AUBADE

The old god shrugs and decides today 

He will exist between seven and two

And answer fourteen prayers, nineteen petitions

And all questions clearly worded and asked 

At least fifteen minutes before closing time.

He creates a valet to help him dress,

And a cook to make him breakfast 

As usual, when he leaves his house, angels 

From a previous dispensation are waiting 

To ask him for work. He creates a secretary

To write down the names of those

Who have them and descriptions of the rest.

AVOID THE COFFEE

The cafeteria where I eat sometimes is generally

Filled with the ghosts of old lawyers and clerks.

It has gradually climbed since I first saw it 

From ground level to the seventh floor 

Of a five story building. It's  clock 

Always shows it's half past 1937. 

FAMA INTERIM

God's marble palace is always cold

And very seldom used nowadays.

Once in a while there's a ceremony

Or it's rented by a filmmaker requiring

Illimitable space. There are an infinite number

Of basements but only one attic. Since He retired –

Which was at about the same time I did –

God has taken to spending much of His time

In that attic. Some say He's working on His memoirs

Others insist he's building a new sort of universe

Intended to work on different principles.

Whatever He's up to, He and Lucifer have reconciled.

Fallen angels have begun filtering back

Into Heaven, taking odd jobs or rushing about

Carrying great baskets of feathers and pins

Or blueprints or buckets of tenpenny nails

Or leather portfolios filled with shadows.

ON POINT

The point of angels
Is to dance. Granted
They can destroy cities
Free prisoners
Blow horns stop
The Sun from moving
Carry news or threats
And make bodies
Out of almost anything
Including air, time and something
Called subtle dust
Which you can’t buy these days.
All this they do because
Someone had to and dinosaurs
Weren’t good at it
But the reason for
Having angels
Is to dance.

RHYTHM

Claude Hopkins is playing

I Got Rhythm, ignoring the circumstance

That he’s been dead since 1984

Where he is, it’s 1941

And he’s in a Brunswick studio 

Where the Muses, looking for inspiration,

Have dropped by. (He’s aware

They visited Art Tatum first

And that Tatum chased them off.)

Crowded into the small studio 

Are Hopkins, his piano, the equipment 

An engineer and nine muses. Making it worse 

Erato, an incurable romantic, has invited 

The Muses' estranged cousins, the Furies

To accompany them. There are only three Furies 

But they take up a lot of space. Perversely,

They've started jitterbugging though not

In time to the music, ignoring Terpsichore's pleas

That they stop. The engineer is falling in love

With the youngest Fury, Tisiphone;

Her name means "vengeful destruction;"

It will probably not go well between them.

Hopkins is not worried. It's 1940;

It's now; he's alive then, dead now

And either way he's playing I Got Rhythm.

WITH A NESHNABE

When they met again, many years 

After his death and a few weeks 

After hers -- contrary to the last,

And after the last, she'd taken

The long way round and arrived 

Riding behind a handsome Neshnabé --

She returned to him the piety

He'd thrown off in 1914 and which

She'd picked up and preserved

Tending it until it became a puzzle

To her and all those she lived with.

He returned to her her habit of smoking 

And certain memories of her father 

For which there'd been no room

Among things hastily packed

And carried across the ocean.

SALTED

The channoards of Paris
Had the right to salt
And boil the King
(After he was dead).
It’s been some time
Since they last exercised
This ancient right but,
If you’ve woken up,
Again, with a royal corpse
And an indescribable
Tattoo you could do worse
Than look to the saltbreakers
Perhaps the techniques
Has been preserved.

LICENSERS

The ghosts of Kamianka 

Strumilowa sometimes,

For my father's sake, allow

A dream of mine to

Take place there. Of course,

It must first be licensed 

And the script approved 

By the town's synod

Three men, three women,

Two ducks and a cat

Who acts as chair.

Occasionally, they demand 

Some rewrites. One of the ducks 

With ties to a community

Of nondescript ghost dogs

Often requests that a dog

Be given a role. I always 

Agree. In my recent series 

Of dreams about my office

(Translated almost intact 

From Brooklyn to 1904)

All the senior managers 

Are dogs or ducks or

Luchadores willing to work

For very small amounts 

Of ghost kronen.

SCHOOL

The Taganrog gymnasia stood 

On the highest point in town 

When the headmaster was fired 

He found a new position

As an insane tramp. Records show  

That Parunov, the new headmaster, 

Paid for the old one's burial.

This story is, perhaps, improved 

Though made less interesting 

If you believe the old headmaster

Was dead before he met

Three big men with shovels.

BROKEN WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

The Assistant to
The God
Of Broken Things
Is frustrated by
His employer's
Inability to keep
Promises or
Appointments.

One does not pray to

The God of Broken Things

To be made whole but

To be made broken

More interestingly.

BEING OTHERS

We are, they said, tired 

Of being Byzantines; let's 

Be Turks instead so when Mehmet 

The Conqueror and his soldiers 

Reach the City's walls they'll find

Another Mehmet at the gates

And themselves already inside

Dowsing fires and making whitewash

For the mosaics in the Hagia Sofia.

TELLING STORIES

Lately it's begun to irk God

That He is impeccable

And thus incapable of lying.

Trying to amuse the ghost 

Of a pale girl He used to meet

In the old church in Haarlem

He spoke of a thing with 

A beaver's tail and otter's feet

And a venomous spur. Only

Frantic signals from St. Baavo

Prevented the world being filled

With disturbingly clever platypodes

Spiraling on batwings and breathing 

Multi-colored gouts of fire.

THANKSGIVING

Puddle ducks are surefooted

And run well. Black ducks

Are often seen with mallards

Who are the most common ducks.

Black ducks can mimic mallards

Pretty exactly and are said to be

The wariest of all ducks 

Widgeons, though, are nervous too

And quick to take alarm. Their flight 

Is erratic, filled with sudden turns; 

They are not above stealing food

From diving ducks such as  buffleheads

And mergansers. Shoveler drakes 

Call out loudly, going woh-woh or tuck-tuck;

The hens, when they get a word in, quack feebly.

THE WOMEN ON THE BOAT

Every time an Arthur dies Bedivere

Throws the sword into the water

Where a hand reaches up,

 Catches it and brandishes it

Three times. A boat

Sails slowly towards shore

Crewed by three tall women

Except for the times one

Or another of the queens

Is occupied or ill or

Would rather not spend her day

Rowing to the Isle of Apples.

Those times one of the women

May be short, even stumpy

May, in fact, be Baba Yaga.

She makes a passable crone

Once she puts away her pipe

(And just where does she put it?

She has no pockets;

Better not to know, perhaps)

And as long as she doesn’t smile.

Matron is more difficult

And she’s an impossible maiden

Preening and being brazenly bashful

Fluttering her lashless eyelids

Still, she’s always available

And the contract requires

Three women and a boat

Every time an Arthur dies.

TWO FRENCH SAINTS

St. Genevieve is the patron saint 

Of Paris because when Attila the Hun

Approached her prayers, it's said,

Made him march instead to Orleans.

She was hard to drown, performed 

Miraculous cures and healings,

Could read minds. Her presence

Made candles light themselves.

It is impolitic to mention her

In the same prayer as St. Aignan,

Sandthrower, cloudwatcher and

Patron of Orleans who felt that,

At 93, he was too old

To have to save his city again.

Every November 17 Orleans sells

Gingerbread pigs in Aignan's honor.

Don't even try asking for one in Paris

MEANWHILE, IN THE WORLD OF IDEAL FORMS

The cat of whom 

All other cats 

Are shadows 

Lived for a while 

With the Platonic Ideal 

Of Plato. Plato-ness 

Felt that catness

Should feed herself 

Or perhaps subsist

On the idea of food.

AT THE TOURNAMENT

Since fair maids were thin

On the ground just then, needles

Stood in for them, holding

Themselves straight, flirting

Bright lengths of thread.

Pins kept their heads down

As became the common folk.

The princess stood alone

A twist of embroidery thread

Trailing from her eye. She had,

It was whispered,

Acquired a taste for blood.

BUYING FROM IFRITS

After the Third Avenue El was torn down 

People on its route woke up often, saying 

"What was that noise I didn't just hear?"

Ifrits came by, knocking on doors

Selling the echoes of trains going by

None of them from the Third Avenue El

But sufficiently like to allow some sleep.

The foreign train sounds brought with them

Improbable things and to this day 

Third Avenue ghosts will sell you a ticket

To places you've never heard of or knew

How much you wanted to see.

PATRONS OF THIEFTAKERS

Protasius and Gervasius came to see Bishop Ambrose

In a dream, interrupting one in which the Bishop

Had been teaching some bears to sing counterpoint.

They entered with a flourish of horns and choirs 

Of seraphim. The bears refused to leave the dream

And sat towards the edges of it, growling 

But quietly. Even bears know better

Than to challenge martyrs and seraphim.

Protasius spoke for both, saying that he and Gervasius, 

His twin, were martyrs who died when Nero

Was Emperor. (“No,” said Gervasius; “it was Diocletian.”

Ambrose suggested a compromise; perhaps Marcus Aurelius?)

"Anyway," Protasius went on, "we're dead and buried

In your cathedral without markers. Felix, though,

And Nabus, have railings around them and an inscription

People stand on us to speak with them. Perhaps

You might want to do something about this 

Remembering that we, though patrons of haymakers 

And thieftakers, include swords and clubs

Among our attributes." In Milan now

The brothers have a large, slightly gaudy shrine;

In one corner someone has carved several small bears

Who seem to be singing in counterpoint.

THE CREATION OF THE REST OF THE WORLD

Before the world was, Wales was;

I have this from Hunt who’d seen

A Welsh genealogy. Towards the middle

God creates the Heavens and the Earth.

Not an over-proud folk, the Welsh;

Perhaps they welcomed the rest of the world

Suddenly appearing, slamming into place

Around Wales, which had always been.

Or perhaps it happened by degrees

The rest of creation coming into focus

And trying to look as if it, too,

Had always been there.

                                Some Welsh farmer,

I expect, pulled down the family Bible

(A huge thing, with all the pages blank

Save for the one in the middle labelled

“Births and Deaths”) and wrote

“Up all night with sick cow. About 10:30

Rest of world appeared. About time, too!”

CHARLOTTE

There’s an old ballad called

"A Corpse Going to a Ball."

It's about Beautiful Charlotte

A farmer's daughter in Maine

Who, ignoring her mother's advice

To wrap herselfin a blanket, boards a sleigh

And arrives at the ball a frozen corpse.

Afterwards, the poem says,

She never spoke another word

This seems unremarkable,

Even tame. Better, perhaps,

Had she delivered a speech

About dressing appropriately

During a New England winter

Or danced a bit stiffly

(I expect a waltz would be difficult

But perhaps she could've managed

A clumsy jig).

With no help from me,

The ballad became popular.

You can still find in antique stores

Small naked porcelain dolls

Called Frozen Charlottes.

AN INCIDENT

A ship carrying twenty thousand sheep 

Bound for Istanbul's slaughterhouse

Sank in the Bosphorus. Some of the sheep 

Swam to shore; men dropped their coffees  

And ran into the water, desperate to save them.

AN OLD FRIEND ON THE TRAIN

When the train stops at Bayside

My friend David boards though

He died three years ago. In the precise

Hierarchy of high school

He ranked slightly below us;

Our fathers were professionals

His was a printer whom money

Had forbidden to go to college.

We had houses; his family lived

In an apartment. He was pleasant-looking
And athletic and not tall. His family

Were all musical. He played everything;

His father taught recorder on weekends.

He had an exaggerated hatred of falseness

And made me feel guilty when I sang

Molly Malone; not being Irish

I'd no right to a brogue. More than any of us

He was wary, mocking belief, scorning love

He was sturdy, ran doggedly; he was at home

Playing football or the piano or

Standing under the glaring lights

Of the empty parking lot where those
With nowhere to go spent nights

Teasing and testing each other.

Grown-ups said that he, unlike his friends,

Had a head on his shoulders, a head

That had been screwed on right.

He later turned himself inside out;

He later took the word of a malign ghost

Who broke him in pieces.

This never seemed right to me.

Once, a girl told me that I was special

And David was just David but still

She'd rather go out with him.

OCCUPATION

Sometime in early 1917

The Emperor Franz Josef

Began playing himself

In Esther's dreams.

He was a bit sheepish

But explained that as a ghost

He found himself at loose ends

And lonely. None of his courtiers

Turned out to have liked him

"Heaven," said one, "means knowing

I need never listen to you again"

Other emperors were no help

Charlemagne goggled at him

And spoke, anyway,

A weird proto-German

The Emperor Rudolph

Was always in his lab

Attempting to transform

This into that and back again.

Charles the Fifth brooded endlessly

That the Hapsburgs no longer

Ruled Mexico or the Netherlands.

My grandmother assumed

She gone a trifle mad

Sooner than she'd expected

Despite repeated assurances

That he wasn't an illusion

But merely a ghost. Once

She woke up with

A yellow and blue medal

Held in her left hand,

The Order of the Iron Crown,

First Class, making her

A privy councillor

Properly addressed as

"Your Excellency."