Unanswered, prayers
Accumulate,
Whisper
Bicker,
Sort themselves
Into heaps,
Piles,
Hillocks,
Mountains
Which soon
Crash down.
Remembering
He was human
Michizane answers
Not on point but
Exquisitely.
He has time;
Who prays now
To a god
Of calligraphy?
My shadow suggests I write
About my grandmother having
Once sewn a button for Death.
"That wasn't my grandmother,"
I tell him,"but Charles Simic's.
You know this; we read his poem
Yesterday." Well, how about
Seeing the Moon pulling a cart
Across a bridge? A lovely image!
"Yes, but Muso Soseki saw it
Seven centuries ago." All right then;
Why not write about the Moon
Giving Death a ride home after
A hard night then finding a button
In her cart instead of a tip?
"I'll consider it ... what sort of button?"
The wind demands
"Have you found it?
Have you found it?"
The trees nod but only
To be agreeable. Really,
They've no idea
What the wind has lost.
My shadow is old and forgets
To put his hat on when it rains
To keep him from feeling bad
I forget my hat too.
My shadow wakes up and tells me
He's pretty sure he made this world
Or at least one similar to it. "My work,"
He says, "is often copied."
Many Emily Dickinson poems
Can be sung to the tune of
The Yellow Rose of Texas.
I was assured of this long ago
By many good folk including
An improbably beautiful woman
From Texas who'd absent-mindedly
Cross and uncross her blue eyes
While telling jokes or eating jello.
When the hermit of Amherst
Visits me she wears a poke bonnet
And a long work dress,
A bit draggled at the hem.
She settles herself and tells me that
"Becaws I coulden stop fer Death
He kinely stopped fer me.
The carriage hailed but jest oursells
An Immortality." She seems
Content with her translation.
Cold city night. On corners
Men stand around trash cans
Filled with fire.
Underground trains. Women
Sleep clutching handles
Of scuffed shopping bags.
Judy Bond is on strike
The bags say. Do not
Buy Judy Bond.
No women stand by the fires.
After the historian
H. R. Trevor-Roper
Was translated from Oxford
To Cambridge was he aware
Of the difference? Were
His silences slightly wider?
Did his parentheses
Tremble in a wind
Only they could feel?
At times, the crates
Left behind in
His old rooms stirred
Uneasily.
If his afterlife includes
My mother and books
My father will be
Content. Still
It won't hurt
If the 1937 Dodgers
Come by now and then.
For over three thousand years Egyptian soldiers
Have annually drowned in the Red Sea; they're sick of it.
Each year, fewer of them rush between the walls of water
Do you think us fools? they ask. This has made Passover
Difficult. How can freedom be celebrated
Without the bloated corpses of drowned men?
In winter men appeared
Selling chestnuts kept hot
On braziers. Every year
Their smell said "We will be
Delicious." Every year
I believed them.
In Red Cloud, Nebraska there was
A woman who had the Mediterranean
Corked up in a bottle. She put it there
Long ago and always intended
To return it someday but only after
She'd figured out what to do with
The water sitting in the vast basin
Where the Mediterranean should be.
Despite the fact that there's
An even chance that you
Are alive or dead or both
Or neither my experience
Says you won't be here
Forever. Someone
Will check and, by observing,
Sort you into either
Being dead now or
Not dead yet.
I am the only permanence --
The hypothetical pet
Of a man who invented a cat
To put her in a box.
In the box with me
Is a cat. It's been years
Since I've smoked but
I accept the cigarette
He hands me. "It may not,"
He says,"be much comfort
But I'm hypothetical. Schrodinger
Didn't have cats; he
Was more a lizard person with
A distant regard for dogs."
From certain directions
There is no god at all
Only Absence, blinking in the sun
Amiably willing to discuss
The terms and conditions
Under which it might consent
To be something like God.
On Thursday I will think
"Tomorrow I will water the cactus."
On Friday I will think
"This is Friday. I must water the cactus."
On Saturday I will think
"Yesterday was Friday. Did I water the cactus?"
Wednesday is the property of Aesred
So I don't have to worry about it.
Sunday, Monday and Tuesday
Need to find reasons for existing.
I've little idea why my dreams
Sometimes include chairs and tables
And waiters who go snaking their way
Around them. Perhaps they're left behind
From whoever last rented the space.
The smaller waiters rush about
Carrying heavy trays, loaded with bowls
Of thick soup. The larger ones -- almost giants --
Carrying cups of excellent coffee.
My brother occasionally takes part
In my dreams but masked since
We're not talking to each other.
(Pretending to, we sometimes
Push words back and forth)
He doesn't do very much
To forward the action
Tipping his chair back
And ordering black coffee
From one of the surly waiters
Who I'd fire if I was a manager
With a say in the staffing of dreams.
The night is long; shadows have relieved
The men who stood around the fires
Burning on street corners. Towards dawn
Pieces of darkness will run home
Filling the sky, making dreams
Take unexpected turns or go unfinished.
When Huaynaputina exploded
It sent lava flowing to the sea
Twenty leagues away. The sky
Grew overcast. For seven weeks
There were no shadows.
Slow dawning light coaxed their return.
Some remained absent, lost or mad or
Dead of cold in far off lands.
The First God is trying to create
A place on which he can stand
Snakes appear to help him.
When they die, he mourns them.
The First God complains to Thoth
That Nut's kids are making
Too much noise. Also, he wishes
Seth would stop murdering Osiris.
A listening dead man interrupts
(He'd be eavesdropping
But Thoth hasn't invented eaves yet)
"Children make noise. They kill each other
Leaving pieces of dismembered bodies
Strewn all up and down the Nile.
Don't take them too seriously."
The First God is battling with a serpent
Who is not one of his old friends.
Despite his lack of hands, the serpent
Uses his spear skillfully. Suddenly
An armed woman with braids
Walks between them, urging them
To talk over their differences.
The Serpent says "I don't think
I created this woman; did you?"
The First God shakes his head.
I cannot remember if it was
The baby who was named
Elliot Bruce and the dog
Who was Bruce Elliot
Or the other way round but
I know my mother, then eight,
Named her dog to annoy
The baby's mother.
I see your mouth quirk and can read,
As in a comic strip, the thoughts
Italicizing over your head. He's writing
About Verlaine's miscarried brothers
Again! If I cease to employ them
They might stay forever encanted
In bottles in their mother's kitchen
While their brother luxuriates
In having been born, writing poems,
Going to prison, shooting Rimbaud.
When his sibs -- never more than
Two at a time -- try to haunt his sleep
Verlaine summons the Platonic Ideal
Of a waiter and calls for extra glasses
And curiously slotted spoons.
Only I invite them to walk at large
In a world nor green nor opalescent.
Back then I had a personality
Much too big for me. I'd look
From a window then race
To look from another pretending
I was fully staffed and garrisoned.
Years later I read Beau Geste
In which two men pretend
They are a small besieged army,
Propping up corpses on battlements
Crawling about to take shots
From here, there, some other there.
Making things worse, the two of them
Hate each other. I shook my head
Really, wouldn't a smaller fortress
Have been more practical?
The poet Vogel's ghost
Is circulating her resume
Pole -- from Lvov
Poet -- mostly unread
Jew -- dead since 1942.
I have no work for her
But chat for a while
She knew my grandmother
When Esther masqueraded
As an orphan. Later,
She was friends with
Esther's sister Irina.
In one of Vogel's poems
Three grey buildings
Go for a walk.
(The poem says four
But one of them
Was an impostor.)
Near death my mother
Spoke of her stepmother
Who'd been hard
And unloving towards her.
"I was no picnic
To raise," she said.
On the one hand,
Admirable. On the other,
How difficult to lose
An old and faithful grudge!
At my mother's funeral my father
Read Cavafy's poem about Ithaka
From a copy my mother made.
Any available paper had been
Fair game for her so Odysseus
Made his long way home
Sailing along the narrow margins
Of a page filled with news
And a picture of two models
Made happy by a spotless plate
Held high and glinting in the sun.
Every time
I visit your grave
There seem to be
More shadows
Standing around
Or pulling weeds
Or making patterns
With the pebbles
Left on your stone.
At times God, Who has
Illimitable choices,
Decides to be fictional.
Those who pray wake up
To see exiting angels
Who've left a pre-printed card
"We regret that, for now,
God is a collection of
Literary tropes and
Psychic projections.
Your patience is appreciated
While we work to correct this."
Those with urgent problems
Of the heart are well-advised
To submit prayers to
Tashtego, Queegqueeg and Dagoo,
Late of The Pequod.
Sophisticated supplicants
Will wait for the second
Or even third response;
The first will always be
"Try throwing a harpoon at it."
The last public letter writer write
In sunlight or moonlight. When there was
No sun or moon, a candle might serve.
Sometimes you'd find her on the edge
Of a circle of homeless men around a fire
Burning in a trash barrel. When there's no light
She turned into a string of quiet words
And was carried home by the wind or,
If he felt like it, her cat. Even now
A lit match and a pool of copperas and soot
And oak gall might summon her at need.
Having no where to sleep two men
Spend the night walking the streets
Furiously discussing politics
And literature and unnatural parents
They don't notice crossing into
What used to be Heaven. Angels
With heavy lanterns follow them;
(It's a rough neighborhood these days.)
God, unable to remember when last He slept,
Drifts in their wake, nodding occasionally,
Longing to join the conversation.
Anne, the second-oldest of my father's sisters,
Was, I'm told, the pretty one, the party girl.
Of all the nine children in that family,
Including two who died long before I was born,
She was the one I knew least well though I saw her
Several times a year. Even Edith, who died as a baby,
Comes by so we can discuss what she'd have done
If she'd grown up (Drawn pictures, we think;
Worn big hats; told good stories). Moshe,
Dead at almost 13, was good hearted and fat
And remains so after his death. For some reason
His brothers and sisters could never talk of him
Without mentioning a sweater he'd owned; it had a story.
None of them could remember it but the story
Was, they all said, quite funny. Anne though?
Anne? A cipher to me. Not the oldest. That was Rose
Nor the youngest. That was my father.
Not the sad curmudgeon Harry nor Joe
Who delivered milk and was a luftmensch
Not the witty one -- Sadie; not Doris,
Who could do anything and shoveled snow
When she was ninety. Just Anne
With pixie glasses that didn't flatter her
And a handsome, faithless husband who gambled.
Had I asked my father to tell me eleven things
About his sister Anne that would amaze me
He would have reeled them off, one after another.
I never did, so I cannot write about her now.
By then citizens had begun to infiltrate
The place formerly known as Heaven
Huddling during the day around the vast fires
Which replaced the decommissioned sun.
The moon, still ruling the night, had grown fretful
Granting prayers either at random or with
A new-found sense of irony.
God was often seen
Leaning against a wall, say, whittling, or
Drinking endless amounts of coffee from
A never-failing styrofoam cup. He seemed
To have no fixed address; some said
He spent sleepless nights by the River Sambatyon
Making those small infinities which, properly wound,
Run in a sort of quick stumble but never quite fall.
Despite her size -- about six inches high:
About three and a half inches wide --
And the unlikelihood of the original
Being pinned above my desk, the figure
Tells me she is the genuine Mona Lisa.
The one in the Louvre, she says,
Is overblown, puffed with pride, demanding
Armed guards and a constant stream
Of tourists without whose insisting faith
It would vanish. The cancelled stamp on mine
Says she was mailed December 19, 1970
From Whittier, California by someone
Sending me her love. Just try
Getting that Parisian through a mail slot!
God's wallet is stuffed with bills
But they're all for infinite amounts
Making it difficult to break them.
Because of this, when He and my father
(Friends since 1934 or so) ate out
My father paid for both of Them.
When the Houses of Parliament burned
Ghosts, roused from long slumber,
Tumbled out, mixing with the crowds.
Turner the painter alone knew them
For what they were. Some, now homeless,
Accepted his offers of employment.
You can see them still in his later work
Half-hidden by mist or steam or with the sun
Granting them bright-colored shadows
To which they have no natural right.
Riding with a corpse
Gets boring. My father
Has climbed to the roof
Of his hearse.
In the distance, ghosts
Are digging the ghost
Of a grave. Wooden angels
Are weeping. The real ones
Are napping, looking about
Or gossiping in Yiddish
They have position
But no mass. There's room
For him among them.
