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.
