The Czar

By Blake Townsend Romanov

I have called this book The Czar because, like in Kafka’s references to the emperor, the czar is an emissary of God, or God on earth, but one hidden and beyond the reach of certainty. So this is a book about the uncertainty and unattainability of God. It is a requiem to the promise of a romantic love to last forever, always promised and always withheld. What may be my last book of love poems, at least such commemorative love poems as are written to loves in my wayward past, I have, as usual, committed many poems to the love of God. Though raised in the simplicity of Calvinism, I have developed a love and confess a longing for the ideas and aesthetics of the high churches, the Roman Catholic and its sister church the Byzantine or Orthodox Church of the East. I do not confuse the two but love them separately. I am a lover of Orthodox icons, which in their fidelity to platonic forms, clearly defined shapes, bordered with definite lines, and often in geometrically quantifiable shapes, such as circles, ellipses, and all manner of formulaic curves—in these, I sense eternity and stillness, unchanging from its beginnings. In my poems, I have applied this aesthetic in the form of clear-cut ideas, a tendency away from opacity of image or imagism as it’s sometimes called. There is also presence of the meandering asymmetry or gothic aesthetics of Roman Catholic churches of France and Germany. While I hold fast to ideas, I have employed a winding complexity of word and image in expression of such ideas, a kind of inverted wandering, which I think speaks to the Catholic in me.

I am especially knotted in feelings for this book’s muse, Emily Gray—the only one to receive two books from this struggling poet, the girl I most wanted to marry but did not, one with whom I have lost contact. This, like all the other books, contains both a sinner’s longing for God and an erring lover’s longing for forgiveness—the theme of all five books I have written as Blake Townsend Romanov. It is a name I chose in part as a pun that bespeaks loneliness—Townsend, as in the outskirts of town; Romanov, as in roaming off into the wilderness, perhaps into the sunset like the cowboy heroes of the old Western black-and-white films.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796013238

Blake Townsend Romanov

I am only going to divulge a little biography because I value privacy (enough so that I publish under a pseudonym). I am in my thirties, born and raised in New York City. I am more or less caucasian, a mixture of Irish, Scottish, Russian, Austrian, French Canadian and Swedish. My parents are not native New Yorkers, and I have roots in the West, the South, including New Orleans, and also in Boston. I am to some extent a scion of privilege, having gone to private school, though politically I defy privilege. I am Christian, more or less liberal tolerant Christian, but with some Evangelical fervor behind it all. My favorite metered poet is Ralph Waldo Emerson, and my favorite free verse poet is Wallace Stevens. I also love Emily Dickenson and Edna Saint Vincent Millay is certainly an inspiration. I also love Dylan Thomas, owe a lot to Shakespeare, and am lately given to Robert Lowell. My favorite novel is The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence. I love fantasy novels, such as the Lord of The Rings, and the Earthsea series (I have never outgrown my love of magic and fairy stories). I love nature and have benefited in this respect from my parents' house in the country as well as time spent in communal organic farm settings. I love animals and children and all things that have not been through the assembly line of social consciousness.

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Blake Townsend Romanov.

ISBN:                Softcover                    978-1-7960-1324-5

                          eBook                        978-1-7960-1323-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/11/2020

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

791654

Contents

The Baptism of the Czar

The Poet’s Conundrum

Nightmares

Insomnia Song

The Tinker Of Nod

William Blake

Paul Bowles

Color

The Talk of Lovers

The Dream Of Knowledge

Shiva

Smoke

The Sacred Heart

Sunset

Meditation

Rapunzel

Pipe Dream

Under Our Tree

Morning Song

Man and The World

Delta Wolf

Robin Hood

Trinkets

The Flag

Busy

Invocation

Love Poem

First Sight

Till Death Do Us Part

Forgiveness

Transcendental Romance

Expulsion

Metamorphosis

Conifer

Countenance

Nocturnal Love

A Look

Potter’s Wheel

Gray Eyes

Lesson

Life and Death Struggle

Sonnet to God

The Cloistered Hearth

To Frost Regarding The Thicket

Klimt

Prey

Body Searching

The Subconscious

Musings On Picasso’s Night Fishing At Arles

The Dark Mechanics

Material Beauty

The Philosopher’s Song

Mary’s Cross

Playful

The Child and The Swan

To Vonegut

Sport

Sleeper

Away

Puddles

A Quibble

The New

Kant And The Whirlwind

From Apollo To My Daphne

Pirate

Nirvana

Love-Maker

To Wait

Self-Image

Dylan Thomas—Mort

Day’s End

Cats

Another Rose

Limerick About Poetry

Limerick of London

Call and Answer

Twilight

Time-Passing

Windsong

Window On Motion

The Aged Flowers

Jade

The Blind Lamp

The Bowed Boughs

Musings On The Natural

From Eden To Gethsemane

To Percy Shelley

Flesh

Inner Workings

Form

House Arrest

Mystery

Still Wings

Turning

To Be Seen

Ashes To Ashes

Without Proof

Weaver In The Night

Stone

Iris

Pupil

Lifetime

Opacity

The Sapling

The Volcanic Heart

Rauschenberg

To William Carlos Williams

Love’s Illness

Sun

Moon

The High Places

Stone-Heart

Partial Reflection

The Road Home

Fate

Freedom

Inspired By Houseman

Pine Floor

The Lines Of Your Heart

Conversion

The Christian Heart

To My Aging Love

Detail

Love Song

Geometry of the Heart

Lust

Sorrow

The Patient Heart

In Name

What’s In A Name:

The Maternal Spirit

The Passing Light

Vacancy

Venus De Milo

Mercy

Ring

Hands

The Heath

Small Talk

Chamber

Style

Advice

Pale Blue Eyes

My Father’s Garden

Declaration

Doodle

Mirror

The Evangelist Limerick

Love Over Belief

The Zen Limerick

Zen Archery

The Bohemian Ending

The Ugly

Aphoria

Closer

Harmony

Natural Law

Existentialism

Lonely Evening

The Guarded Heart

Anonymous

Xeno’s Paradox

The Modern

Expectation

Rain In New York

The Tiny Heart

Drear

Plagiarism

To My Lost Daughter

Dinner

Swoon

The Door

Mariache Song

Foreshadow

Love Unspoken

Jesus

The Meaning Of Life

The Old Dandelion

Daydream

For Emily-Venus, Cupid

and Psyche

The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

-Jesus

Every man is a king.

-Huey Long

The Baptism of the Czar

Come each, come all, come from near and from far,

Tonight, behold the baptism of the Czar;

Behold his church, his castle, horse and car.

Ashen skies over great high plains of wheat,

And a pox of stars shining never meet,

Between which we travel to behold the seat

Of power, majesty and peace in a rule,

Of a great nation the most precious jewel,

Who stays the sun and the moon in their dual,

A harbinger of God as in the world,

Now a sweet babe in arms encurled,

But wait for his royal robes to come unfurled

And blanket the land in a heavy snow,

As then his terrible grace we will know.

The Poet’s Conundrum

Can one paint silence even with a word

Or catch a butterfly without a net

Or without an ear know the songbird’s tune?

So all that is to the spirit inured

Must be marked in freedom, to freedom set,

And all the natural is but moving swoon.

Yet by the rider the fleet horse is spurred,

So the sundown sprawl in the heart is met,

And by the wavering eye the pockmarked moon.

Teacher, teacher, of what is there to teach?

But beauty like a worm in dirt works through

A blind path whose end is out of all reach.

Beauty cannot lie and yet is not true,

For it commands the heart yet does not preach.

Nightmares

I don’t know what’s true in the night and can’t.

Without the stars I would not even know

The emptiness of space, only the plant,

So poisonous, of thoughts, moving in tow,

A train of revelers, elves upon leaves,

The spirit of this sickening brew, the fumes

Of dark embers of remembrance; bats weave

Invisible trails in shoddy old looms

Of geriatric physiognomy.

It is a subjectivity inverse,

Attacks itself in wild economy,

As all collapses, thus tapped, must disperse.

The bacchanal of dream and conclusion

Is out for blood, savor of confusion.

Insomnia Song

I sleep in a floral trance not full dark,

The stacked patina of many colors

That paint upon each other half a mark,

Each a stain upon stain upon pallor,

Each an accent without a word complete,

And in such is no escape from my sight,

Where half images with but half thoughts meet,

Behind it all the general callous light.

Not rest nor toil but a kind of steeping,

In arrested musing of childish art,

No relish of waking nor of sleeping,

No epiphany in its quickening