Gold Bug Variations

ARIA

The Perpetual Calendar

I.

What could be simpler? Four

scale-steps descend from Do.

Four such measures carry over

the course of four phrases, then home.

At first mere four-ale, the theme swells

to four seasons, four compass points, four winds,

forcing forth the four corners of a world

perfect for getting lost in

or for filling, by divide and multiply.

Four secret letters, tetragrammaton,

start to speak themselves, the tune

doubling down a net of no return.

What could be simpler? Not even music

yet, but only counting: Do, ti, la, sol.

Believing their own pulse, four tones

break into combinations, uncountable.

II.

From language to life is just four letters.

How can that awful fecundity come

from four semaphores, shorthand and dumb,

nothing in themselves but everything?

Gene-raining cascade, proliferating green

tints, varieties senseless except for their own

runaway joy in the explosion. Fresh phloem-

pipes, palisades, leaves ripe for insect-aping.

All patterns patented: gyro, chute, receiver,

fish that track ocean back to first stream

or steer pitch black by trapped bacterial beams.

Can egg-chaos really be all the blueprint needed

to father out this garden-riot from just seed?

No end to the program except a breaking out

in species-mad experiment, sense-shattered shout,

instruction-torrent: live, solve, copy This, repeat.

III.

Two men, two women, their requisite friends,

acquaintances, strangers and impediments,

two couples at arm's length of thirty years bend

in ascending spiral dance around each other.

All four have traveled far from home

and, in the hour when they need it most,

the grace of reference works won't come

to cure the persistent call of tonic.

"Picture those pay telescopes," he said,

"that sprout up at scenic views. Ten cents,

a minute's panorama, then it snaps dead.

Clicks shut. Cut off. And you with no more change."

All four must make a full tour of the curse,

and deep in variation, for a moment, lose

the four-note theme, sight of each other, worse,

Drowned by the pump and swell, the flood of dates.

IV.

The calendar's fresh beauty is how it runs

through perpetual days, calling us on

to the urgencies of life science, old names,

genus, species: May Thirds, March Twenty-ones.

Everything that ever summered forth starts

in identical springs, or four-note var-

iations on that repeated theme: four seasons,

four winds, four corners, four-chambered heart

in four desire-trapped bodies in the thick

of a species-swarmed world where green thrills

to countless change while the calendar holds still.

Winter works again, through autumn's politics,

its call to action, critical count of votes:

Look, speak, add to the variants (what could

be simpler?) now beyond control. How can we help

but hitch our all to these mere four notes?