INTERRED

The angel makes itself a body
Of circumstance and folds
His bright wings around himself;
The cell is cold; there is neither
Blanket nor mattress. Guards
Obey instructions and pretend
There is no angel and if there is
He has no wings. One by one
God will forget our names
And we will have never been.

LANTERN

Maigret’s shadow was missing when he died

So he’d been accompanied only by a rented one

Which fled at the first sign of trouble.

After the funeral, a long narrow hand

Reached into the surface rain-slick street

And lifted the reflection of a lantern.

Since the Inspector is gone mysteries

Must be solved by what he left behind.

COMMEDIA

The theatre closed, grey Arlecchino

Spent his days knitting voluminous shawls.

Columbina had taught him, long ago,

As part of some absurdly complicated scheme

Requiring him to pass as a pretty girl

And flirt with Pantalone and The Captain.

Zuchino sold the shawls for him, stealing,

As was only right, most of the proceeds

Mondays they saw Pantalone in the nursing home.

The Captain, to their surprise, had died well

Defending Brighella. Pierrot was dead also

But was too foolish to lie down. At midnight

Arlecchino would find him, singing voicelessly

To circles of strange lop-eared cats

And packs of skittish white dogs with red ear

LIFE OF THE ARTISTS

Gaugin, Vollard the art-dealer tells me,
Employed a witch. She had sought
Maid's work but wasn't much good at it;
He used her as a model. Breton peasants
Urged she be fired; in the resulting fracas
Gaugin broke his foot and limped ever after.

At concerts, politely listening to sonatas,
Cezanne wished a barrel organ was playing
Or perhaps a steam calliope. One of his pictures
Refused to be what he wanted; he hung it
From a noose in a tree. I like to think
Vollard pleaded for the poor thing's life.

CIRENCESTER

That apparition which appeared at Cirencester
In 1670? That would be me. Not that I recall
The place but the apparition, being asked
If it was good or bad, didn't speak but disappeared
With a melodious twang. This is just what I do
When I don't know the answer. I am plagued
By people with hard questions, hoping
To make me twang melodiously and vanish

NOT FAR FROM THE BHV MARAIS

The garden is gone where the archbishop
Walked during his exile, sometimes alone,
Sometimes with a duchess descended
From Melusine while servants behind them
Swept away evidence of their passage.

Occasionally God, choosing to exist,

Sets them going again; well-behaved flowers

Cover the pavement; lines of trees

Nod to each other and the duchess

Tells the archbishop on of the jokes

She inherited from her mother.

SHARD

There are no cameras in 1189 so the artist

Does his best to paint what he sees: an angel

Without a head attempting to build

A very small cathedral.

                                                   Some angels

Are unfamiliar with bodies, making them

When they need to out of what's available.

This one has put a big shard of pottery

Where his head should be. Folks in Reims

Can accept shardhead angels, though they wonder

Why this one carries a mandolin on his back

Which he never plays.

RIVER

My grandmother once, only once, mentioned to my father
That she used to dance by the river with other children.
He was astonished. A song was playing on the radio
The very music to which she'd danced when radios
Had not been invented. How little I know of her! She made
Noodles from scratch; she wanted three but had nine children
With a man she didn't much like. She learned English
By studying her children's schoolbooks. Her dreams
Mostly took place back in Lvov. Before her marriage
She worked in a cigarette factory; I don't know
What the brand was called. She  spoke Yiddish
And Polish and German and English; she also 
Could get by in Russian and Ukranian.
She disliked hearing the Emperor Franz-Joseph mocked.
She'd stay awake late, reading. She might keep a newspaper
For forty years, waiting for the time to finish it
Her son Morris died when he was twelve. She never
Spoke about him after she sat shivah. I like to think
He turned up now and again in her dreams wandering
Through the broad streets of Lvov with her or dancing
Down by the river.

WITH REGRET

According to Georges Dumezil
A flamen dialis may not touch dogs
Nor she-goats, ivy, beans or raw meat;
Neither can he name them. Beans
I can live without and raw meat but dogs
Would surely run after me
Laughing at my inability to shout
"Dogs are chasing me!" And what
If she-goats come to me for advice?
"I cannot talk to you any more;
I have become the flamen dialis"
Cuts no ice with a she-goat.
(This problem with she-goats
May be why there's been no flamen dialis
For the last two thousand years.)
I admit I might enjoy freeing prisoners
And tossing their chains to the street
From my impluvium once I've found out
What an impluvium is. I am flattered
But still must decline your offer.

STILL GOOD ADVICE

Ever since William Blake praised them

The Tigers of Wrath have been insufferable

And sneer at the Horses of Instruction.

From his nutshell, the King of Infinite Space,

Urges moderation upon them:

“Where are the Velociraptors of Rage?

Who now fears the Protozoa of Vexation?”

ISHMAEL

While not ungrateful that a coffin floated him to safety

He still resents that his story -- which he thought

Educational and filled with profound and surprising delights –

Gets casually swept aside by page fifty and only returns

For a few paragraphs at the end of the book. Some days

You'll find him at the Battery, looking towards Europe,

Hoping to be asked about his life before the Pequod

Or after the Rachel. Nights, he sits in Starbucks

Appreciating the irony and nursing mochacchinos.

ONE OF AESRED'S

Meaning sleeps; the words
Dance like leaves. Ghosts
Embrace the enchanter; dreams
Linger, unwilling to decide the gate
Through which they'll enter
This world or another.

AFTER STAYING UP LATE READING SEI SHONAGON

Rising early and setting off as the Sun rises

Behind grey-blue clouds resting on the horizon

And meeting oneself coming the other way.

Worse if only one of you is sober.

Telling a story and realizing the villain

Cannot help outsmarting the hero

And winning the heroine. Worse if it’s plain

The girl will be happier with him.

Feeling ill with no person about so that cats

Must see to  your affairs and attend

To your recovery. Worse to discover that

Mouse broth flavored with fennel is delicious.

HULL STORY (R)

Since the first of them, in November, 1504,

Pulled a stubborn thorn from a saint's paw

All Hulls, even those most unwilling,

Have gone the quickest route to Heaven.

(You thought all saints were human?

 Believe me, if God becks His finger

It is worse than useless to tell Him

That you're a performing bear)

Accordingly, when the stonemason

George Washington Hull died too young

Of acute silicosis, no lines waited for him

Nor any papers to fill out in triplicate;

There was, though, the question of Sabrina Hull

George had told Mary and Margaret, his daughters,

Of finding Sabrina, a woman of the wild

From some fulgin recess of untamed Ohio

And traveling back to civilization with her

On the way, their adventures multiplied

But Sabrina was dauntless and the wilderness

Greatly respects dauntless women.

No canyon was too wide to be leapt across

No mountain too tall to tunnel through.

Rattlesnakes bit their own tails when they saw her

So they could roll more swiftly from her path;

If they thought she looked glum, grey wolves

Gathered around her at night to tell her jokes;

Ohio’s Great Sabertooth Armadillo himself

Lost two falls out of three when they thumb-wrestled.

Even in stories the Hulls have impeccable morals;

If George was going to spend years crossing Ohio

There was nothing for it but to marry Sabrina

(Mary was skeptical about the officiating tree shrew

But her father insisted it'd been lawfully ordained

By a breakaway faction of the Southern Missouri Synod)

Though Margaret asked repeatedly, he never said

Just what had finally happened to Sabrina

George would look solemn and say that tale

Would be told at exactly the right moment.

But he’d coughed himself out of his body

And, as a Hull, popped straight into Heaven

Before the exactly right moment came.

And there was Sabrina, coming in too.

They tried to stop her at the door

The quota for fictional people, they said, was filled

"Whether I am real or not, I was married

To George Washington Hull so I am Sabrina Hull

And Hulls go direct -- no detours  -- to Heaven"

(This was before Lucy Stone had discovered

That a woman might perfectly well keep her name

No matter who she married, so don't blame me

For my strict adherence to demonstrable truth).

A woman who has heard the jokes of wolves

Is hard to gainsay; when she is a mistress of logic too

There ‘s no just no stopping her.

                                                      (Of course,

The other Mrs. Hull showed up some years later

But, though sometimes sniffing at tree-shrew marriages,

Life in Ohio had taught her how to share.)

MISSING

For years after he died my grandfather spent most days
In a framed poster of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks
Which hangs in my doctor's waiting room, next to the tv.
He sat at the counter, nursing a cup of coffee,
Looking fairly content. Two or three months ago
I found the picture deserted, the diner's lights dimmed;
I've not seen him since. Yesterday, the counterman
Nodded at me from an old photo, buying a paper
At a Parisian kiosk in 1932. Who'd have thought
The counterman can read French?

12:55

No star danced when I was born
Or if it did none but a sentry angel
Long fallen, bored seven leagues deep,
Could see it from a hole so far down
The night sky showed itself

At five minutes before one
On a Friday afternoon in Spring.
Ringling's Circus was just starting a show
Across the street. Clowns shouted
As they always do, "Here we are again!"
Had I the wit I'd have cried to them
"Me too. How was the world without me?"

WITH CAT

You think it is 2018 and early morning birds

Sing loudly in late Spring. I know

That it is 1935 and winter is here -- see my coat?

It is heavy and torn and some buttons

Have been replaced by pins.

(In truth, I always wear this coat

Because I am always cold.)

Usually I look down, scanning the ground

For half-smoked cigarettes, my cap pulled down

So that my eyes are in shadow

But now I look at you; my picture's being taken

Here, beneath the French bridge where I sleep.

I'm holding my black cat; why shouldn't she

Have her picture taken? I've seen your dreams;;

Not for a minute do I believe them.