MONUMENT

 

As everyone knows, Gian Giacomo Trivulzio

Led the French invasion of Milan in 1499

And later commissioned Leonardo da Vinci

To build him a tomb which -- no surprise! --

Was never built. His tombless ghost haunts

Leonardo's designs, frightening no one

WORKMANSHIP

 

If we did our job right you'll scarcely hear it:

Just a very soft click when twilight starts

If we were in a hurry, though, there might be

A rasp or a shrill squeak. We've an arrangement

With certain corvids for such occasions.

Who make themselves conspicuous so you'll think

It was just a contrary grackle or some angry crows.

OUT

 

When he was a clothing cutter my grandfather Max

Didn't go home during busy season but slept,

As did the other workers, on the cutting tables

Or on piles of fabric. At the beginning of the season

Their dreams expected to find them in their beds

And, disappointed, might be seen moving slowly

Through the late-night streets, cursing their ill-fortune.

Max's friend Shepsie -- his real name is lost now

And may have been lost then -- had just one dream

It was ragged from having been dreamt so often

And though the tailors did their best for it,

Sewing up holes and patching it with remnants,

The police sometimes arrested it for vagrancy.

BLAME THEM IF THERE'S NO POEM TODAY

 

I was trying to write a poem

About the crooked and crabbed ghosts

Who haunt Vincent Van Gogh's picture

Of the Church at Auvers when

The Academy of Moral and Political Science

Without so much as knocking came in

And made themselves at home. "We've come,"

They said, "to live with you as you are 

The newest member and we mean

To teach you everything we know about

Moral and Political Science. To begin with

Morality is not a science. Nor is politics.

But enough of that for now! What do you plan

To feed us? And do you happen to know

The Female Poets of the English Language

Arranged in Chronological Order? We're told

They're well worth meeting."

YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE CAREFUL

 

One day you find a  thick envelope

With a letter inside, on parchment,

Telling you you've been elected a member

Of the Academy of Moral and Political Science.

Worse, the vote was unanimous. You protest

But there's no avoiding it. You must buy 

A monocle and a sash and learn at last

The proper use of the passé composé .

FLOWERING

 

According to legend, Clytie

After staring at Apollo in his chariot

As he each day rode through the sky

Became a sun-staring flower

Either a marigold or a sunflower

Or, some say, a purple heliotrope

Given how myths work I'm sure Clytie

Didn't get a choice or she'd have said

None of the above and stayed a nymph

Gods, though, do what they please

Most likely they were reassigning

Redundant nymphs so Echo became a voice,

Arethusa a fountain and Clytie put down roots

If the gods had asked me I'd have advised

Letting Clytie be or, if they were set on 

Her being a flower, I'd say marigold.

My father's gardens always had marigolds

Usually around the edges.

SIDEWAYS THROUGH THE PARK WITH WITTGENSTEIN

 

Whereof one cannot speak

Thereof one must shout

Or whisper insinuatingly.

Perhaps Truth will slam by

To see what the noise is about.