CATEGORIES IN ACTION

Stone draws its sword;

Flower leaps aside;

Moonlight wraps a body.

Flower climbs a mountain;

Moonlight dances on water;

Stone has a bad dream.

Moonlight tells a story;

Stone sheds tears;

Flower falls asleep.

PECCAVI

I’ve read or maybe heard that 

Impeccable beings cannot 

Commit sins, not even

Such pleasant ones as lying;

It must be frustrating.

You say: I know a mammal

With feet like an otter,

And a tail like a beaver,

Who lays eggs. Oh yes;

It also has a duck's bill 

And one poison spur.

Reality groans and screams

And gives birth to a platypus.

ANGELS

A hard winter and it seemed on every corner

An angel stood with ragged wings outspread

And a tin can that she'd rattle at you. Sometimes

There'd be a cardboard sign in colored marker

Saying "Aseity" or "Grace" or "Immanence"

Or some other one of the Attributes of God

(Me, I'd not have thought "Incomprehensibility"

Was anything to boast about. I lack Aseitiousness

And have rarely been associated with Grace;

Nor am I usually Immanent, Simple or Righteous but,

By God, I have been Incomprehensible since I was six.)

The Angel of green and purple Impeccability

Always looked particularly depressed. Occasionally

I'd put a dime in her can; she looked hungry.

A GHOST VISITS LVOV

My grandmother, nearing death, found herself

Back in the cigarette factory in Lvov.

Seventy years in American exile

Had made her more deft;

She could roll cigarettes with either hand

And never have to look. It was forbidden

To smoke inside -- too much paper --

So the girls went outside on breaks to smoke

They were a hard group to impress. A ghost

Was nothing new to them; many

Had rooms near Pidhirtsi Castle

Which was and is notoriously haunted.

My grandmother stayed for ten days

Rolling cigarettes at a fantastic rate

And taking day trips to haunt my grandfather

Who was fifteen. She visited his dreams

And gave them a thorough cleaning even though

She knew he'd just fill them up again

With stray thoughts and stories

Including the one where he was a detective

Who could leap over rooftops and she.

Or someone quite like her,

Was in love with him six fathoms deep.

RELATIVE

My cousin, the god of horses, lives

On a quiet street in the Bronx

His great grandfather took the job

When no horse wanted it. The last god

Who was a horse died trying to answer

Prayers from the cavalry horses killed 

Charging the Hindenberg Line at Arras.

FLAUBERT AND HIS PERIOD

Flaubert was pernickety

About punctuation.

After he died, his executors

Tried to inventory his stock

The handtooled periods, though,

Had been stolen as souvenirs;

The commas had slithered off;

And the question marks

Inverted themselves,

Saying they were answerable

Only to the King of Spain.

NO DOMINION

The first time he read the poem by Dylan Thomas, Death

Was irritated. "And Death shall have no dominion" indeed!

Death knows that, though he takes all things away

There are things he cannot take. Still, he believes

He will always have some dominion, be it only

The size of Monaco (not Monaco, though; he dislikes Monaco).

Over time, though, Thomas' words grew on him.

He'd intone them solemnly when he scrambled eggs

Pausing dramatically after his name and then booming out

"Shall have no dominion." Souls, new startled from their bodies

Would be told that they’d be one with the man in the wind

And the west moon. Not recognizing the quote, bare souls

Would find themselves unsettled by the possibility

That Death was off his rocker. "They be mad," he'd say

"And dead as nails" and his voice dark music

The trees stretched and bent themselves to hear.

REVENANTS

When I was young the notion

That they'd all disappear someday

Would’ve made me stare.

Subway stations had machines

Selling gum or chocolates or soda

And plainly would always.

A few old pillars bear traces of them

Empty bolt holes or faint outlines

Of where they once were. Slip a nickel

(Genuine, not mostly made of copper)

Into where the slot once was

And there's a whirr far off

In the reaches of space-time;

A small yellow box of Chiclets

Peppermint Flavored Coated Gum

Falls into your hand. On your life,

Do

     Not

             Eat

                    Them.

ABETHA

God came to Anne Milton’s house

One wet November night to find

Satan in the kitchen drinking tea

With just a touch of something in it

To ward off the chill. Satan nodded as if

It was the most ordinary thing to see

His great friend, his eternal foe

Contracting Himself so that his head

Barely scraped against the low ceiling.

Another cup appeared; Anne filled it

Angels crowded around the house

Peering through windows, listening at doors

Having hastily made for themselves bodies

From mist or smoke or gutter-fallen leaves.

Abetha Gill, 46 ,Anne’s red-haired maid,

Drove them briskly away, saying

“This is a respectable house; we’ll not have

Angels larking about. There’s the Queen’s Head

Three roads over. It’s filled with demons

But they have manners. Pay for your drinks

And there’ll be no problems.”

MING WITH AN ANGEL

Sometimes in one of my father’s crowd scenes

He’d draw Ming the Merciless, ragged and unshaven,

Next to  the Angel of Parentheses, whose job it is

To qualify every attempt to define God so that

When anyone says something like “The Hand of God”

Or “the Shadow of God,” the angel steps in and says

 (Not that God has hands) or (not that God has a shadow).

How these two first met I don’t know; I believe

It was before they joined my father’s stock company.

I see them, occasionally, going about their business

Or quietly having lunch in the shade left behind

When the Dutch elms were cut down in Union Square.

CORPSES. CORNERS

When I was in law school, Libitina,

A Roman corpse goddess, sat next to me

In Torts, taking notes in her tiny handwriting.

She was there as part of an exchange program;

An American student spent three years

Desperately bored, prepared to answer

Corpse's prayers. I didn't know Libitina well;

We were in a study group together but she

Never slept and insisted that the very idea of law

Was hilariously funny. I've heard now

That she took advantage of a bad ocr

To become goddess of corners which, I suppose,

Puts her ahead of Alys, who is a judge,

Pete, who is a dean, Tony who was a senator

And is now in jail and just behind

The other Pete who is dead but had

A magnificent run.

BANDOLEON (REV)

My father won 1942's silver medal as New York's second-best high school Spanish student, though he never picked it up. I don't know the language much beyond the warning old subway trains used to have pasted on their doors: Aviso! La via del tren subterraneo es peligroso! This warning was timely; but for it, who knows? I might well have followed the way of the underground train and so been lost forever. Given my virtual Spanishlessness, though, I had to check that the musician Muerte de los Angels was not merely the Angel of Death. He isn’t; that would be Los Angel del Muerte, whose offices take up most of a very tall building in downtown Buenos Aires, with branch offices everywhere.

The Death of Angels heads a much smaller operation. He is, in fact, its sole employee and business is so slow -- how often do angels die? -- that he can conduct it from his studio apartment. So far, he's received no official complaints about his pursuing an alternate career playing the bandoneon.

DEATH OF ANGELS

In Spanish the Angel of Death is called Angel de la Muerte

His headquarters take up three floors in central Buenos Aires

And there are branches pretty much everywhere. His brother

La Muerte de los Angels, the Death of Angels, is less busy –

How often, after all, do angels die? Still, Providence

Felt he was a good idea and so he spends long days

Wearing a dark suit and a string tie in a small office

Over a cafe. He used to make plans involving trumpets

And fiery scythes. He still has them in a lower drawer

But now intends, if ever summoned, just to improvise.

On summer nights, he goes downstairs and plays

Bandoneon with a tango orillero group. Then, if you set a pin

Before you on the table you may see angels dancing

Though they prefer the more modern milonguero style.

OUR GODDESS

When the village burned, its gods

Moved to the City except for Nifre

Who, being old and having forgotten

What her original functions were,

Had become the goddess

Of lost things and people. Her miracles

Were few and usually pointless,

As when she persuaded some mallets

To be ball-peen hammers instead.

Still,  it was something to have

One god left to listen.

If distractedly, to our prayers.

CALENDARS

Leaving England December 24, 1731

He arrived in France the next day:

January 3. The Reverend Joseph Spence

Died owed eleven days including a Christmas

And a New Year. One of the children

Who come by chance into the world

Came to Oxford from Milan with three days

Neatly wrapped in a parcel but arrived

Seven and a three-quarter hours too late.

FAMILIAR

Being dead and at loose ends, my mother

Comes by sometimes to urge me

To write more about my father. I argue with her

(She'd think me altered if I didn’t).

"Haven't I written enough about him

And about you too?" She glances at my muse

Who sits idle at her desk. The two of them

Get along disturbingly well. (When I lived at home

My friends, dropping by while I was out,

Would chat with my mother for hours.)

"He has absolutely nothing scheduled today

Or, in fact, until next Monday when he'll have

A working lunch with his totem animal;

I'll pencil you in for a ragged, unrhymed sonnet."

ON WATER

A slight mistake; instead of a man

A lead statue of a man was sent.

It was late and there were no stars

Available for money (love? We'd some

But not much and no intent of spending it

To purchase starlight.) We thought

We remembered the way so that darkness

And a few drinks would make no difference.

It is a handsome statue though the features

Are slightly blurred. It cannot walk on water

That it stays afloat at all, vulnerable and flailing,

Is actually a sort of miracle