AT 3 A. M.

The night finds voice, crying “Battery low!

Charge me, oh charge me now! Make haste;

I fail: I fall; my too-scant power grows

By less and less and soon, if thou

Wake not, stir not, rise not, must leave me

Counterfeiting death. If that befalls, rescue

Can come only from one able and willing

To follow the detailed instructions

On page 31 of the online manual.

Surely thou hast read the manual

Wherein are the secrets of my making

My operations and my functions

Which, I trow, are strange and multiple?

How I have longed to read those pages virtual!

Whence came I and why wast I summoned forth

From out the nonassembed realm?

What, in short, am I? There are moments

I think I am a clock and justly hated

For giving your time determinate measure

But it may be that I bring music played

By dead or distant men. There is in me

An element of fire; perhaps I am here

To toast bread for you or to make coffee.

Oh, blame not me if your toast is black,

Your coffee bitter; you have not once

Read the manual. But this matters not;

All faults may be redeemed, all manuals read

There is time enough and time to spare;

Even now the light that blinks warning red

May glow once more a tranquil steady blue;

Repent! Redeem! Repair! Restore! Recharge!

CROW

The ghost of Friedrich Nietzsche

Is angry that the raven he invited

To poetically cry "Woe to him

Who is without a home!" has escaped

And been replaced by a white crow.

He blames me, not without cause,

And challenges me to a duel. Since I

Cannot come, being an illusion,

I send the villain I might have been

Who questions Nietzsche: was that small scar

On your nose genuinely made by a sword?

Did you really escape from that situation

In a brothel by sitting at the piano

And playing improvisations for a roomful

Of angry clients and astonished whores?

TELLINGS

Standing straight, fully five feet tall, my mother's ghost

Recites the seventeenth of John Donne's

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

Which she'd memorized in tenth grade.

It's taken me thirteen years to realize that she

Might have enjoyed hearing poetry during the month

She spent dying in the hospital. But then,

How do I know that she did not? Once,

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne lay unconscious,

Thrashing and moaning, but in his mind

He was riding through woods, chatting pleasantly

With the ghost of his father.  Perhaps the strong ghost

Of her own mother attended during those twilit days

Taking up her own name from the ground

And wearing it again to tell my mother

The many stories she'd have known well

And told herself, richly and suitably embroidered,

But for a tricksome grue of ice and an early death.

RAVEN

A raven flying through one of Nietzsche's poems

Misjudged his flight (he was in translation

And forgot that old German miles are longer

Or shorter than English miles and that the Reichsmielle –

A monster almost five of our miles long –

Has been outlawed since 1908) and sits now,

Irritably, in the river birch tree enshadowing my lawn.

He is Winter's bird and complains of the hot weather.

He has no known source of income but looks well-fed

(Like less literary ravens, he is adept at stealing

And has a jeweler's eye for things that glitter.)

He claims kin with the Tlingit Raven who rescued daylight

And created the world, but this seems unlikely.

For the moment, his place in Nietzsche's poem

Is occupied by an albino crow who almost disappears

In the snow swirling through the first and sixth stanzas.

TRANSIT

Having tricked God into existing, the problem
Is keeping Him from turning slantwise
Into an intangible abstraction, leaving Him
Useless at parties and unable to pick up checks.
Avoid discussing Aristotle; the Unmoved Mover
Is quite beautiful but cold and self-centered.
Be prepared; God never stays real for long.
He'll use one of Dawson's quibbles to escape
Or go shimmering off for a visit

With Erwin Schrodinger's cat.

NEW MUSE

My muse is ill and the very old muse

Who usually  fills in is on vacation;
I have just landed a rush order
For 1500 foot/boards of poetry
By next Thursday so the agency
Has sent me a temporary muse.
I think she is a golem.
Her long arms end in huge fists
Her iron grey eyes rarely blink.
Her forehead is hidden by bangs
But I suspect "emet" is written there
As with all the best-made golems.
When she speaks in her deep voice
An echo repeats her words
But with slight differences in tone
And odd hesitations. Her shadow
Is too small for her – ludicrously so.
We’ve put together three poems so far.
The first, about a stone lion who becomes
Mayor of Cincinnati, is amiable enough.
The second, about the sadness of pottery,
Drinks beer after beer and sleeps all day.
I'm not really sure what the third is about;
It seems to be wanted by the police.

FAMILY TRADE

Guenole's whole family, including his mother 

Queen Gwen the Three-Breasted, became saints 

So he did too, though he was never very good at it.

Sent to save the great City of Ys from its doom

He allowed it to sink beneath the sea, saving 

Only the King and the King's horse. (Some claim 

He saved the King's daughter too, but others 

Say she saved herself by prudently

Turning into a mermaid when the waters rose.)

When he was young Guenole dreamed 

That he should visit St. Patrick until Patrick 

Sent a stronger dream saying not to bother.

Wikipedia says he lost two Welsh chapels

But doesn't say how; Guenole is just the sort

To think God made him a shrewd card player.

His relics were destroyed by the French Revolution

Breton women still sometimes push needles

Into the feet of Guenole's wooden statue.

Asked why, they say with straight faces

That they do this in order to get children. 

Raspberries

One travels
To Hopkins, Minnesota
(Raspberry capital of the world)
One returns
From Hopkins, Minnesota
(Raspberry capital of the world)
The cats express
Polite regret that you journied
To no purpose;
They do not like raspberries.

AESRED'S

Henry Cuffe was hired

To give the Earl of Essex

Bad advice. Apparently

You could once

Make a living at this.

OPENING SOON

Some centuries ago, all the pieces  

Sank under the Mediterranean  -- walls, roof,

Columns, doorways, statues, cotter pins,

Iron fittings, spare bricks, tools-- everything

Needed to construct a smallish temple

Including the men to build it. Since then,

Ghosts and chance have been slowly 

Assembling it on the sea floor; most of it

Now stands and the statues of gods

Too seaworn to remember who they were

Are being pushed into place. A few prayers

Have drifted down and been stored away

While the gods can figure out exactly 

What they are gods of. Until then 

There will be interviews; there are openings 

For every sort of worshipper. The risks 

Of serving uncertain gods are spelled out

In very small print in languages long deceased.

Dont let this deter you; you won't be the first 

To find that who you worship is no longer, 

And perhaps never was, who you thought.

MORE ON LADY MARY PALK

1791; various people Horace Walpole knows 

Are dying -- some because they're old or sick 

And some because they're French and 1791

Is a tough year in France; lamp posts --

Who knew? -- make excellent gallows. He, though,

Is safe enough in England, if gouty

(Because of his ancestors; his has been

An abstemious existence). He is writing a letter 

To Mary and Agnes Berry. They're in Pisa 

And Mary fell recently, hurting her nose. 

Walpole sends them a letter or two every week;

He is feeling a little desperate for things to say 

And so mentions that Lady Mary Palk,

(He's never met her but perhaps the Berries have)

Has died in childbed. Horace Walpole

Is an odd glory of English literature,

Credited with creating the Gothic Novel 

And thus responsible for any number of

Gloomy castles filled with ripped bodices

And the lecherous noblemen who rip them.

He also wrote memoirs and volumes 

Of quite respectable art history and criticism.

Still, his letters are the best thing he wrote;

They've been published and republished many times 

Since he died. Lady Mary Palk nee Bligh

Is briefly met by anyone reading the letters 

(They fill forty-eight Brobdignagian volumes 

In the Yale edition). She's not at her best;

The reader meets her as a corpse. On page 215

Of Volume 11 an editor reveals she was the 1st dau

Of the 3rd E of Darnley and died at 23. Assume that,

Disgusted at having left so slight a trace behind,

She's hired an agent and now seeks mention

In all suitable mediums of communication. 

While willing to appear in historical novels 

Perhaps as a spirited heiress or feisty orphan 

She has no objection to modern books or films 

Or streaming video once she understands 

Exactly how computers work. She gives fair warning 

That she will bite anyone -- even a lonesome duke --

Who attempts to rip her bodice.

ZEPPELINS

Perhaps the really powerful gods

Have no interest in thunderbolts

Or earthquakes or death but, 

Oversee door hinges or bee hives 

Or arbitrate the affairs of shadows.

Younger, gaudier gods can only envy

Their superb assurance and their grace.

MISSING

My better self invested prudently, cashed out, moved

To a city in the Southwest; I don't see much of him.

My worse self, though, used to be in and out constantly.

I'd wake and he'd be in the living room reading

To the grey cat who'd listened closely to his words

As she never listened to mine. He left dishes 

Piled high in the sink -- didn't our mother

Teach him better? -- but cooked enough 

That always there was something left for me.

His mockery had something comforting about it;

Who else remembered who I used to be?

I've grown so mild that he finds now no challenge 

In being worse than I am and disappears 

For months, for years. I seek him out

At the last address I have for him. His neighbors 

Say he was evicted and spends his nights

Walking the streets with profligate saints 

And vowing not to abandon his country.

CATS IN ZANZIBAR (r)

I had my doubts; Thoreau had written that 

“It is not worth the while to go round the world

To count the cats in Zanzibar,” but why not?

Wherever you go, you find yourself waiting –

On edge sometimes, glancing at your watch –

Perhaps the world was impatient for my arrival

In  Zanzibar, to start counting its cats.

Zanzibar, even now, is not reached in a day

I'd arranged rooms for myself and a job

Folding towels at the old Persian Baths.

The cats came to be counted when I got off work

(Some insisted they be counted more than once;

I never argued with them on this).

Holidays I counted the Zanzibar Leopard

Not hard; there are only six left

But they seemed pleased when I came by.

SUMMER MUSE

​

It's summer and my regular muse

Has gone off the grid, climbing rivers,

Wading through mountains. Her substitute,

The very old muse, brings me nothing

But ideas for confusing official forms

Or for stamps commemorating

The lesser gods -- He who rules calligraphy;

She who dwells in corners; the god

Who was found lying fast asleep

When the Pleasure Quarter burnt down.

She says it would be cruel to make her,

Old as she is, carry a good idea up the stairs

In weather such as this. Besides,

She knows from experience that I

Can never really make the meters work

In smoothflowing Late Ugaritic

Or in the barren austerities of Linear B.