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.
