CLASSIFIED

Ambiguous deity, all powerful

And omniscient, currently 

In unfulfilling relationship

With everyone, seeks someone

Who can surprise Me. Willing

To relocate except 

I'm already everywhere.

CAT

Making his rounds, Death

Nods as he passes then

Sweeps the white cat

Into the pocket of his coat

If I'd picked her up

It would have ended 

In claws and hisses but 

For him she purrs quietly.

ENTERING FROM 53RD STREET ...

My eyes adjust to the dusty light 

Slanting its way in. It's late August;

Time stands behind the bar, fiddling 

With the strings of his apron. God

Is at a table, drinking with his friends.

There are peanut shells beneath His feet

The ceiling fan whirrs softly under a ceiling 

Of pressed tin. The waitresses' wings are draggled

And smell faintly of beer. I am amazed

To find God still where I left Him

In 1976. I might tell Him that Heaven 

Has cut loose from its mooring and sailed

No man can say where or that those angels

Who don't work in bars are mostly unemployed 

Passing even the warmest nights huddled 

Around fires burning in wire barrels

But I simply sit in the chair that has

Has left empty for me all this while.

URBAN AFFAIRS

When the old Penn Station was torn down 

Its demons, leaving their unhurried lives, 

Spilled into the City. Some colonized the Municipal Building 

Where the dolphin-crowned statue of Civic Fame

Offered them a cautious welcome. They mingled 

With the aboriginal civil servants, becoming

In time, one breed. Because my grandfather 

Was born in the building’s shadow and my parents 

Were married in the building by the County Clerk 

I enjoy certain hereditary rights

Including the ability to tell at a glance who 

In the Department of Buildings has the power 

To condemn my soul to spend half-eternity 

In a Beaux-Arts Hell designed by McKim, Mead & White

And who can merely choose to capriciously deny 

My application to tear down half of Central Park

In order to resurrect the Village of Pigtown.

OBSERVING

Surely my Grandfather Joe noticed 

That a banshee attended upon 

My Grandfather Max. This was not

The sort of company Brooklyn Jews

Was supposed to keep in 1946

Nor were they commonly shadowed 

By relays of bats when out late.

Still, though Joe could not help seeing

Banshees and dybbuks and their kin

Or knowing that his boss's wife

Was a golem whose wig tried to hide 

The word written on her forehead, 

He knew, much too well, how

To act as if the world did not

Insist on showing him its wonders.

CALLING

Ghosts come prompt to their hour

But he knew some tricks

Worth two of that. His gaze

Fluttered about, rarely lighting;

His true name was hidden;

Whatever minute it was he

Was always somewhere else

Nor could torture wring from him

What he’d determined to forget.

POWER

What use in being God if

You cannot stand in the rain

Sorry for Yourself, filled with regret?

What use being Time if you

Cannot drive a rattly wagon pulled

By two spavined horses one of whom

Keeps trying to bite the other?

What use being the left hand horse—

The one who doesn’t bite so much—

If you can’t wait while Time

Helps God up into the wagon?

STORAGE

Baba Yaga keeps the noise of the Third Avenue El 

Rounding the C-curve at 129th Street

In a large jar, sealed with wax. When the line

Is hastily thrown back into being 

To accommodate new technologies requiring 1954

Be entirely recast and recorded in Dolby HD 

She intends to sell it for an exorbitant price.

In the mean time, she's willing to rent it out 

For parties celebrating the birthdays 

Of children with unusually steady nerves.

ON THE FAITH OF PHOTOGRAPHS

There's no hurry. Someday, the photo

Will show only fog. Later still,

If no one throws the picture away,

The fog will have left behind

An entirely different house

And perhaps a cat, strayed

From another page in the album.

RUNT

His brothers and sisters were large, loose-limbed folk but he,

The last one, the one born at a journey’s end,

Had possibly been put together from scraps. He was

Economically made, a man short and dapper while they

Took up more room than was strictly necesary; their clothes

Grew old before their time. His shadow kept close to his heels

Theirs jostled other folks’ on the sidewalks and disappeared

For days at a time. All the family, and he not least in this,

Had small magics at their command but he preferred

Legerdemain; miracles weren’t to his liking.

After he’d been broken and his brothers repaired him

He never trusted himself again or anyone else.

EL

The Third Avenue El will someday

Conjure itself up, calling back 

Every atom from which it was made.

In anticipation, a new shadow -- 

In case the old one refuses

To return to Third Avenue --

Is being woven by monstrous spiders

From dust and soot and the memory

Of hot asphalt on a summer day.

NEWS FROM LVOV

Sometime in 1974 my grandmother

Gave up her habit of dreaming.

Since then, no one

Has seen the statue of Neptune

In the old market square

Nodding his head in time

To songs being sung

In a marketwoman's head.

The statue of Adonis

Has offered no good advice

Nor gravely accepted an offering

Of dandelions and hazel leaves.

Amphrite has not offered

Her stone shawl to a cold child.

Diana's statue has -- not even once --

Blinked nor smiled at an old joke

Skillfully retold

NOT ABOUT TIME

Ghosts come prompt to their hour

But he knew some tricks

Worth two of that. His gaze

Fluttered about, rarely lighting;

His true name was hidden;

Whaever minute it was he

Was always somewhere else

Nor could torture tear from him

What he’d determined to forget.

ON THE BEACH (R)

My poems seem to change in the summer

Ignoring me even more than usual.

Come winter, Raskalnikov and Little Nell

Will be after me to write something for them

Gloomy, deep; poems you can hit with a mallet

And leave no crack, no chip, no dent.

(You there – trying to recall where you left

Your mallet – put the thought aside.)

The hot weather wants airy poems, with holes

For the wind to blow through, and hinges

So they can be put away when it starts raining.

I assume Little Nell and Raskalnikov

Are on vacation now; lying on some beach, talking

About  whether Daniel Quilp and Sonia Marmeladov

Might be just right for each other.

OUT OF PLACE

Max realized at once that he 

Had wandered into his wife's dream;

The streets were too broad and clean

Statues on the bridge over the River Bug

Nodded at him, smiling; one of them 

Offered him flowers. Cats and dogs

Didn't understand a word he said

And every third man walking by

Looked like the Emperor. Indeed,

The Emperor himself strolled by,

Smoking a cigarette and singing

Some old song about blue roses.

The Empress Sisi, her eyes too big

And glowing unnaturally green,

Took Max' hand and whispered urgently

Mortraizek, geyn tsu deyn eygn klum!

CALLED

If the road one night called to him

He’d rise, summoning to attend him

A variety of curious metal things

Pointed or geared or quick

With something like life,

And be off, his restless eyes

Seeing all he was leaving

Lighting on nothing long.

BARGAIN

The shadow of the Third Avenue El

Roams free on moonless nights. Once,

My grandfather met it on Mott Street.

He was eight; his parents had still 

The habit of being alive. I suspect 

Some sort of deal was made. Later,

When I knew him, I’d sometimes see 

Shadows where I didn't expect them

Warily keeping their distance.

REPAIRING

As was only right in so neatly-constructed a man,

American-made, and a watchmaker to boot,

My grandfather Joe originally kept perfect time.

When he broke, it took him years to fix himself. 

He cut corners, using eccentric gears bought 

From shady suppliers. His mainspring worked

After a fashion, so if one hour was too long

The next two might be a bit shorter. My uncle Ase

Loved Joe but was a pharmacist and had 

No remedies for a broken clockwork heart.

RIVERS R

“You cannot,” said Heraclitus,

“Step into the same river twice.”

“You’re on!” I said and so

We spent the rest of the night

Jumping in and out of rivers;

We both caught colds.

It turned out he was right

(Though some of the rivers

Were quite similar the second time).

Heraclitus, though, after a few drinks,

Can never leave well alone.

“If  horses,” he said, “had a god,

He would look like a horse.”

“I’ve got you there!” I answered

“The God of Horses is my fifth cousin.”

(Due to an unwise bargain I have

An uncountable number of cousins;

They're like the pillars at Stonehenge)

“He looks nothing like a horse.”

There was no choice, of course,

But to visit my cousin who lives

Many versts north beyond the subway stop

At Zurega Buray. For my mother’s sake,

Pitr welcomed us warmly

After innumerable cups of tea

He showed us around. Though as a god

He has access to infinities, his apartment

Was small, and crowded with the ghosts

Of horses. Horse angels were constantly

Coming and going and horse prayers

Were piled so high that miracles were needed

To keep them from crashing down.

"Alright then," said Heraclitus, "you try

Coming up with something pithy and memorable

Which wittily illuminates the human condition!"

"How about 'The weed of crime bears bitter fruit?’ "

"Wasn't that The Shadow's motto?"

"It was. You didn't ask for originality.

And didn't Xenophanes say that horse thing?"

Heraclitus shrugged and thought for a moment.

"You know," he said finally, "the weed of crime

Is, properly considered, a vegetable."

SHADOW CAST

When it grows late the shadow doesn't disappear 

But slowly turns the color of night.

If it oversleeps, the structure built

To hide that in the town’s heart

There is a shadow not cast by anything 

Calls to it urgently. It wakes gradually,

Stretching itself, pretending 

Its size has something to do with the sun

Just shrugging itself above the horizon.

When people walk on it their shadows 

Cling desperately to their backs,

Climbing down blocks away or sometimes 

Never climbing down at all.