Wednesday, October 29, 2025

Links in the Merlin Double Helix Chain

The Flying Bellinis, hand to wrist
above the big tent sawdust,
know the continuum of daredevil “ahhh!”
from night to night, from father to son.
The daisy chain’s endless green and white
tied together with matrimonial bands
stop and start, dip and chart
the Billboard hippie fest—can you dig the light,
man and wife spawning the generational heart?
Watch Whitman stitch the leaves of grass,
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry before the lilacs bloom
in the dooryard when Lincoln heaves the torch.
Most of all, Joyce riverrun past Eve and Adam's,
and the first shall be last and the last
shall be first—oh I’m talking syntax and pages
that loop like gyres, and to every season,
there is pern, pern, pern, Seeger and Yeats
says Qoheleth: live, die, plant, reap,
laugh, weep, and dance under Scottish Skye
to the music of the spheres still spinning
despite Galileo’s culling of cepheid stars.
Uther Pendragon begets, and the once and future
marries Guinevere again and again and again,
while Lancelot, the queen’s joyous guard,
finds a way to split the round, pierce her mound
every time. Place your bets on the neon ground.
Which brings us to Merlin, the master hook and wheel
who pivots and joins the constellations nine
with magic born of Barnum and Igraine.
To every sex and seed there is a reason,
a time and purpose under heaven for lay, laid, and lain.
It’s coffeehouse beat, a Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg howl.
I am, you are, he she it is the Walrus
disguised by the mystery tour’s Franciscan cowl.
Be off now. Get with child a mandrake root.
All the stones are one. All the stones are one.
Let us start when everything’s begun.

~William Hammett


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