INFINITUM

The case

Is lost, is won.

Still,

The lawyer plans

And replans

Writes

And rewrites.

AMONG THE CRATES OF PUNCTUATION

Box after box I have

Of commas, some almost new,

Left behind when the sentences

In which they’d served

Evanesced. A good comma

Is almost indestructible.

The rarest one I own

Was used by Aldus Manutius

In a note he left

For his wife one morning

Telling her he'd be home late

But would bring home

Three bottles of wine

And Desiderius Erasmus.

SHEPHARD OR SHEPHERD OR SHEPPARD

His pasteboard tradecard said

"The ambiguous Mr. Fleetwood Shephard

Witty jests; bawdy reparte; pandering;

Influence peddling; heavy drinking;

Discrete translation into unknown tongues;

Extreamly reasonable rates." Apparently

It was slander to refer to him as

"The best paid pimp in England;" he

Was not well paid. His death was often reported; 

Being ambiguous, there’s every chance 

He remains alive and will celebrate

Turning 385 next New Year's Day.

OCCUPATION

To allow the dogs time 

To master brush work 

And write poems

Li Po's shadow spent weeks 

Chasing a ball and barking.

TRANSLATED

Half-erased, 

In need of redrawing,

I stayed in the house

Of Carnea, goddess

Of doorhinges.

Since few 

Pray to her now

Her temple

Takes in lodgers.

EMBROIDERY

Li Po three days before he died

Made his shadow an embroidered hat

Exactly like the one he always wore 

It is recorded that the shadow,

In time, learned to write poems

But his were nothing like Li Po's

REPLACEMENTS

The point has never really been to kill us

But to make us into something else

So we can take our turn guarding camps and

Find nothing wrong with shooting children.

Who will be the us now that we

Have decided we'd rather be the ones

Holding the knouts? The job does not

Pay well and the benefits have been

For the most part, hypothetical.

TROPE

Read enough poetry and you'll notice

That certain images, certain combinations,

Are unstable, are fleeting and may,

When next you look for them, be gone.

If you meet Time walking his dog

You should linger; you'll not see him

More approachable than this. ,

Soon he'll appear in some foreign elegy

Where he and the dog must wear disguises

And use false names.

ON THE STREET

There are moments he forgets

He's been translated into silence;

Things that might become words

Stand at a respectful distance

Waiting for the crook of a finger

Or a head nodded ever so slightly

Sometimes morning discovers the ghost

Of a crooked cop has left

Half a sandwich and a small coin

Which will not buy a glass of tea

Anywhere on Seventh Avenue.

Time has made the lion and the saint

Unsure which is which but no matter;

Go ahead; ask for a miracle.

         

PAGE 3, WEIRD TALES, MARCH 1944

If only I had this manual!

Over six hundred pages!

Sturdily bound

In tough fabrikoid!

With it, I could repair 

Any car made

Between 1935 and 1942.

Without it, I can barely 

Change a light bulb

Or find my nose

When I wake each morning.

COURIERS

Where have they gone, the dead postmen

Who used to be everywhere, riding tandem bicycles,

Climbing out of wicker laundry baskets,

Carried on rugs by strong-armed women,

Sleeping in trees, pretending to be vultures

Improbably wintering on Snediker Avenue?

On cold nights they'd build street fires

A little apart from the fires the homeless men made. 

If you were hoping for a letter from the dead

You'd try to forget it. Dead postmen

Only deliver mail you don’t expect.

ROBE

Finding an unfamiliar robe in your closet 

You put it on and blango! You're a priest.

Since you've no knowledge whose priest you are

You stand in the early morning light with those 

Waiting to do day labor. No one chooses you

To pick fruit or asks whether you've done construction.

A woman shares a cigarette with you; a man

Asks to be forgiven. For all you know

You are a priest of a merciless god;

Some of the symbols on your vestment are disquieting;

You forgive him anyway. Finally, an old pickup truck 

Pulls to the curb; three demigods, pooling resources,

Are conducting test runs of a new faith. No

Human sacrifice is planned; light martyrdom

May be required. You ride in the back,

Doing small miracles to amuse some vestals

Drowsily watching the sun shrug itself upwards.

WREN

Bats and bees and seraphim bicker

Over precedence and protocols;

A drab brown bird nips in

To bid you farewell on behalf 

Of night and day and all the great world.

KNOCKING

Like a member of the secret police conscience

Enjoys waking you at three in the morning

When you're confused and likely to blurt out

The very things you meant to keep secret

So it was with me; there was barely time

To slip out the back as the front door shook.

No time to dress; I ran through Lvov

With a confusion of rags and tatters and dreams

Running alongside, urging me in shrill voices

To seek shelter in a barrel or an alley

Or in dark corner of an imagined church

Painted by the crook’d shade of Pieter Saanredam.

PRODUCTION

The ghosts of Lemberg are putting on an opera

My grandmother Esther -- who worked as a teenager

In a cigarette factory -- urges them to do Carmen.

For days her ghost, who looks to be about 15,

Has been looking sidelong at the other ghosts

And lounging provocatively on gravestones

In the cemetery where she isn't buried.

Her sister Irina, though, feels Nabucco

Might be a better first production.

She also laughs every time she sees Esther

With the shadow of a rose between her teeth.

While deciding, the ghosts -- unable

To rent the city's opera house --are renovating

The one that wasn't built, following the plans

The town council rejected in 1896.

TRAIN POEM

Satan cannot make it today so

His part will be taken by a bear;

He offers Jesus berries, honey,

Fish and the promise of dreams

About berries, honey and fish.

He expects Jesus to refuse

Which He does. Still, He 

Is very nice about it and

Says He'll think over 

The bear's offer to teach Him

Bike riding and juggling.

PIN

Since they've gathered to illustrate a principle of mathematics --

Namely that any number of things having location but not mass

Can simultaneously occupy the same point --all God's angels

Could as well dance on the pin's point as on its head

But that, they feel, would be showing off. Also

The pin in question has on its point

All of Hell's demons, marching and shouting slogans.