to another level, and words fail me, which, for me is saying a lot.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Sally, the poems are old (from the early 1970s), so they are the work of a very young man who had an eye for beautiful women, but whose desires often took the sublimated shape of poetry. That was me a long time ago.

      Reply
      • Sally Cook

        Joe, in any case they are lovely, Some of my best paintings were made during the seventies; I had a lot to learn but these were quick, sure and incisive. A painting would grow, like a seed, in my mind, and then burst forth. I once had to give a lecture and needed a painting to illustrate a point. So, I stayed up all night and made the painting.
        Sold it in December of last year for a good price. Its message had not diminished. You are what you are at a given time; can not be anything else. Art is art and has something to say. If it doesn’t, well, it isn’t art. What I said still stands.

  7. jd

    All three are lovely and say so much in their
    small spaces with beautiful language. Thank you also to Jeremiah Johnson for the link to
    another beautiful poem.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you, jd. I’m glad that after all these years the poems still can evoke some feelings.

      Reply
  8. Roy E. Peterson

    “For Dorothy” is a beautifully wrought disclosure of sneaking a peek at someone with allure in an attempt to memorize the visual sensations that present themselves. This could happen anywhere: a hotel lounge, an airport, a convention, or a congregation. As mentioned in another comment above, I am particularly enamored with the last verse in which a decision to speak or only continue to observe is made. “Dimly bright-a votive candle” is an inspired phrase that sears itself into the mind.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you, LTC Peterson. I barely remember Dorothy — she was an undergraduate at Thomas More, the women’s college at Fordham. Very lovely, very quiet and reserved, and very shy. This poem’s scene is in Fordham library’s reading room.

      Reply
  9. Brian A. Yapko

    All three of these poems are terrific, Joe, for different mystical reasons. The poem “For Dorothy” puts this desired young lady on a pedestal. By doing so, although she remains out of reach, she also gains a certain immortality — you’ve imparted the idea of her with spiritual significance — that votive candle, that far, rare light etc. It’s truly beautiful.

    “Satan’s Consolation of Adam” is a perfect Screwtape-like manipulation of Adam with seductive justification for a carnal life very different from the innocence of Eden. But this poem goes beyond Screwtape into a competing realm of spiritual beauty made manifest IN flesh rather than by its transcendence. When Satan talks of old faith and empty chapels, he is offering a substitute: a new life which negatively parallels the new life that Christ will offer many bible books away from Genesis. Your Satan is a frighteningly smooth talker.

    “Satan’s Consolation” connects nicely with “The Conquest of Mexico” which also addresses old and new faith but finds surprising connections between the blood-savagery of the Aztecs and the Christian who drinks the blood of Christ. Similarities or merely echoes? There is something deeply archetypal about the offering of blood across civilizations. But the distance between the religious paradigms of the spiritually bankrupt Aztecs and the conquering Spanish Catholics is as far as the east is from the west.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you for this, Brian. Let me add one thing about the first poem: in traditional religious iconography, the image of a single burning candle represents the presence of God. If I did put Dorothy on a pedestal, with a votive candle, it may have been a way to turn my fleshly desire into a sublimated prayer.

      As for the second poem, yes — it is deliberately carnal. When Eve says “Come eat of me, and live…” it is meant as a direct sexual invitation, where the offering of a fruit to Adam is also a candid proposition. In many traditional poems, the taking of fruit is a common metaphor for sex. The Devil is telling Adam that a new world of erotic sensual pleasure is now open to him.

      The third poem is the simplest — as you point out, it touches on the parallels and connections between differing kinds of blood sacrifice across cultures. What I deliberately did in the poem was to emphasize the idea of “lifting up.” The tiered pyramid is high, the Aztec high priest raises the sacrificial knife, the victim’s excised heart is lifted up to the sun, the skulls are piled up high like bricks, and the Catholic mass has an elevation of the Host.

      Reply
  10. Paul A. Freeman

    Dorothy reminded me in the atmosphere created of the Wordsworth’s ‘Lucy’ (I think it was) poems, what with the sense of longing and loss.

    Satan’s Consolation was interesting. To put yourself in Satan’s shoes and make him sound almost human as he commiserates with Adam while reveling in his victory was quite amazing to me and well worth revisiting since each read reveals a little more.

    The Conquest of Mexico had me recalling the Mel Gibson directed film ‘Apocalypto’, one of the most exciting, thought-provoking and original films I’ve ever seen. To reveal any more would invite spoilers.

    Thanks for the reads, Joseph.

    Reply
  11. Daniel Kemper

    Hi Joe,

    Well, you know that I obsessed over the meter and rhyme… Here it comes, right? Wait, wait, I am a fan of iconic theory when well used. It is not well used, and yet lauded, far more often than it is well used and lauded. Your poem, no surprise, uses it well to my way of thinking and should be lauded. I think this is my favorite poem of yours.

    A common theme in your work involves the tension between things being beautiful/sublime and things being messy/earthy, and the value you find in each. Or a focus on the lackings of the converse, things that are merely austere, not sublime, but pretend to the sublime through the veneer of a certain kind of idealism. And the other converse, as free verse is most often guilty of, things that are messy/earthy but not in any well-written way that engages our earthy senses well. I’m not sure I could think of more important themes to engage.

    This is a quintessential piece of work that engages those issues, in my opinion. My absolute favorite thing was the tactical choice of the AxxA rhyme. The sublime bookends, the messy heart in-between. The tension of holding in the admiration made palpable by the A rhymes and the run-away feelings on the xx non-rhymes. And all bound together in the stanzas they way they are bound together in fully human beings.

    The final stanza really captures it. The votive candle, which is itself a moving flame within the unmoving way, is in the recesses of the xx lines, landing on the final shimmering rightly unexplained final image, leading us away from the poem in reverie as the speaker is led away into reverie.

    In short, I found it a multi-level use of iconic theory, and really slick. Looking back, my overkill description of it might be overbearing rather than just appreciating it. So I think I’ll stop now. And just appreciate it.

    –Sorry, falling off the nerd-wagon again: One other weird and wonderful thing about this poem was the “v” sound. Somehow that hung very sweetly in my ear so that “furtive” lingered just long enough to connect with “evoked,” which in turn lingered just long enough and at just the right distance and pace somehow to produce “votive.” That was great.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you for the appreciation and analysis, Daniel. Ernest Dowson believed that the sound represented by the letter “v” (a voiced “f”) was the most beautiful in our language. He would say that the best concatenation of words he ever composed was “the violet, the viol, and the vine.”

      Reply
  12. James Sale

    These are all highly wrought and beautiful pieces, but my favourite is Dorothy: the simplicity of diction and of rhyme, but at the same time a concentrated and winding syntax that leads you on to the final denouement. The power and the craftsmanship in this is usually completely overlooked. As Winifred Nowottny commented, “Of all the elements necessary to make an utterance meaningful, the most powerful is syntax, controlling as it does the order in which impressions are received and conveying the mental relations ‘behind’ sequences of words … its operation as a cause of poetical pleasure is often the last cause we recognise, if indeed we recognise it at all. The result is that syntax is important to poet and critic because it produces strong effects by stealth; these remain ‘inexplicable’ so long as the power of syntax goes undetected.” Well done Joe: fine, fine poetry.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Many thanks, James. I agree with Nowottny about the primacy of syntax, which is why I believe a solid command of grammar (in all its little by-ways) is essential if one is going to compose really good verse.

      All of this reminds me of something I learned when in England — one job that requires the utmost skill, training, and memory is that of a cabdriver in London. The city is so vast, so complex, so interwoven, and with every street, alley, lane, crescent, and turn bearing a medieval name, that a London cabbie must master a huge quantity of mental luggage before he can qualify to work.

      Reply
      • James Sale

        Indeed, Joe. I was born in London, so complex is a good word, and to extend the metaphor: we are now in the world where Sat Navs and Uber exist – shortcuts that mean drivers (ie. poets) no longer need the knowledge, and so appear to know where they are going, but … don’t!

  13. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Joe, I enjoyed all three, but “Satan’s Consolation of Adam” leaps out at me. The language of seduction is lush and sensuous… and knowing such charm slips from the forked tongue of a serpent sends chills. Words really do cast spells… they coax, they fool, and they’re successful in ruling the multitudes. Thank you!

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Susan, I’m glad that you liked the poems. I was a very young man of 22 when I wrote that poem about Satan, and you know how powerful an obsession sex is with guys of that age.

      Reply
  14. Michael Pietrack

    When I read “For Dorothy,” I thought it was for a stranger. But the , how would you know her name. Then it got me thinking maybe Dorothy is the writer’s wife. A marriage can feel like strangers living together at times. Not sure which reality is true…or neither.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      As I’ve mentioned above in the thread, Dorothy was an undergraduate student at Fordham University. I had only a passing acquaintance with her, and I do not recall her surname.

      Reply

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