Wednesday, January 31, 2018

KEYS



All the lost keys in the world wind up at last
With Baba Yaga; she has long forgotten why
Some years, St. Balderamus, patron of locksmiths
And the Flamen Portunalis, priest of the god of locks,
Turn up with a long train of exhausted camels
Who swear fearfully, having no liking
For cold weather. Men and beasts are drunk
On grain vodka because water freezes
And because the Flamen distrusts
Water which isn’t part of an ocean or river.
Two days are spent, sometimes three,
Loading the camels with great loads of keys.
Baba Yaga feeds the men and camels porridge
Out of an enormous caldron. The camels spit
But the men say thank you. On the way home,
Almost every key contrives to get lost again.
If the flamen and Balderamus reach Trieste
With 70 or more keys between them,
The Triestines greet them with flags and song.

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

BROKAW 12



Existing only in memory, the glass animals
No longer sit quietly but leave their cabinet
And start roaming the old house. They call
To the musicians, who climb from their painting
Carrying their instruments, their music,
Brilliant colored, floating above their heads.
The elongated scholars, who’ve stood so long
On either side of the bookshelf, embrace at last.

Monday, January 29, 2018

IN A WAY



Some days, from certain angles
Or in just the right light, I become,
For most intents and purposes,
More or less real. By degrees,
Dreams start doubting that I
Am of their party. Gravity
Sends me notes suggesting
I am still its subject. If I seek
To board the warship Temeraire
A sailor forbids it, waving at me
My birth certificate and insisting
The ship was broken up for parts
A hundred eighty years ago.

Friday, January 26, 2018

CHILLS




God is feeling cold today
Shivering, He pulls on a wool hat
And wraps the universe around Him
Relays of angels bring Him
Great bowls, filled to the brim
With the Platonic Idea of Soup.  
All meetings have been cancelled;
Prayers, anxiously pacing around
The infinite waiting-room
Have started answering each other.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

PATRON OF GARDENERS, BOXMAKERS, CABDRIVERS AND PEOPLE WHO SIT ALL DAY



St. Fiacre drives a cab. Over the windshield
Dangles a little unsmiling icon of himself
Which argues all day with the gps. In defense,
The gps has purchased a black market soul
And, taking control of the satellite radio,
Makes Fiacre listen all day to drum solos.

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

AARON AND GEORGE BETA



{The Aaron in the poem below is quite real; my mother claimed she was descended from him.}

Bad enough to have a king who’d gone mad
But little harm was done. He didn’t declare war
Against Luxembourg nor insist that women
Be allowed to manage their own property.
No, a mad king had his points, uniting the country.
Even the Radicals could pity an aging man
Whom Reason had abandoned. Worse, though,
Was when he began to fly – not sensibly
In one of Montgolfier’s balloons – but as if he
Was himself a balloon, his heels lifting off the ground
His body softly rising towards the ceiling.
A window left incautiously open meant gardeners
Crick-necked from peering at the tree-tops.

He had feared not madness but blindness
And that, too, came in time.
He had provided against it by memorizing
All of Handel’s keyboard music
Which he played like a king
With great assurance but not very well

Charles James Fox sent a note to William Pitt
That he had heard of a man in Germany
A Jew; a rabbi of all things! named Aaron
Witnesses swore he floated when he prayed
No matter how many rocks the rebbetzin
Sewed into his pockets. The diplomat sent
To summon Aaron to Whitehall found
The rabbi was already on his way there.
He died en route; a minyan appeared from somewhere
(The peasants swore no other Jews had been
Within miles of the town where he died),
Bathed his corpse; kept it company through the night;
Buried it properly, and with due respect.

Good enough, but mercy is a harsh mistress
And Aaron not a man to leave an errand
Uncompleted. His soul crossed the Channel
In the last of the old boats which had once
Carried all the dead of Gaul to Albion.
They’d given up treating the King by now
Accepting that he was mad. He spent his days
In a shabby robe, unshaved, a rope trailing
From his left ankle so that he might the easier
Be hauled down if he started floating too high.
(There was some fear that he might drift to France
Which was not a friendly place for kings just then).

The King knew the ghosts who crowded round him
Were not real. They fled when Aaron walked through them
A bold raven fluttering the phantom peacocks.
Most of the notes the King’s youngest daughter kept
Are still locked up. It is thought that the King
Taught Aaron the harpsichord. It is known
(You can find it in the Princess Lieven’s letters,
Who had it from the Duke of York) that the King
Died peacefully, recognizing his son who said
His long-bearded father had had at the end
“As fine a rabbi’s head as you could imagine.”

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

CONGREGATION



Now that you’re dead all of you
Crowds into the kitchen, filling
Every chair, leaning against the wall.
One of you is washing dishes
Another fiddles with the radio
Until it finds a program off the air
Since 1973. Every bit of homework
You ever did is due in the morning
But you're working on it. Essie,
Who died at 80 but is ten here,
Is explaining that babies are born
Through the navel. A very old you
Holds you at three on her lap
You're chatting about the mother
None of you has ever met.

Monday, January 22, 2018

ALSO CALLED SEREDA



Old woman in the rain
Tells it to strike harder
Calls to the lightning
For light on the road. Thunder
Offers his arm but she
Says, “If you say one word
I’ll find my own way home.”

Friday, January 19, 2018

CATS



It is their prerogative
To go where they wish
Sometimes
A cat decides
To push aside the words
And settle
Where a poem use to be.

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

STORIES



My father's alter ego was a magician,
Powerful and diligent, yet his spells
Frequently went awry. Mongoose
Rarely had money and was usually
Looking for work. For a while
There were two of him, but his wife
(Known only as Mrs. Mongoose)
Sent one back into the mirror.
Before he was Mongoose, my father
Had experimented with being
The greatest detective in the world
A master of disguise, quite capable
Of solving the most baffling crimes
If he hadn’t been so often frustrated
By the fact that he was a flowerpot.

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

ET ORIGO



My tablet offers a font that imitates
Brushstrokes. Over time, a virtual soul
Has built itself to guide the brush.
The Seven Gods of Calligraphy are meeting
To determine its status. Meanwhile,
It amuses itself by renaming my files.

Monday, January 15, 2018

NOT ABOUT AESRED



An advantage of writing myself notes
Is the ease with which I forgive pomposity,
Bad temper, self-pity and lack of grace
"Poor fellow!" I find myself thinking,
" He's not half so foolish as he sounds;
How very fond of him I am! If only
He could just stop talking to himself!"

Friday, January 12, 2018

WINTERSFROG



Below freezing
Basho's frog,
Rejecting advice,
Sits poised
On the well's rim.
Oh frog, trust me!
Love breaks hearts
But ice breaks bones.

Thursday, January 11, 2018

BY THE BUG'S BLUE WATER



The words I don't know
Are unspoken in an accent
That marks me as a native
Lost,stolen or strayed
From Kamianka Strumilowa
A small town, itself now hiding
Under a new name
On the banks of the River Bug.

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

STILL MORE ON THE SUBJECT OF YETIS



Yetis were created at 4:37 p.m. on the sixth day
When, if there'd been any about, a blue thread
Couldn't have been told from a green one.
(As a tailor's grandson I have a hereditary interest
In threads and spools, bobbins, spindles, needles,
And angels dancing on the heads of pins.)
If -- pray note I am too polite to say "when" --
The human race doesn't work out
Yetis are meant to come down from the mountains
And, apparently, set up small businesses
Or find work as butlers, buskers and busboys.
The Book of Yeti's text may be corrupt, though;
And this not be the plan at all.

Tuesday, January 9, 2018

NOTES FOR A PROFILE



Baba Yaga cannot remember
Not being Baba Yaga. Surely
She wasn't born old. Her cat
Says the two of them once
Made a clockwork lizard which sang
And did simple arithmetic. For a time,
She was available to answer prayers
Or to thwart them. Her voice
Is surprisingly soft. The souls sleeping
In the red box in her cupboard
Do not look unhappy.

Monday, January 8, 2018

YETIS



That yetis invented chess, if they did,
Cuts no ice with me. My brother likes chess
As did my Grandfather Joe but I was never
Much one for patient strategy. Besides,
Orang utans, when not murdering Marie Roget,
Brought backgammon into the world and tarsiers
Invented language in order to make puns
And where has it gotten them? Granted,
There is a yeti in my house -- quite likely the one
Who stayed with the great Wasliya Szymborska.
Granted, too, that he’s brought a chessboard
And holds a white pawn in one of his hands …
Very well – I chose, of course, the left hand
How my grandfather would have laughed
As if he always wins when his ghosts
Demands he meet them in Union Square
And play until the day breaks.

Friday, January 5, 2018

CIRCUMSTANCE



Snow banishes the world beyond the front windows
The black and white cat stares at me from the sofa
Trying to decide what sort of luck he should bring
When he walks across my path. The yeti
From Wasliya Szymborska's poem is half asleep
In the old pink chair which indignantly recalls
When it lived in
Iowa, where there are no yetis.

Thursday, January 4, 2018

SAMOVAR



Once, doctors who failed to cure the prince
Would have been executed, or at least
Been turned into lizards or toads
And released into the dark woods
But modern times had come, so the Tsar
Sent each of them home with a certificate,
A small samovar  and a signed photograph.

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

THE SAD END OF THE REVEREND WILLIAM JOHN LOFTIE

After weeks of troubled dreams he woke to find
He'd become a leading authority on gravel.
If his life depended on it, he could not
Pretend to mistake lag gravel for pea gravel.
Bored beyond endurance, he listened
To his voice explaining why Krumbein phi
Is a better scale to use than Udden-Wentworth
When talking about sibiclastic rock.
(He often talked about sibiclastic rock
Until none there were who'd listen.)
When he came to his sad end, driveways
For miles around were draped in black.

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

IF YOU'RE PLANNING A VISIT




By decree, the Red Duke haunts the garden
Tuesdays and Thursdays from twilight to dawn;
The Mad Monk has it Mondays but only
October through January or if the moon
Has been called away on urgent business.
The Wronged Lady In A Pale Green Dress
Appears other nights, unless she is indisposed
Or on tour. When that is the case, her understudy,
The Girl Who Carries Her Head In A Basket,
Will juggle, dance, and tell fortunes.