Jamail Center for Legal Research
Tarlton Law Library

The most remarkable pages of the Très Riches Heures are those of the calendar, with their elaborate depiction of the life of man and nature throughout the months of the year.
                                                                                -H.W. Janson, History of Art
 

1.  Janvier

In the cold mouth
of an ancient winter
the calendar begins

a laden table
crowded by tiny dogs
and silken men

delighted
in their fawning
and almost oriental

they bear their gifts
before the duke
before the sun

of his bright fire
his tapestry
a tournament of knights

waving flags
banners and pennants
words woven into air

"approche, approche,"
a courtier calls
the calendar begins

2. Février

Behold the living
huddled world
birds

at the spilled grain
a dozing girl
and two half-naked youths

before the fire
that fold
of close-packed sheep

sturdy
woodsmen wade
through snow

a lady pink-
skirted
homeward goes

the woodchopper
arches
backwards

one almost hears
the impending whisper
of the severed air

3.  Mars

Before spring
comes work
the cursing

plowman at the yoke
oxen sweating
bare brown

earth begging
for plow and furrow
seed and growth

the flowering 
of grapes
the duke will watch

from his big chateau
where everything
he sees is his

except for Melusina
a golden fairy dragon
her extended wings

astonishing 
in the blue skies
above his high towers

4.  Avril

How bright
is silk
in the noonday sun

gold rose
scarlet violet and blue
the bride and groom

family and guests
are bright but do not see
those fishermen

in tiny boats
drawing a net through
silver river water

how like the fisherman
drawing his net
is the artist

how like a pool
of water
is the mind

how like a fish
is a bride 
in glowing silk

5.  Mai

In a wood that is now
a Paris street
the Seine close by

the men on horseback
searching for laurels
in celebration

of inflorescences
births beginnings renewals
and the green

delicate green princesses
in the malachite livery
of spring

are they unconfounded
by the brass trombones
the piercing flutes

the blood-red trumpet blast
the duke's musicians
exhale into the miraculous

springtime air
a fanfare for
the merciless births

6. Juin

These scythers only seem
to dance a dance 
they mow the grass

making hay
they do not think
flesh is grass

they are not like death
they do not dance
some terrible dance of death

or sing a song 
some terrible wailing
song of death

they work
according to the rhythm
of their work

the sounds 
of the whispering
scythes

their only sounds
among the blades
of grass

7.  Juillet

Arcady
is far away
there are no gods

no pipes
no nymphs
there is a shepherd

and a woman
shearing pale-white sheep
the bent mid-summer

reapers reaping
their yellow wheat
their sickles

poised above
unbundled sheaves
and waiting

upon the ground
the staves or crooks
of the shepherd

and that woman
so blue
so beautiful

8.  Août

Wider
where they play
the river

by that company
of august
falconers

invites sporting 
naked peasants
divers

disturbing nothing
but the water
her bare feet

dangle
from the riverbank
as she strips

beside the waters
maybe laughter fills
her painted mouth

with the freedom
of release
the falcons will ascend

9.  Septembre

Again
they will have wine
the purple

Angevin grapes
again
are ripe

gathered
purple masses
in peasants' baskets

or baskets
on that wagon
pulled by brown oxen

or loaded
on the backs
of those donkeys

all too impatient
for harvest's
end

an Angevin
peasant eats
a grape

10.  Octobre

This ancient
impossible wedding
cake

a palace
also called the Louvre
no longer stands

it burned was razed
or just collapsed
its stones

scattered over France
to brace barns
mend pasture walls

maybe a peasant
made a stoop
no wonder

the red harrower
and the blue sower 
scattering winter wheat

ignore that flock
of black and ravenous
birds

11.  Novembre

Hogs among the trees
search out acorns
a harvest

beneath crowded oaks
their branches
heavy with leaves

mostly green
their edges yellow
as fat

brown acorns
littering 
more open ground

are devoured
by another crowd of hogs
greedy unchecked

a swineherd draws back
with a stick
what a picture

ancient oaks
dying leaves
acorns for hogs

12.  Décembre

Speared the boar is
down
the dogs fall

merciless hungry
devouring the body
a huntsman

seizes the head
the drooling head
of a happy dog

to save the boar
the meat
for supper

a second huntsman
holds a spear
the third a horn

are these self-portraits
artist as huntsman
with dogs

a fatal spear
a horn to blow
the mort

To a Sunflower

The maker and breaker of worlds, did He
Linger longer, that third full day,
Indulging some florid fantasy
Creating thee? Or was it, say,
A spur of the moment kind of thing,
An afterthought, a jab of the brush
Against the canvas, an instant's fling
In the fury of that six-day rush?
For the sport among flowers are you,
My striving, gaudy, gaunt princesse- 
Beautiful? No, but this is true:
None can challenge your wild excess.
And so I wonder, do I see
In you the Plan? An accident?
Delightful serendipity
Or the glory of the firmament?

Elegy

     The red-faced British major looked for tigers in the grass, surveying the sometimes marshy grassland beside the Ganges from atop a slow-moving elephant. Despite the advantage of his high perch, the grass here was very tall, and even the brightest orange tiger might hide itself in the thick of it as the hunting party passed. 
     The major's Bengali guide was chattering along with the noisy beaters who worked the grass nearby, their voices raised in loud cackles and calls in an attempt to flush their cautious quarry into the open. It is 1907.
     The major saw a sudden commotion among the beaters just ahead of him, and so he slipped the safety of his rifle to the "off" position in preparation for the kill. 
     No tiger came charging out of the grass. Instead, an excited beater ran up to the front of the major's elephant and began gesturing wildly toward a marshy area nearer to the river, all the while speaking emphatically to the major's guide. 
     "Ducks," the guide explained. 
     "I don't give a damn about ducks," the major said.
     "These are special ducks," said the guide.
     When he saw them, the major had to agree. They were Pink-headed Ducks, always rare, and lately almost never seen. Well did the major know that no hunter worth his salt ever passed up the chance to bag such prized and luminous creatures, despite the fact that the flesh of the Pink-headed Duck was notoriously inedible. 
     The large-caliber rifle he was holding, though, would never do, and so the major moved take up his shotgun instead. 
     But he moved too quickly and dropped the rifle, which misfired when it hit the ground, the major having forgotten to re-set the safety in his excitement.
     Simultaneously with the sound of the gunshot, or so it seemed, the beater who'd found the ducks was struck dead by the bullet, which hit him squarely in the back of the head as he was still pointing to his find.
     "Damn," the major said, certain that all the noise would disturb the ducks.
     To his astonishment, the ducks did not fly away, despite their obvious distress at the sound of the rifle. As fast as he could, the major slipped two shells into the double barrels of the shotgun and then fired each in turn and with imperial accuracy.

     Both birds dropped dead. The acrid smoke rose in slow curls from the barrels of the shotgun in the curious and complete silence that immediately followed the shotgun's final blast.
     When he went to gather up the birds, the major saw why they had not been driven away by the first gunshot. A nest was nearby; within it were three perfectly white and perfectly spherical eggs. He collected the eggs along with the birds and returned to his elephant to resume the hunt.
     Almost as an afterthought, he ordered his Bengali guide to see the burial of the bloody beater.
     Years later, when the red-faced British major was a long-retired major-general and the Empire was fast becoming a memory even as it began to fight its second world war, guests to his home admired the many trophies of his youth. As ladies stroked the back of a stuffed Bengal tiger, their eyes inevitably came to rest upon the mantle above the general's fireplace. For it was there that he had arranged for the display of the Pink-headed Ducks. The birds were posed as a nesting pair and were huddled near a decorative basket designed to resemble a grass nest. The basket contained three white and perfectly spherical eggs.
     "What beautiful ducks!" the ladies said. "Oh, yes, they are very beautiful indeed," the general would say. Sometimes he added: "They are as beautiful as they are rare." For he knew very well that no one had seen a Pink-headed Duck in the wild in many, many years; in fact, he'd read somewhere-was it in the Times?-that the Royal Geographic Society now believed that the species was almost certainly extinct.
     He did not care. For safely preserved in his inviolable memory was his moment in the Bengalese sun when he beheld the two bright creatures shining in their tropical grace, the slow waters of the green Ganges moving like a heavy curtain behind them.
     Only occasionally-very occasionally-was this bright vision darkened by a question:  Wasn't there something, the general would almost bring himself to ask himself, wasn't there something he should remember about one of those bloody coolies-one of the beaters? 
     But the white-haired major-general was damned if he could remember what that something was.

A Snapshot from Chichén-Itzá

My eye is like this camera's lens- 
Unblinking at the Terribles- 
As I focus on my wife who grins
Beside the Mayan Rack of Skulls.

It is so strange that we should play
Where they once beat a sacred drum?
The gods they feared have had their day,
And we are certain spring will come.

Fledglings

I climbed our prison tower's winding stair,
Unfolded wings of feather, twine, and wax,
Tied them to Icarus with cords of flax,
And then I said, "Beware the upper air."

He never heard.  He soared without a care
Into the hot eye of the sun, the wax
Slowing melting.

                      Then, he was gone, and the backs
Of the waves sported feathers everywhere.

Fathers, which of you will escape the fear
I knew that day?
                             You'll buy her skates when she
Turns three, fasten them with exceeding care,
Give warnings she will not or cannot hear,
A first reluctant push as she rolls free- 
And then you'll look down helpless from the middle air.

Plato Has a Bad Dream

Socrates professes to know nothing; 
we naturally treat this as irony, 
but it could be taken seriously.

"Do you know anything you think you know?"
asked Socrates, come back from the dead. "The wise,"
he said, "confess their ignorance, despise
the mob of easy truths and yearn to go
to the sources-the sky above, the earth below,
the circle of birth and death. With opened eyes,
they bow or kneel before these mysteries
but know they do not, will not, can not know.
Chained in a five-walled cell of sense, our thought-
bedeviled minds seek light outside the cell,
but find no light amenable to sight;
in fact, our vision is a wall. Had I taught
you well you'd see the world is one dark hell- 
a cave, where shadows dance into the night."

Utopia

Given an island, money, time for thought,
I might create a perfect world:  with sandy
beaches, little umbrella drinks, distraught
bikini girls to rescue, cigars, brandy,
azure youth-inducing waters, a free
lunch everyday, an afternoon buffet,
steel drums in the moonlight, while out to sea- 
the arching backs of dolphins at their play.

But why stop there?  Why not a long (if not
eternal) life, perfect justice, unchained
dreams of ageless freedom, Camelot
and Shangri-La combined, Paradise regained?

O will I never quit wanting impossible stuff?
(Thank God sometimes the dolphins are enough.)

A Scrap of Ancient History

In the camp of Alexander,
Blacksmiths tinkered,
Ministers whispered,
And Captains lingered.

An unburned salamander
Was rescued from the embers
And then precisely quartered
By the hierophants who mattered.

"The world will somehow prosper"
Was their solemn verdict rendered
(As if the entrails of a lizard
Could tie continents together).

But the late lord kind and master
(O mighty Alexander!) - 
Embracing his one thousand gods- 
Cared no further for the future.

Langley

American astronomer and pioneer 
in the design and construction of 
airplanes . . . . He invented the 
bolometer, used to determine the
intensity of solar radiation.

The bicycle brothers were not alone:  he too
had dreams heavier than air, envied the birds,
grew crow's feet staring squint-eyed at that blue,
unbroken sky. (Maybe he dreamed of the words
they'd write the day that Langley mastered flight.)

Then the bad news came (dateline:  Outer Banks)- 
how two Ohio boys had done all right,
had gotten it to fly, the glory, and the thanks.

So Samuel Pierpont Langley, who once had caught
evanescing sunbeams in a magic jar,
became a footnote overnight-a naught- 
despite his dreaming well and going far.

May I reserve this space for those who place- 
For the Langleys who make a race a race?

Doctor Jung Dreams of a Confrontation 
with the Alchemist Paracelsus, Who Says:

Is the phoenix crowned with a gold mandala?
The circle closed at last?  Can you ennoble
A leaden egg with a yolk of gold, or trouble
The water (the aqua regia) with the breath of Allah?

Other deities will do:  My Cabala
Embraces lots of gods on a scale quite global
(But mostly desert types from Egypt's rubble)
Transplanted to our northern soil. Follow?

So tell me-is the phoenix crowned with a gold
Mandala? Can you ennoble the egg of the soul
With glimmerings of perfect gold-that flash
Of nascent genius-as the ancient sages hold?

If not, consider this as makes one whole:
To free the soul, reduce ego to ash.

Robert Boliek practices law in Birmingham, Alabama, where he focuses on appellate work and serves as adjunct professor of insurance law and an instructor in lawyering skills and legal reasoning at Samford University's Cumberland School of Law. His poetry has appeared in The Formalist, New Orleans Review, RE:AL, The MacGuffin, Troubadour, Hellas, and Edge City Review, among other journals. He has a first collection of poems, "Museum-Pieces," for which he is now seeking a publisher, and is presently writing a novel. 
Boliek was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, February 13, 1958. He obtained his B.A. from Auburn University in 1980, his J.D. from the University of Alabama in 1986 and his M.F.A. from the University of Alabama in 1999. He was articles editor of the Alabama Law Review and served as law clerk to Chief Justice C.C. Torbert, Jr., Alabama Supreme Court (1986-1987) and to Justice J. Gorman Houston, Alabama Supreme Court (1987-1988).