TUESDAY'S POEMS

One morning, having forgotten she died,

She rented rooms from a tailor, hired a maid,

Set flowers in the window.

When the tailor put the cat out at night

It would sneak back in the house

To visit with her.

Before going to bed she would kneel

Politely asking Christ to watch over her sleep.

But He rarely did.

Instead an old Roman god, left behind,

Paced the confines of her room

Until the false dawn.

When I was nine, the maid’s ghost

Told me in a dream the name

To which the cat would answer.

When you have just eight readers it is no light thing

To lose two of them. “Send no more poems

Like the ones you’ve been writing. It has become

Too burdensome even to ignore them.”

Oh, but I will miss my audience! Still,

Ich kenn nicht anders; my muse is not

Anyone with whom I would trifle. Demons,

She says, and angels and the maid’s ghost

Come from the grave to whisper

The name of a cat she once knew

When she worked for an old dead woman.