WHY THE CLEANERS SOMETIMES FIND WORDS IN MY OLD OFFICE

Some, left behind by accident,

Are in cabinets or behind the desk,

Or helplessly trapped between two slats

Of the blind that's never lowered.

Others stalked off, indignant

At the sentences in store for them,

And hid beneath the radiator.

The nouns sleep heavily; the verbs

Have mostly succeeded in finding places

In my replacement's memos where

They make her say surprising things.

The adjectives and adverbs are weaving

A long rope made of conjunctions,

Intending some unmooned night

To rappel themselves five stories down
And disappear into the City.

TROLLEY TO EBBETS FIELD -- R

The Lvoviner dreamed sometimes
Of trolleys running to Ebbets Field
When he woke up he would ask
The Prince of Fire, who'd come by
From God knows where, to smoke,
What a trolley might be,
Who Ebbet was and what sort of things
Might be found in his field.
The Prince would light his short pipe,
Take between one and four puffs
And explain. "Trolleys are female trolls
Big and very strong but kindly
In the future they will make a living
By charging a small coin
To carry children long distances.
Ebbet is not a man but a sort of tree
Which bears four different fruits.
Someday the trolleys will carry children

To a field filled with leafy ebbets
Early on summer mornings and watch them
As they run around all day or climb the trees
It late afternoon, the trolleys
Will  take the sleepy children home in their arms."
His pipe finished, the Prince of Fire
Would say good night and go off
To God knows where. The Lvoviner's cat,
Stretching, might say "Do you believe him?"
"Not a word," the Lvoviner would answer,
"But to be the Prince of Fire is hard
And sometimes he needs to talk."

AN IRON STATUE OF THE GREAT ELECTOR AS ST. GEORGE

Even in cast-iron the Great Elector
Makes an unconvincing St. George.
The plume on his helmet has collapsed
He's short, with a doughy face and a paunch.

The spear he lifts clumsily

Started out as a curtain rod.
Two of the dragon's three heads --
A lion and a lizard -- gamely pretend fright.
The third  -- a goat -- is plainly bored,
Gazing away from the stubby knight
Thinking about who he wants for dinner

LIST

The space between two notes, slow-struck

On a morning nor summer nor notsummer.

The time it takes for a small red apple

To decide to roll off a kitchen table.

Things  the reflection recalls

That the moon does not.

TWELVE YEARS

A cold first day of Autumn

Small raindrops are falling

Unmolested by the wind.

The leaves are late-summer green

With here and there one that's red

Or yellow. Theodore T. is dead also;

Did you know? After you died he

Ruled in your favor against God.

I meant to thank him for this

And many other favors. Please

Give him my regrets, my regards

PIANO

My mother was a small woman with small hands

So the piano and she were never a good match.

Still, in her day, a well-off watchmaker --

The sort who owned a car in the Depression --

Might deem his house unfurnished without a wife

And children and a piano. His first wife died

Bearing his first daughter. His less-loved second wife

Brought a piano with her, and her parents.

(Fanny's unexpected marriage didn't release her

From her spinster's job of caring for them.)

After a few years, a second daughter appeared.

How surprised my grandfather was,

How stunned, how bewildered, that giving his eldest

Food, shelter, a stepmother, a piano and a half-sister

Was not the end -- not even nearly the end

Of the responsibilities he'd somehow acquired.

MANTEGNA'S AGONY IN THE GARDEN

Jesus, exhausted, hollow-eyed,

With strands of grey in his hair,

Looks in jaded disbelief

At a phalanx of chubby-legged

Naked boys with wings who glare back

From the plaster cloud they’re on.

The boys look to be three or a bit less

One of them, having no neck,

Has a head that will soon

Roll off and have to be retrieved.

They've brought a set of the props

A crucifixion planner might need:

 A cross, a sponge on a stick, a spear,

A short but sturdy pillar of flagellation,

And a brass pot of gall which dangles

Just above a tiny child-angel's penis.

FROM A PACKING LIST

The confession of a friend

That he died years ago.

Pine tree branches

Burning in wire baskets

Before I was born.

A gambler's tall shadow

Dealing cards in a room

That no longer exists.

TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS AFTER THE INVENTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY

1867; photographer Julia Cameron

Has posed a tired young woman

As a bacchante. Being a bacchante

Apparently requires bare arms

Also, three angry cyclopean starfish

Must roost in your thickwaved hair.

The bacchante looks sad. If Bacchus

Were to appear on the Isle of Wight

He might start his work by finding

A heavyjawed, browneyed ghost

And standing her a drink. Or two.

HAIR'S BREADTH

What terrible crimes I’d have done

If I wasn't so lazy!  Another

Narrow escape, world.

WEZELAAR TRIPTYCH

Unmistakably, that is a fireman's hat

Jauntily clapped on Jesus’ head.

He's also put on Hermes' sandals.

He leans on a shovel at an angle

So perilous it is a miracle

He doesn't fall down. He has found

Some sort of vase or bottle and gestures

With a kong and boneless hand

At a kneeling woman who is begging

That Jesus spare the bottle's life.

To the right, black-hooded women

And a homunculus in a white dress

Look off into the middle distance.

To the left, a crowd of kneeling men

Wonder just how long they must kneel.

MARY BOYLSTON

In her portrait Mary Boylston sits very straight

On an extremely handsome red chair. A bird --

A large rock dove -- perches on her hand.

The woman knows she’s dead but endeavors

Not to let on that she does. She has no wish

To hang on the wall of the Detroit Institute of Art

Or be sold on postcards at the gift shop

As a foil for indignant chairs or grieving birds.

DIFFERENCE

Some of the older theologicians say God is puzzled

And upset by men’s foolish habit of dying.

They record witnesses who’ve seen Him on battlefields

Angrily kicking corpses or swear they've seen Him

In hospitals, thick-fingeredly pushing souls back into bodies

(Perhaps not the same bodies with which they’d been admitted.)

Some interpret this as a strident form of God’s mercy

Or say Infinity can never compromise with Limit

A few claim it is because the dead, after a while,

Seem to find their ways to God’s House and move in

So there are always souls on the roof playing harps

Or in the basement chucking coal at each other

Or leaving the refrigerator open until the rooks

Believe Heaven was made to delight them only.

LABOR DAY

Labor Day and one cicada is trying
To do the work of twenty. The birds
Have all left, flying to wherever birds fly
When they're off-duty. There's a puddle
Beneath the hose tap; a stray frog
Is sitting there for now. Wandering
Is not something frogs do well
But what can you do when your pond
Has evaporated clean away?
He looks exhausted. Dusk in three hours;
He'll eat someone then; get back on the road

THE WIDOW ELIZABETH RICHARD

For her last three years Elizabeth Richard
Shared her house with John Copley's portrait of her,
Smiling sometimes at what a plain stout woman
The beautiful Miss Garland had become.
Late at night she'd tell it things that puzzled her
Or that made her measurelessly sad.
The picture has been thinking hard about all this;
Since 1771. You can see in its dark eyes that
It hopes any day now to find the right words
To answer, to comfort, to console

COPLEY MINIATURE

My name is Griselda Oliver and you

May stare at me as long as you wish;

I will not blush nor blink. Have you noticed

How very pretty I am? The freckles

Time's given me make me even prettier.

I'm clever too; my left eye sees everything

My right eye sees even more.

This miniature me, painted on copper,

Knows a very private joke which you

Are born centuries too late to hear.

ELIZABETH ROSS

A medieval saint, reconvening her scattered atoms,

Poses for John Copley. The bird perched on her hand

Has just said an amusing thing, at which she smiles.

She could, as a saint, ask that Boston in 1767

Be sunk twenty fathoms deep or buried

In sand or dust or heaps of broken pottery.

She won't, of course; she is much too kind.

Still, knowing she can if she wants to gives her

An implacable serenity which the painter

Understands and envies and captures perfectly.