IN LEMBERG

When she slept in Brooklyn, her rest scant and uneasy,
My grandmother Esther walked the streets of Lemberg. There,
In 1922, she met Joseph Conrad. Not the version who still
Walked in daylight but the one who'd taken
His uncle Tadeusz' advice to forget the sea
And go to the famed University of Lemberg.
He'd become a lawyer and married a Magyar flautist
Who died on a cold February afternoon
At 4:35; he'd written down the exact time
And always kept the note in his wallet.
As he aged he became unhappy at being unreal
He'd sleep for weeks then walk through dreams
Desperate for food and a bit of company.
Through two years -- he and his other both died
In 1924 -- she read him Yiddish translations of his works.
Their favorite was always Nostromo;
They wept together over the fate of Martin Decoud.

TRAIN

More real than most things

The train made of its passengers

Shadows and sea glass.

Its high tracks are gone,

 Hauled away with the motormen

And the conductors. The night

Says nothing; get on board

Since you will have it so.

ON THE EL

Tearing down the el on Third Avenue

The contractors skimped on the work;

The market in shadows was poor

So they were just painted over and left.

Sometimes, during the debatable days

Between year’s end and year’s beginning,

The shadows cast the great work up again

Mile on mile of track and platform, girders,

Turnstiles, machines selling gum for a penny

Or soda for a nickel. The trains rumble by,

Passengers idly watching the street

Or lives lived beyond uncurtained windows

Look! There I am, holding my father’s hand

Looking at myself, pretending I’ve grown up.

CORRESPONDENCE

The minor official

Who became the God

Of calligraphy

Was the first to respond.
To the ad: "I

Am old

And lonely

And will answer all letters."

Being not busy

He writes her often

Since he’s not

Received a prayer

Since 1963.

SPLENDENT

Opening one eye, Jerome sees that someone --
Probably Brigid -- has drawn a halo over his head.
It shines so that he cannot possibly sleep
No more can the others huddled against the cold
On the Seventh Avenue grating. The halo
Shifts colors as he watches it, never the same
For more than a few seconds. He lifts one finger,
Planning to undraw it but hesitates.
Finally, he adds triangle ears, a few whiskers,
Narrow eyes and an odd shape apparently meant
To include the nose and mouth, It lacks something;
One of the others offers an expiring cigarette
Which fits the mouth perfectly. The men
Pull the smoke around them and wait
For sleep to find them again.

PROFESSOR

He always stood
Braced to sustain
The weight of all he knew.
His voice rasped, hoarse
From raw certainty.
He knew the answer
To all our questions
And to questions
We didn’t know to ask.
I've forgotten most
Of what he taught
But at need I still
Can stand as he did
My eyes glittering;
I can speak with his rasp
As if bored beyond words
From always being right.

FAMILY, REVISED

There seemed no end to my mother’s family

She’d casually mention some uncle

Of whom I’d never heard as if from always

He and I had known each other’s secrets.

Mention a place, no matter how obscure,

And some cousin had colonized it.

All her childhood summers had been spent

Among relatives whom now she rarely saw

Yet all their doings were known to her.

Perhaps she had a mystic link

Running back to the 1930s: Lillian’s son

Will leave New York to study in Chicago;

Give Menachem another daughters

So someone can be there to greet him.

NOT FAR FROM SNEDIKER AVENUE

My father's cat once found
An old halo, one of those Brigid
Used to impatiently draw
On the air with a long finger
And then hang over her head

NIGHT WORK

In your dream a car rolls up;
You enter and are driven
Into another dream.
Where you're not the star -- are,
In fact, simply staffage, employed
To put things in scale
And liven the background.
About five a.m. you're paid
In what looks like cabbage leaves.
The same car takes you back
But your dream has its lights off
And every door is locked.

CRITICISM

I was writing a poem to my mistress' eyebrows

When a cat, resting in the third stanza

In the shade of a hemistich, said

"You have no mistress and if you did,

She would like as not have no eyebrows."

found

"a cartilaginous fish,

two feet in length,

and of somewhat

elongated 

and hake-like form"

arrives in chapter 14

and drops its card:

Chimæra monstrosa

but must make way

for a ringworm cure

MARKETPLACE

Once, when I threw a stone at Death’s broad back,

He whirled, snatching it from the astonished air,

Weighed it a moment, then flipped it back to me

Smiling, quite gently – as if we were friends

Since then whenever Death and I meet

He acknowledges me with a half-salute,

Or bow or the flicker of a supple hand

PICTURE

While he can still recall her face

He draws it on a piece of brown paper

With red chalk and black and a bit of white

Catching the faint shine her skin showed

When she'd been working. From the page

She smiles at him reassuringly.

Even dead, she’ll interrupt her work

Because he asks it of her.

NOT WRITTEN

There was to be, my notes tell me, a poem

About the trumpeter Columbus brought with him

To play a fanfare for the Chinese Emperor.

In China, three ghosts and a raven

Were waiting to whirl him and his horn

To a different court entirely. I believe

The God of Calligraphy had agreed

To make an appearance halfway through.

Alas, the trumpeter or I missed our time

And the poem sailed off without him.

ANSWERS

A reader from Ohio writes
"What sort of zoning laws require
That garrets have bath houses
Built next door to them? Also,
Is one of the ghosts named Trevor?
If so, I think I met him once
Floating down the Rio Atabapo."
Dear reader, the zoning laws
Are not quite so simple. The area
Is what is called a "mixed used district;"
The uses it allows are garrets,
Gazebos, bath houses, bird baths,
And giant naked statues of Napoleon.
(It happens I am quite well acquainted
With a giant naked statue of Napoleon
But he lives in Apsley House, in London.)
The birds in my poems are dayworkers
Who mostly choose to bathe at home.
Thus, most of the district is simply garrets --
Whole buildings composed only of garrets.
(We're offering very attractive terms
If you're a starving artist looking
For a basement garret.) The main bathhouse;
It moves about, or did until the Princess Sophia
Took it over.  I’m not on the Zoning Board;
Most of its members are cats. I do not intrude
Upon the business of cats.

                                                    None of the ghosts
Is named Trevor or anything remotely like Trevor.

P.I.R.

The stone over her grave lists her virtues
Saying she was loved and loving but
It's carved in reverse so that a mirror
Is needed to read it. Also, her birth
Takes place 28 years after her death.
Such things happen to some folk.

SOPHIE

Somewhere -- -a bar? A lecture? -- my muse met

George's daughter, the blind Princess Sophie,

Who spent many of her last dark years
Tearing up books under the impression that torn paper
Comforted the sick. Who knows how many pillows
She sent to puzzled ill people? It was a slow season;
I had no work for her. Still, she seemed a quiet soul
And blind! And princess! So I let her live
In an imaginary garret room. Unfortunately, zoning laws
Required I construct a bath house next door
(If you have bath house ghosts, sooner or later
There must be a bath house for them to haunt)
The garret bored her; she frequented the bath house
Where she mastered Minnesota Whist. I don't see
How a blind woman can win so often, nor what
She means to do with her indentured ghosts.

FROM NOW

4:05; November's last day
Sky grey up high shading to white
At the horizon. A single leaf stirs
In a breeze only it feels. Until now
The universe has gone as planned
But this moment, this leaf,
This breeze from a direction
Never previously suspected
Is as far as the planning goes.
Think carefully; listen to spiders;
Practice looking through walls.