PSYCHOPOMPS DEMAND BETTER WAGES, CONDITIONS; MANAGEMENT HOLDS FIRM

During the long and bitter days of the strike

ManageRS went into the field, leading

The most elite or demanding among the dead

While scab psychopomps, hastily trained,

Took up their badges and mousebone lanterns

And did what they could. A cadre of dead souls

Were led in circles for weeks, only to be left

At a motel near Bayonne, New Jersey.

To avoid litigation, Bayonne is now deemed

A branch office of Purgatory.

LOOKING FOR FAMBLY ON THE WEB

The internet has taken my family's history

And given it a good shake. My aunt Sadie

Is now her mother's mother. A number of people

Named Weinstein suddenly find

They were all married to my grandfather.

Apparently things are not going well

In Alternate 1940; my grandfather is still

Where he used to be, in Brooklyn,

But Sadie and her daughter, the woman

Formerly known as her mother, are living

In the Bronx, surrounded by Weinsteins.

HARD TIMES IN PAWLING, NEW YORK

Sometimes the ghost of former governor

Thomas E. Dewey allows his famous mustache

To grow ragged. His gaze becomes dull;

Even cats feel for him some pity. "The Comtesse,"

They say, "is working on her memoirs.

She has reached page seven thousand and two

And has not mentioned him once."

THE SQUARE

People who used to sleep in Madison Square –

Chased away so swings and a dog run

Could be built -- have returned as ghosts

Arguing in languages no two of them understand.

The pigeons nowadays make hoarse noises;

They've either become heavy smokers

Or are studying to be crows. A statue

Has been put up of a female torso,

Shredded and melting. Attempts by monuments

To James Madison, Chester A. Arthur,

Admiral David Farragut and William Seward

To engage her attention have failed

Perhaps; it's hard to tell

At what a headless woman is looking.

IN THE AIR

It might have been that I was on my way

To eat at The Dove (good coffee)

Or Mama Lucita’s (the best eggs rancheros

I will ever have though Mama will

One day be closed by the Health Department)

Or Medici’s (hamburgers on back bread;

Individual Chicago-style pizzas). Then again,

I might have been going to buy books

At Powell’s (characterless but huge

And a box of free samples outside the door)

Or O’Gara’s (a thin Irish man with a trim mustache

And a pipe who’d gesture each morning,

Making the dust rise from the books

And walk out the door and down 57th Street

Towards Powell’s). It was sunny, I remember

And I suddenly leaped in the air, leaving

Much of who I was still hovering.

I have spent years discovering

Just who it was who came down.

ANOTHER FOR AESRED

I bear no malice, says Quantum;

It is my nature to make instruments

Fall out of true and engineers

Into desperate criminals and masters

Of improvisation.

I cannot choose

To allow 2 and 2 to equal four

And not seventeen or a slice of bread

Or a rentboy who weeps hard tears

On a rainwet street in Soho.

THE OLD STORY

One morning the Marquis will discover

That he's grown old and tyrannous

And that some talking animal –

Perhaps a vole this time, or a gecko

Who walks upright and sells insurance –

Plots to bring him him down. Really,

Would it have been so intolerable

To have stayed home, watching

Bits of chaff floating on the stream,

Working for his brother at the mill?

AT THE CONCERT

The first piece was dissonant and boring so

I followed Sam Johnson's example

Withdrawing my attention and thinking

About Tom Thumb. Since the two of us were

Having the same thoughts, Johnson

Was nearby. We nodded but Thumb

Was on his feet, urgently defending

His right to be taken seriously

Despite standing just shy of three inches tall

And his history of being trapped

Inside various types of pie.

A PORTRAIT

For years she thought she'd been painted
By the French painter Jacques-Louis David
But now must accept she is the work
Of a gifted pupil. Her expression --
Eyes wide in her half-shadowed face,
Lips willing to be amused -- seems unchanged.
As ever, she looks at her viewer calmly
Willing to talk, willing to go on working.
My head cocked, I watch for a while. We are
Both prentice pieces  and so
Must serve each other as we can.

NEWS FLASH

In a lost book Augustine wonders
Why a thunderbolt had to tell him
That St. Jerome was dead. Couldn't
A note have been slipped beneath his door,
Or a grey cat mention she'd heard it
From a calico who'd been told by a tabby
Who gotten the news from a grieving lion?
Really, Jerome was no more or less dead
Because thunder said he was
Or if angels had posted an announcement
In green and gold letters, thirty feet high.

MOMENT

Some god is turning his gaze your way;

Be still and hope the tall grass

Is tall enough this year. Or maybe

A goddess is thinking of thinking

About you. Make no sound; perhaps

The noises of the world will divert her.

And if it’s God in one of His quantum states
Whose attention rests so heavily on you?

Brace yourself and bear it. Existence

Can’t be easy for Him either.

LIGHT

Starlight for my father at fifteen

Still awake at five in the morning

High in his attic, standing by the window.

A flickering dream for my mother,

Fourteen and just about to wake up

A mile or two away. It's a Saturday;

He will go to the synagogue and ask God

Some probing questions. She will go

To a movie and gather evidence

Of how reality can be constructed

From shadows and light and fear and love.

FOR VW AT 84

I have decided Virginia Woolf may live

An additional twenty-five years

Beyond her suicide, the pond waters

Indignantly refusing to drown

A Glory of British Letters

Imagine her writing reviews of plays

By Angry Young Men or commenting

On Suez and Sputnik and leaving

Almost finished a brilliant jeu d'esprit

In which John Profumo awakens

In Hyde Park with Christine Keeler

And a demon who offers him

A gently used wish with a chip in it.

A LONG WAY DOWN THE TRACK

Reach in your pocket;
There's a ticket there
For the Midnight Special
Or the Hellbound Train
Or even the Train
That's Bound for Glory
But perhaps,

Persuaded by me,
You may ride

The train from Timbuktu
To Kalamazoo
To Kalamazoo
And back.

ANOTHER OF AESRED'S

Rolling to his execution

Captain Brown said

"It is a beautiful country;

I’ve not had the pleasure

Until now of seeing it."

If you don’t hear

The poetry

There will just be

No pleasing you today.

MISCONSTRUCTION

Because we were in a hurry and because
We were tired and because we
Didn't care very much we left the hours
Entirely out of order so six at night followed
Hard on the heels of ten in the morning
Which gave way to three in the morning which
Is an hour filled with wolves who decided
To stay for a while and were irritated
To disappear at the stroke of noon.

RELIC

The hour looks sandblasted

Any maker’s mark gone;
The minutes, blurred and dull,
Their sharp edges lost
Are oddly shaped
Their seconds having drifted
And accumulated; a few
Are chipped or cracked. Once
I'd have offered nothing,
Or next to nothing, but now
It is the first time
I’ve seen in a while and,
Miraculously, still functions.

Perhaps it had been part
Of a long night, the sort
Where it is a long march
From three a.m. to four, so the wolves
(That hour is filled with wolves)
Close their yellow eyes and sleep.
What wonder if the rest of the day
Grows impatient and goes on
Leaving this hour behind?

NAR

Did the fool at the wedding look grimly

At the bride's sister, knowing she'll one day marry

A man named Moses Getreu and on another day,

 Have a child who'll write letters to her

On Snediker Street and on a third day,

Play a long last song, take a last deep breath,

And jump from a roof, meeting an angel

On her way to the street below?

CAREER

When he was young he wrote twenty

Or twenty two very good poems.

The rest of his career was spent

In writing them over. They grew tired

And coarse. Towards the end

The lovely “Tyrhennian Light”

Had become a recipe

For a dust and jalapeño omelet.

As he was dying, Wordsworth’s ghost

Dropped by to say “It doesn’t count

If you do it deliberately.”

FAMILY MATTERS

It is 1890; my grandmother Esther is one year old
And Max, whom she will someday marry,
Is two -- twice her age; it is obvious
They’ll never suit each other. Her mother
Is alive or dead. She anxiously asks me
Which but I don't know; after consideration
I allow my great grandmother more time
To walk the broad streets of Lvov and to look
At the river about which her daughter will dream
When she’s thousands of miles away.
Irina, Esther's sister, is already born
Or perhaps not. There may be other children;
I'll lodge them in Paris until I discover
Whether they existed. If they did,
I'll bring them home. If they didn't, at least
They'll have had some very good meals
And the consolation of speaking French
With Parisian grace and assurance.