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Greene & Greene: The Gamble House

After Paul Muldoon’s “Sleeve Notes” from Hay

 

"And the most marvelous thing of all is that, while everybody is agreed to praise these remarkable institutions, there is not a single state which cares to imitate them." Xenophon, on the Spartan way of life, from the Constitution of the Lacedaemonians

 

“…The Romans lost no time in changing over to the Greek type [of military equipment]…for this is one of their strong points: no people are more willing to adopt new customs and to emulate what they see is better done by others.” Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire

 

I.

 

The soul of grammar, in these teak corbels,

holds up nearly as much – I mean well – as one’s 

private doubt. Scarcity’s nook concerns

every detail of the 8,100 square foot house.

 

I’m sure you already thought of this, but 

that well-meaning king-post truss in the attic

squishes our previous faction until it is as small

 

as small can get, or cedar psychobabble

with a silver wash. As if for a grandson’s

nightlight, what it really took to hang this lantern

may prove positively pointless in its art glass’s

light, yet originality is not quite kaput

 

atop the Sarouk rugs in this realistic

entry way, whose extroverted flight is tan and tall. 

 

II. 

 

Good Housekeeping included a fine article on the eco-

friendly alterations and additions made glad by Ivory.

 

III.

 

Tsuba shapes are everywhere, like the brass

screws of prior commitments.

Bird’s-eye maple, with ebony inlays, dents

the dust jacket on my eyes for a good cause.

 

Japanese joinery pays meticulous

attention to what the stone path really means –

making inroads to some ideal adolescence –

in connection with shades of mushroom and moss.

 

IV.

 

“O come on, all ye lookie-loos,

come stand inside my ornamental pond

 

deboned, 

come wear the feathered boas

 

of the past the way my rooms wear echoes:

like an earring.”

 

Before the days of duck, duck, goose,

these bronze and silver slumbers

 

had a goal. “To wait upon you hand and foot

in kohl like building codes.” 

 

V. 

 

The rear terrace, unlike many architectural gems,

is a perennial staircase

beyond the sunk costs of bed wetters and Archimedes.

 

This, then, must’ve been the bedroom’s

sink-or-swim ethos

on the sleeping porch, with commonplace complacency.

 

VI. 

 

I seem to recall its full-figured depth, its full-

figured fame on a black walnut fortune

carrying me off like a raven did a lizard

down the block just now. “Grief is greedier

 

than greed,” a man running his thumb along the rails

might say. It’s triangular as the nightingale’s tune

from the low-pitched front gable. I’d hazard

a guess these wrought iron straps were second-guessed by the dyer.

 

VII. 

 

Was I a fool or not to park my Hyundai Accent

underneath that tree? It’s got a longer face than the Gospel of Mark.

Maybe it’s that babel of silence 

 

hanging over this overhang…I’ve

a hunch it got Gustav Stickley’s goat to impersonate law and order

native lumber for the chairs. 

 

VIII.  

 

A gnashing of green teeth outside “Little Switzerland”…

Voila! Not quite a canton or phantom twin,

but Pasadena appreciates 

experiments in inglenooks and window seats.

 

What might strike odd itself as odd

is how barbaric air gets queued

up by opening the front door. Bungalow

or not, it was unwilling to fail Aunt Julia;

 

her covered balcony was making headway

toward the alameda

in her heart, I’m told. Her care

for each potted plant was no match for en plein air. 

 

IX.

 

Before we hear the wrought iron straps play their Basement

Tapes, let’s listen to the soft sugar pine countertops in the kitchen cover “Gimme Shelter.”

 

X.

 

The open mortise gives it moral flexibility. 

This room was the boys’; 

 

it’s spread out like a capillary 

bed, you see. Emil 

 

Lange emulated bone meal 

for the gnarled California sigh 

 

of the leaded art glass entry doors. 

Green, disoriented muck and mire 

 

is inextricably intertwined 

through thick and thin and the piano’s wires. 

 

XI.

 

Charles told Henry, “I’ve procured us all the best sorrows 

in the local area.” To which Henry said, “Except tomorrow’s.”

 

XII.

 

Inside the din of the piano’s wires,

the Hall brothers wined

 

and dined as the Greenes cried out, “Meyer? You schmuck!”

and Meyer passed through the leaded art glass entry doors

 

to a calypso singer’s psi.

For want of a scarf joint, the meal

 

was served cold. The weather from Lima,

Ohio had come to pillory

 

what it had perceived as abys-

mal business practices; “Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.”

 

XIII.

 

Before we take the freeway home, through rainfall’s “Helter Skelter,”

let’s wonder, in this butler’s pantry, what that thunder’s bass meant. 

 

XIV. 

 

It almost reeks in earnest of chardonnay:

the secret in secret doors;

“Millionaire’s

Row” has plenty of secrets that will always

 

be with us. Sick of feeling disgusted,

the front gables’ low-

pitch somehow

furnished David B. Gamble’s foremost needs.

 

Is it any wonder the mullion’s design

is called the cloud lift,

when crafts,

by arts and arms, inspire milk and wine?

 

XV.

 

That foundation stone pretends to say “cheese”

like some chalk outline from Law & Order:

Special Victims Unit. Fugitive

 

or not, the corbels’ teak poetic license

is no match for the souvenir bookmark

I purchased in the garage for – dun, dun – 99 cents. 

 

XVI. 

 

With religious eyes and scientific canine

teeth, these tourists play the part of supervisor.

Compared to perfect bedrooms,

 

bedrooms here put lonely geysers

to bed and shame. The softened edges of the dire

daylight disappear an eyesore 

 

outdoors. These beams of burden indirectly knew a boudoir.

The low undulating walls

below, have come, in time, to imitate the coombs of Côte d'Or.

 

XVII.

 

Emulating the imperfect, Tiffany lamps

adorn the writing desks. 

The ornamental pond looks past the face of music’s symmetry

 

from clinker bricks. To catch a glimpse

of encaustic-tiled focus, 

make like creeping ficus, up and over the vis-à-vis. 

 

XVIII.

 

The coal of building codes

for several feet of longhand writing: “Is it gaol

 

or jail?” No one knows. The Lombards,

before the days of puff, puff, pass, 

 

were used to hearing

kings’ demands in hallways like shoes. 

 

I bet the Greenes called this beam “Boaz,”

debonair 

 

as the kitchen’s soft sugar pine

countertops and values. 

 

XIX. 

 

Taking a page from meaning, the exposed

rafters want someone to influence –

or, among the orange groves, you might say possess.

 

To look up from the sunken driveway to the pediment,

memory and passions form a gnarled posse

in a person standing naked as an accident.

 

XX.

 

Forgive my asking, but is it considered unsavory

to flourish within view of the Arroyo Seco?

 

XXI. 

 

The Gamble House, to cope with the gambrel

of time, emulates the gyroscope’s gimbal

like so: pulling out all stops, the nervous

stops with tsuba shapes that nowadays

 

are comfy in our comfortable ambition.

Not only do these ebony inlays, again 

and again, reach out for empathy and tout,

like one agog at a shootout,

 

what’s real – I mean well – but they also learn

to imitate the no-tell motel’s

echoes from the sea and season’s turn.

 

It did it just an hour ago; the wide world’s forelock,

clipped and flipped à go-go. “Let’s paint the walls

white as ivory” didn’t stick.