Two poems on a cold February morning

The first features James Joyce and his brother Stanislaus; the second the admirable Leonard J. Fleidner.

A few weeks after his mother died

James, the older son, brought a small table

And a chair into the garden.

To read his father’s love letters

Ribboned and kept by the dead woman.

(Frustrated at her hard dying, her husband

Had shouted “If you can’t get well,die

Die and be damned to you!”)

Watchful Stan, the younger brother, waited

Until the last letter was read.

“Well?” “Nothing. There is nothing for me here.”

The ashes of the letters he never read

Stan occasionally saw in his dreams.

Just before he died in Trieste

He called them up, and the chair

And the table and the garden

And ghost of his brother, reading. 

It cannot be that the principal, Doctor Fliedner,

Came to work in a high, stiff collar, wearing shoes

With buttons. Yet I picture him so, his pale face,

His quiet, watchful eyes. He seemed all greys

As if life had leached from him all color

And he walked without a sound. In the mornings

He’d stand sentry as we ambled or pushed inside

Then bear silent witness to our homeward rush.

Once in a great while, he would give in

To some unspeakable urge, sitting at the piano

Playing ragtime music, his body stiff,

While over the keys his long fingers danced.