Friday Poem: From Aevum Measures by Steven Toussaint

abide more tritone idle mode

because of sin the artisan

   cannot exact

      immaculate

   the transept rose

      in damask steel

   cannot restore

      with faithfulness

   the hawthorn’s point

      to Amor’s nose

   it vanishes

      like God inside the oculus

   or rose’s heart

      cannot impose his art

   on better likenesses

      his compass froze

   his eye is glass

       his clairaudition

   rendered less

      each rose he sketched

   in needless repetition

      what lot is this

   that he alone survive

      the Inquisition

   but cannot make them look

      alive

abide more tritone idle mode

if ear to ear these sins commit

   as shorebird sips

      her scallop

   a peregrine

      hears shorebird sup

   and stoops to her

      non-cochlear

   the only note

      she’d know it from

   diminished

abide more tritone idle mode

the stiff Guidonian finger

   he gave thee it

      to give the fig

   with fists in perfect

      impotence

   that we by rote

      divided both

   the sea the boat

      the hand the shell

   is braced within

      from mi to fa

   our thumbs withdraw

      to strings they are

   made dulcet by

      with dulcimer

   let them combine

      till memory

   commit this thing

      from C to C

   all-flattening