Poems of the Lathe
1. At the Lathe of Lethe2. Ugliness3. Turning4. Psychiatry at the Lathe5. As the Finish Goes On6. Truing7. Shaping 
At the Lathe of Lethe
If we watch men turning wood at the lathe—Making bowls out of root clumps or gnarly trunks,Starting with stuff most people consider waste,Ending with wonders they tremble to hold—In their work we see the art of revision:Not only endurance and persistenceBut also respect for the material.The wood pushes back, the gift of resistance,As if it replied that shape is not implied—Turn again and reflect on what you feel.Find the body, not your body, in this bodyAnd carve till it’s free to stand on its own,A part of you still but none of the partsLethe swept away for your peace of mind.
Ugliness
The ugliness of the stump inspires the turner.We must understand this from the beginning.
The uglier the log the purer the visionThe turning may find in nature’s recess.
The lathe is nature’s tool to chasten pride.Thus the digital lathe merely satisfies:
A man’s hands chisel not to be chiseledBy numbers inhuman no matter how perfect.
(To better grasp this consider the portraitOf Michelangelo in the Sistine fresco.)
What matters, you see, is matter (trust me:Matter means “mother,” that’s all you need to know).
Matter matters and mothers the inventionThe turner wants to bring into the world—
Just like the mother he gives himself away,Believing in the body he cannot see.
He runs the risk all creation suffers—The chance the ugliness worms all the way through.
The cost beggars calculation: the hopeRemains unforgettable no matter what.  Turning
He thinks a lot about the beauty of wood,How objects turned by expert hands move himWhen he sees them, even more, when he touches them.
Marble seems to him too austere, too cold,And too ancient, if not also alien—Wood’s the corpse of a once living, breathing tree.
A kind of necrophilia he wonders,A love of touching things all around himLess dead than no longer alive to suffer?
He remembers how beautiful she was,Looking at the casket he keeps on his desk(The more life the less to save and hold onto),
And he grieves, as he often does, quietly,Without tears, for the body he has lostHe used to touch in tremors of joy shared.
And he fights back his bitterness at life,The terrible exactions of energyJoining particles that, just so, must someday part,
And once again he touches the casket,The beautiful wood cradling her ashes,Then returns to the words he’s turning in. Psychiatry at the Lathe
Desire is neither the appetite for satisfaction nor the demand for love, but the difference that results from the subtraction of the first from the second, the very phenomenon of their splitting (Spaltung). Jacques Lacan
A fungal assault on trees of different species,Spalting works a magic in grain and final sheenThat decorates wood beyond human skill. Infesting dead and dying trees the fungiColonize the wood through zones of webs Leaving lines and colors only nature can inventOut of her curious pathologiesWhich mix life and death to tempt with beauty.
When the saw opens the log you can seeMaps of complexity that seduceThe craftsman’s eye and invite his journeyTo an end more destiny than destination.He doesn’t know what his hands will have madeTill he sees it, and maybe not even then.Turning mystifies as much as it exposes,As if the wood turns the artist as he turns it.
On the lathe of the mind the therapistTurns the patient’s pain with chisels of wordsAs together they carve away delusionsTill suffering can speak its darker name,The splitting that tears the self asunder,Which can never be made completely whole,Although the sufferer can turn the faultsTill the lines tell a story that tempts with beauty. As the Finish Goes On
We don’t know the origin of the word smooth.That seems right somehow. Smooth operatorshide all the wrinkles you might pinch them from; seduction works best which delays the bite,the pain that the pleasure is going to cost you don’t see coming until the con is done.
Looked at this way, the word opens the mind.Every day some nuisance snags us or nags us.If smooth originates in sound (my guess),it’s a word for our longing to slide by the frustrations that infuriate usand sap our resistance until we are worn.
Consider now the turner at the lathe(perhaps the most didactic poet of all).Hours of shaping leave the bowls with flaws,and so more hours follow of sandingup through the grits till the surface is smoothand shines like glass as the finish goes on.
The bowl deceives us? It’s the perfect con?Smooth and slick? No. The wood’s imperfectionsshine through, even more visible for the art,its task to unhide the lathesman’s laborto illumine the otherwise suppressed affinity between smoothness and abrasion.  Truing
Proto-Indo-European *drew-o-, suffixed variant form of root *deru- “be firm, solid, steadfast” (see also “Druid”—i.e., “tree priest”)
Turning wood demands truing from time to time.Since the words true and tree share the same root,Poems of the lathe should explore this kinshipIf only to touch the roots of history, too.
Germanic languages arose in forestsOf the North where oaks and snow covered all,And people survived by trees and truth—“Trawþe,” as written in one older tongue,
Meaning “loyalty” or “trust” or “covenant”(As well as conformity to facts and deeds),Since without trees to burn and trust to honorThe winter would kill you and all your kin.
When you mount a log on your lathe, chuck it tight,Adjust the speed to reduce the wobble,And bring the tool-rest to the work, not too close,You’re already working in true as well as tree.
Just so is it so difficult to do.Computers will be more accurate than hands,But hands respond to a different memoryWhen the lathe returns the true in the tree. Shaping
Some words are easy to use mindlessly,As if they’re nothing but noise ad hocAnd no one cares about what they’re up to—After all, other things are more important.
The poems of the lathe interrupt this neglectAnd ask the uncomfortable question:What can be more important than the cutWhich saves this shape and destroys that?
Every shape reminds us of the debrisCut away to render it visible,And in that debris lies a shape that hauntsThe maker who tries to atone for the loss.
And atone he must, nor should he delay.His decisions (this word also means cut)Leave scars everywhere that will never healUnless he acknowledges his desire
Which must otherwise contaminate the shapesWith delusions of ultimacy — Leonardo lives, not despite, but becauseHe abandoned apparent perfection.
He would have understood the lathesman’sReluctance to remove the wood from the chuck—There’s always another turn he can take,A different skew he can try, a new finish—
But the shavings tell a different story,Not of desire but of loathing and remorseFor capitulation to finitude,Resignation to the limits on joy,
That he could not imagine the surrenderTo the shape that would cut through the fearOf failure and error and celebrateThe sacrifice that creation demands:
You can not know what the creature will beOr what it will become with the shape you form.Come the moment—you’ll feel its summonsIf you’ve atoned—you’ll turn the lathe Letheward
And admit some things are better forgotten(The equal partner with remembering),For let this ire abuse your peace of mindAnd you shape the monster who will finish you.