LOOKING

Grab a brush, a rake, a loofah

Comb every farm and street for Shufer

Ask every duck and horse and cow

"Have you seen Shufer? Where's she now?"

But ducks and cows and horses too

Say "Why on earth should we tell you?

If she has gone to ground than we

Must live on Shuferian memory

Though you try for many days

There's no map for shuferismic ways

Cease from courting knocks and bruises

Shufer does as Shufer chooses,"

LETTERS

For ten years or so

I employed half a woman

To do typing, sharing her labor

With my boss, a man

Of preternatural calm. 

One day she left,

Moving to a place

Rural and prone to floods.

She sent many letters

Urged my boss to accept Jesus

Lest he find himself in Hell.

She never wrote to me.

TRAVELER

When thrice-great Cavafy said to thank 

Ithaca for giving you the journey

He didn’t know my mother, the far side

Of a century away, would hear him

And set out. She was never tall

Nor fast but knew how to travel

And how to last. Her true name

Belonged to the dead. She traded it

For one she liked better. 

JMWT IN LONDON

The painter Turner one morning went looking

For a model who could pass as an angel.

(Angels weren’t in his usual line but he

Thought he might show the Renaissance

Just where it had gone wrong). His tall house

Saw him return hungover, towards dusk

With two surly manx cats trailing behind

To add to the five who lived with him already.

READING

My father’s primer,

Might have alternating chapters

First from a knight’s

Then from a dragon’s point of view.

Sometimes they’d meet

Just to talk things over.

Who could use such a book?

The princess, I suppose,

Unless she understands them

All too well already.

BARROW

Elizabeth Barrett Browning  put her soul

In a wheelbarrow and trundled it across

Five centuries. By the time they’d gone

Fifty years Elizabeth – a frail woman if not

So frail as her father insisted – was panting

And began hinting the soul could get out

And walk for a bit or even take a turn

Pushing the barrow. Her soul though

Oped wide its grey eyes and said

“I dreamed a poet pushed me through time

In a wheelbarrow. Passing strange would it be

To wake and find it true but worse still

To rise and have to push. Be warned!

At any moment the tyranny of impulse

May set me all a-yell and I’ll call

'Fresh fish! Fresh fish! Who’ll buy? Who’ll buy?' ”

SUITE 615

In Marlowe's office
three of the filing cabinets
are empty.
When I become fictional
I mean to use them
to store old moons 
and memories
and donuts.
Marlowe
Will not mind.

FOR AESRED

The nun and the monk

Argued they'd had no choice;

The old well insisted they replay

The centuries-old story.

This excuse was accepted

Their son became

The god of certain fish

(Freshwater trout, mostly.)

His twin sister grew up

The third-most beautiful woman

Of her generation and died young.

ONEOF THE REASONS

When I taught Constitutional Law a djinn

Audited the course, sitting towards the back

When he grew bored he'd animate 

Small men made of fire and send them 

Scurrying around his chair. Sometimes 

They'd wander down the aisle

And strut behind me, imitating my gestures.

I blame this, partly, for the university's 

Refusal to grant me tenure or to now admit

I ever worked there

THE PROPHET - R

To get the atmosphere right, John Glassco,
Distinguished Canadian poet and pornographer,
Travelled from 1966 to 1935 to write his memoirs.
He took a room a few blocks away
From  the hospital where his younger self
Was convinced he was dying. He visited 

 One afternoon and made terrible prophecies:
"You will be mayor of a small town in East Quebec;
You will win the Governor General's Award for poetry."
"Tell me," young John gasped, "tell me that I will still
Write highly stylized fetish poems and novels!"
"You will; they will be published under many pseudonyms."
"It's all right then; I suppose I will have to live."

QUAERERE

Fearing I was missing, God

Took out an ad for my return

Or reliable word of my whereabouts 

In the Wolfenbuttel Aviso

For December 15, 1632. 

The Thirty Years War was then

An adolescent so God

Wasn't surprised that no one

Had time to tell him

Where I might be found.

Not giving up, He then

Engaged Eugene Francois Vidocq

Who searched Paris from April 1830 

Through July 1831. Vidocq concluded 

I was hiding among the unborn.

Since 1927 Schrodinger's cat

Has, from his box, acted as God's agent

Buying and selling, saving and damning.

He may some day tell God where I am.

Then again, he may not.

MELITAEA TRIVIA

In 1934 a Persian butterfly flew 

Into a convoluted sentence

Otherwise about a canal

And the tar-stained ghosts

Of ancient sailors; someday

It will fly off. The sailors 

Will follow, taking the canal,

Leaving an and and an if

And three puzzled adjectives.

SHAH RUKH

Every dawn a large angel, his head bent 

To avoid scraping the ceiling, brings Shah Rukh

Six undeniable truths. At dusk a smaller angel

Wraps the truths in black wool and a demon,

Smaller still, carries the truths away.

Once the moon fully rises three old men

Come sit by his bed, whispering lies

So that the Shah can fall asleep at last.

TO ROME

I read that if I wanted to find God in Rome 

I would need to bring him with me. 

God did not want to go. He was tired;

He was dead; he didn't exist. It was cruel,

He said, to force so nonexistent a being

To travel in such inclement weather.

AUDITING STUDENT

When I taught Constitutional Law a djinn,

Auditing the course, sat towards the back

Growing bored, he'd sometimes animate

Small men made of fire and send them

Scurrying around his chair. Some of them

Would  wander down the aisle

To strut behind me, imitating my gestures.

I partly blame this for the university's

Refusal to grant me tenure or to now admit

I ever worked there

THE RESURRECT

Lazarus in Larnaca grew slowly old

And died again. On the fourth day

Nothing much happened. The weather

Was quite nice though

And seven children picnicked

Under a blunt-leaved maple tree

Eating almonds and cheese and apples.

MORE APES

It was not uncommon, I've read, for a town 

To draft a bishop -- perhaps a stranger 

Who looked or sounded the part. 

In light of this, it's not, perhaps, strange that

I keep waking up thinking of a bishop

Who is either an ape, thinks he is an ape

Or has a congregation of apes. Long ago,

My father invented a Brotherhood of Apes

I was three years old and a charter member

We would shamble about and sometimes 

Urge the world to help the Brotherhood 

In our fight against cleanliness and decency.

It would be just like my fellow apes

To have, after so long, have started

Wandering through my dreams, 

Surveying with wide eyes what I've built 

On lands still perhaps theirs, leaving behind

A hairy bishop of missionary bent.

THEN

In those days we improvised

Nouns learned to verb it

Footing archlessly on fantastic toes.

Properly lit, with prop mustaches

Or malacca canes, virtues

Usefully impersonated vices.

When people ran out, an ape

Made a surprisingly good bishop

Gently hooting and forgiving sins.