It is not a miracle that Mei Yao Chen's wife
Found a way home from the afterworld;
The rooftops are crowded at night
With ghosts who've done the same.
Nor is it that her spirit could hold a needle
And thread it. The wonder is that dying
Had not changed her sewing. "No one else, "
Thought Chen, "could put on a patch
So crookedly, with such uneven stitches."
My friend David, dead two years
Come Thanksgiving, has joined me
As I walk down Murray Street
Towards Plandome Road.
I've been meaning to tell him
That he's dead and that his obit
Says he's survived by his dog.
But what use to tell him this?
Better to listen to one more of his
Glorious, superbly told lies
Or sing about Betty Coed for him
(The version where Betty is
A vampire: Betty Coed
Has eyes of red
For Harvard; Betty Coed
Has lips of blue
For Yale.)
Posters have appeared
Saying "Baba Yaga Wants You!"
Her eyes in the picture are
A bottomless black; smoke
Curls from the short pipe
Clenched between her teeth.
The small print says HIDE!
Whistlers in the dark want to believe
The past doesn't change. Done,
They say, is done; God Himself cannot
Say "Let that moment not have been."
Not so, it seems. My Aunt Edith,
Until recently, never lived to be my aunt
Since she imprudently died when she
Was just a few months old. Still,
I've done what I can for her, remarking
On her sense of humor, her taste
In hats, her relative tallness that would
Have let her loom slowly over her short
Quicksilver sisters. Now, I've found
A book of hers. The thing was cleverly done.
I've bought many books in many places;
Discovering one of which I've no memory
Is not surprising. If I saw
Catullus' poems I might well buy it,
Especially if I also liked the translator
And I like Horace Gregory. But this book --
Black, pleasantly worn, illustrated in
A style somewhere between Beardsley
And Flaxman -- I think I never bought.
Inside, a signature, in the handwriting
My aunts all shared except for Rose
Who was left-handed. It says
"Edith Silver. June 14, 1932."
Four men, a woman, a dog and three children
In sharp focus. Three ghost children also
Have come to be photographed though one,
Grown bored, is walking out of the picture.
A wind makes the light cotton clothes dance;
The heavy overalls hang glumly on the line.
Han Shan, it has been fifteen hundred years
Since your last poem. Wake up, old man,
And finish this one for me!
Having dreed her weird
Of falling down icy stairs,
Giving birth to my mother
And dying my grandmother
Must have needed to find
New things to do. Perhaps
She learned to throw knives
With variable accuracy making
The afterworld a place
More exciting. My mother
Would not be surprised since she
Grew up loving an old woman
Who, forbidden by arthritis
To use can openers, would hurl
Meat cleavers across the kitchen
To open cans of condensed milk.
That poem of mine you liked,
Or tried to, about my dead teacher
And his green jacket? The teacher
Was mine but the jacket
Was worn by the professor
Who taught Joseph Roth Greek.
Roth has been dead since 1939
And, anyway, always intended for me
To someday steal the jacket.
My old Mr. S taught history and
Actually marked Fridays
By wearing no tie. An honest man,
He'll surely called on Roth's
Herr G. in the pedagogical underworld
Where they live. He'll return the jacket,
Making what excuses for me
His conscience will allow.
I'd just resurrected an old teacher
Complete with the green blazer
He wore Friday afternoons when
Baba Yaga came by, worried that
She'd not been interfering
In my affairs lately. "Bury the teacher,"
She said,"but keep the jacket."
If your anger, brother, determined
To be quit of you at last, rose
To its full height, strode off
Wearing your house roof as a hat
What then? It would make its way,
I think, westwards, eager to try itself
Against the Pacific Ocean but you?
What of you without your master, servant,
Friend, guide, foe, light against the dark,
Wall against the world? Would your
Ancient virtues return making us say
This is the generous man we knew or
Would the first strong wind blow you away?
Since there's rarely much to drink
In my dreams some performers
Now insist on bringing along bottles
And cans and even small refrigerators,
Ruining the ambiance in the recent
Series of seriocomic nightmares set
In 14th century Carpathia. Still,
What can I do? It's not as if
I can actually afford to pay them.
It's not just things to drink we lack;
There are no navigable rivers,
Streams, inlets, fjords, lakes, ponds,
Creeks, reservoirs, seas or oceans.
Visiting mermaids must be pushed about
In rolling wooden chairs or carried
Or thrown from one place to another.
