One day Li Po's shadow
Remained the same size
While Li Po did the hard work
Of varying his length to match
The angle of the sun's light.
At noon, of course, he vanished.
At dusk's approach, he took advantage
Of being twenty five feet tall
To fix three holes in his roof.
The Prince of Fire
Always wears gloves
His hands are cold as ice.
The Prince of Lies
Has no friends
But his servants love him.
The Prince of Truth
Has long been missing
An angry Princess
Fills in for him.
The Prince of Cats?
There is no Prince of Cats
No matter what he tells you.
The remembered men around the fire
Are one by one replaced
By shadows who shiver in the cold.
Every one of the eleven thousand virgins
Martyred with Ursula is technically a saint
But no one goes around lighting a candle
To any one of them in particular or muttering
"Oh, Virgin Nine Hundred and Four
Be with me now in my hour of need!
Make the dice for just this roll my friends."
This is just as well; Virgin Nine Hundred and Four
Has a life or, I suppose, an afterlife to live
And probably would ignore your prayers
Even if you addressed her by her name
(Which is Margaret-Agathe; her friends --
You think saints don't have friends? --
Call her Agaret or, if they're texting, Ags.)
The square red patch arrives at last;
The warring blues and greens
Smile at each other; yellow sun
Claps her hands with delight.
He doesn't need a lantern
To see His way after
Dancing in the rain but
God carries one because
It's expected of Him
Sobek the Crocodile has lately
Been looking for a room while he
Gets on his feet -- four or them sometimes;
Other times two -- and finds work
Befitting an old but quite tough god
Who can, like most Egyptian gods,
Take on almost any role. He usually plays
A destroyer but has turned his claw
To judging the dead, guiding the Sun boat
And being Lord of the Dance. When Thoth
Was lying doggo, hidden as a tamarind tree,
Sobek stepped in as patron of writing,
Wisdom, the Moon, astronomy, magic,
Measurement and the year's last five days.
He cannot afford much rent but is willing
To perform yardwork, make minor repairs
And perform miracles. He is not hard to contact
Just think of him steadily for a few minutes
Before going to sleep.
References on request.
For contractual reasons the Angel Raphael
Will no longer be appearing in Paradise Lost
Those wishing to have the ways of God
Justified to man are asked to be patient;
While auditions are held. (In an emergency,
Any of the underemployed Egyptian gods will.
For a small fee, fill in. The ferocious Sobek
Is said to be unexpectedly convincing.
Since he's a crocodile no one has asked him
Why he already knew his lines perfectly.)
Knowing no one else in New York in 1882
I have requested my Great-grandfather Juda
To get from 98 Seneca Street in Buffalo
The celebrated steel products of Fowler & Sons
Whose catalogue providence has put in my hands.
Soon, I'll be able to make barrels whose hoops
Will last forever. My horses will wear shoes
Of Hobson's Celebrated English Choice cast steel and,
Though I'm not sure what use it will be to me
I'll have any amount of Black Diamond
Tool steel shaped into octagonals, rounds and squares
As well as some ribbon flats. If the mood is on him,
I think Juda will well deserve his own cache
Of Tire, Toe Calk and Sleigh Shoes
Made of special, patented self-hardening steel
At three quarter cents extra a pound. Hang the expense!
Death has unexpectedly
Brought a lute with him
He's played a few notes
And sung the opening lines
Of a long-unheard ballad
In a sweet tenor voice
(The bearded priest glares;
Death should be more grim)
Following the best protocols
The dying man's good angel
Stands to his right while
A demon is at his left.
Things are running long;
The demon's eyes are closed
And she may be asleep.
To keep himself awake
The angel has quietly made
The ragged clothes and curtains
Start sewing themselves whole.
Because St. Brigid won't stop pestering him
Jerome sometimes cleans himself up
Trims his beard, cuts his hair, puts on
A three-piece suit and the red hat
That marks him as a cardinal
His long, clever fingers fly
Doing street magic
But never
Miracles.
Finally
Brigid relents
He folds up his table
And, though he knows
It'll return to him, throws his hat
Through the window of a passing car
(In the old days having become a cardinal
Was not a thing you could leave behind you).
Fireflies coming on duty
Find the widow standing
In her garden at sunset
Knees slightly bent
Holding a long sword
Once the general's
She can -- she will --
Stand like this for hours.
Fading away, her shadow
Makes one more attempt
To reason with her.
A crowd of two-dimensional gods
Blows through November's sky;
They've been punched full of holes
So the wind whistles through them.
(Some wish you ill but others
Would gladly grant your most urgent wish
If your words only made sense to them.)
In the museum exhibit
A statue of an unknown saint
Shares a room with armor
Made for Henry VIII. The saint
Is austere but looks troubled
Perhaps because doesn't know
Why he is a saint or of what
He is the patron. The armor,
Swag-bellied and elaborately chased
With gold figures twisting about
Against a black background,
Murmurs suggestions: "Patron
Of alewives and wharfingers?
Of confused children? Of letters
Never delivered or delivered
But never opened? Utility saint
Put on when other saints need a day off?"
Dynasty after dynasty Pharaoh’s oldest daughters
Walk along the riverbank, looking for baskets
Sometimes they find small animals or figurines
Made of plastic or resin with strange letters
Stamped on their bottoms. They’ve found Osiris
Many times but he growls at them and they
Put him down again. Moses hasn’t reappeared
But Death sometimes turns up, wrapped in a blanket
Blinking sleepily in the bright sun.
I
A basket is emptiness
With a shape and a handle
So it can be carried about.
II
Though the sturdy basket
I remember has surely
Turned to dust
I would recognize
The emptiness it defined.
III
Beware, emptiness!
A basketmaker
Plots to trap you.
IV
This basket is full
Of the wrong kind
Of emptiness.
V
I meant to bring you
An empty basket
But the emptiness
Leaked out.
While I was out, the very old muse
Let herself in and fell asleep
Over a print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi
Called Cat Dressed As A Woman
Tapping An Octopus On The Head.
The cat looks pleased with himself;
The octopus is annoyed. This game
Has been going on for some time
With the cat entering the room
Where the octopus is trying to sleep
In increasingly elaborate costumes:
A porter; a fisherwoman;
The ghost of a wandering priest
With a basket-hat hiding his face;
Oda Nobanaga, holding a fan,
Preparing to inspire his troops
By dancing for them, Now,
He imfelinates a very great lady
Who expects to be obeyed.
In need, the multiplication table
Will serve as prayer. Also,
Preliminary studies indicate
Heaven sometimes listens
To the alphabet recited slowly
Without running lmnop together.
(Elemenopè is a minor Hurrian god
Of reflective surfaces and crop damage
His miracles generally involve bugs.)
The next world, of course,
Finds you terrifically interesting
It endows university chairs,
Sets up journals (quarterly and bi-yearly),
And has several learned societies
Devoted just to considering you.
There are, though, difficulties;
Internet service is spotty; books
Constantly rewrite themselves;
Figures in photos feel free to migrate
To ones they like better. Still,
Progress is still being made.
A few tickets are left for a free lecture
On a day you didn't visit Paradise Pond.
There is also a promising new book
On what you might have seen
From a ride in your cochecito nina
On 1 October 1951 if you'd been awake
(Close readers of your life may spot me
Waving from the middle of a footnote.)The delicate chains are brass but
The rest of it is bronze except
The weighing pans which
Are made from amber-colored shells.
My grandfather and his father
Were watchmakers and, at times,
Jewelers but what use do I have
For their scale accurate to some
Preposterous fraction of a gram?
It hangs on my wall. Occasionally
The pans tremble, seeking balance.
In couples or alone, shades
Cross the wide square
One leads a dog; a few
Carry packages. Two horses
Pull three deceased friends
In a carriage. There's ample roon
But they sit close together.
One of them thinks about you;
He calls to your grandfather's ghost
That you are still in the world.
Like others of his trade
The God of Baskets wanders
Carrying on his back
Or, when he can afford one,
On a small donkey’s back,
The wares he’s made.
At night he lights a candle
And answers prayers.
When he was young he would
Wager he could make baskets
From anything, from flint
Or iron or time itself. Once
He made one from moonlight
It weighed nothing but could hold
A lifetime's collection of regrets
As well as a good lunch
And makings for a cup of tea.
To the extent I understand gods
(Which is to say not at all
And just as well) I believe
Egyptian gods are
Jacks of all trades, willing
To turn their hands, feet,
Claws, paws, talons or pincers
To any task. Sobek,
The crocodile god, can
Be kind and generous. Seth
Despite often manifesting
As a ferocious hippopotamus
May, if you ask him,
Make a dancer of you. I find this
Reassuring but not the fact
That Isis, the All-Merciful Mother,
Carries a very sharp knife
And can be quick to use it.One sphinx tells
Another "We
Guard the house
Where Voltaire died."
"Yes," says the other,
"You've mentioned this
At least 7000 times."
Setting a long exposure, Atget
Leaves the room. His camera,
Wearing deep black,
Remains behind taking
It's own picture, raging
That the other machine
Says nothing, nothing,
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
This narrow road waits
For someone to walk on it
The street lantern will light
And windows will fly open
To mark her passage.
The city's seven corners
Will send cats to see,
To remember, to recount
Things they saw and
Things they'll invent.
Me? I won't need to listen
To the cats' reports.
If the walker, long-awaited,
Is you I'll know by the slender noise
Of your recidivist shadow.
Setting a long exposure, Atget
Leaves the room. His camera,
Wearing deep black,
Remains behind, taking
It's own picture, sorrowing
That the other machine
Says nothing, nothing,
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
My brother Edwin -- nine, say, or ten --
Is playing chess with our grandfather
Who, keeping his finger on it,
Slowly moves a bishop two squares
Then suddenly retracts his move;
They burst into laughter. (I'd say
You had to have been there but
I was there and it did me no good.)
My grandfather Joe was one of those
Who began when they were young
To drift uptown to Union Square
To find a good game of chess.
Buy him a cup of tea or a donut
And he'd beat you -- unless
You were very good -- show you
Why you lost and how if he were you
He could have beaten himself
Riding the breeze she
Looks down. Two figures
Are making strange noises.
They seem in no hurry;
How vexing if they never
Look up and see
A woman flying overhead!
If my father had said
“I think for a while
I’ll follow Matsuo Basho
Along the deep road
To the North”, my mother
Would have said
“I’ll come too. “
Look at any large family photo album and,
Sooner or later, some version of my mother
Will be looking back at you with sharp brown eyes
Over an unmistakable small nose. I am particularly fond
Of my mother when she was a Turkish woman
Posing at a typewriter in an Istanbul office
Around 1936 (anyone claiming to be my mother
Must be able to type accurately and with
Terrifying speed, her head turned a bit to the left
As she talks to whoever is in the room with her or,
If no one is, whoever is in the next room).
The mother I know best was 9 that year, in Brooklyn,
And would have been pleased to know another her
Was making her own way, taking no guff
And walking with her friends at dusk,
Standing in the shadow of the Galata Tower or seeing
What the Bosphorus was getting up to now.
The shadow walking past
Where there used to be a bakery
Lifts his hand and the shadow
On a bench rises and joins him
They travel down Middleneck Road
In no great hurry. From a gazebo
Two shadows emerge; another one
Has been admiring the trees
Near the library's duck pond
But becomes part of the procession.
A learned shadow leaves the synagogue
Arguing with fugitives from Snediker Avenue.
An old shadow gets off the 8:17 from Penn Station;
The conductor hesitates;tears one last ticket
Before admitting he too is a shadow.
As you enter into the city you see
Another entering ahead of you. Her eyes,
Are unnecessarily bright
Her manner too alert; she will see
Pretty much everything worth seeing.
Hurry -- perhaps you'll be first to find
A broken statue, an old lamp,
A cook on Fourth Street who once
Kicked Ernest Hemingway's shin
Though he doesn't remember why.
Nagoya Sanzaburo's ghost
Lingered so long that
The kabuki troupe's manager,
His lover, the priestess Okuni,
Put him under contract.
My father would ask
What roles did he play?
My mother would ask
Where did he go
When the show was over?
By definition Aristotle's Unmoved Mover
Is everywhere and nowhere and
Cannot be moved. This is not always convenient;
Highways need to be rerouted; rivers need
To flow uphill; offices need to give Him an office,
A title, a salary and frequent raises. Efforts
To put the Unmoved Mover on wheels
Have so far been unsuccessful. They have, though,
Occasioned several interesting disasters
And a reality show that ran six seasons.
As you enter into the city
The statues over the gate
Turn their heads away.
As you enter into the city
A candle blows itself out;
The gods finish repairing
A cracked sidewalk on Ware Street.
As you enter into the city
A dog stops in mid-bark,
Wondering if he'd rather be
A small greybrown bird
Or a snake sleeping under a rock.
As you enter into the city
A cat last seen in 1926
Reappears and announces
It's plans to run for public office.
As you enter into the city
A woman, floating away,
Drops a sealed red envelope.
My ghost haunts my old office
Working on files closed long ago.
I tell the new occupant that she
Must exorcise him herself;
I'm not going near that place.
Too much evidence points to my being
Myself; it makes me suspicious.
Who's being protected? Who might
Be framing me, whoever I am?
Having little money, I can't retain
Philip Marlowe or Kinsey Milhone;
Lord Peter Wimsey works for free
But finds my case uninteresting.
The best I can afford to hire
Is Curious George who, it turns out,
Might be a very decent detective
If he'd stop having ludicrous adventures
Involving machinery or balloons and wasn't
So easily distracted by pieces of ripe fruit.
This woman in Hokusai's print is not looking at you
To make it clear how very much she's not looking at you
She is peering through a red telescope aimed
Somewhere far to your left. Worse, she's brought a friend
To carry an umbrella and to also not look at you.
If you choose to linger and look at them,
That's hardly their fault now, is it?
This woman in Hokusai's print is not looking at you
To make it clear how very much she's not looking at you
She is peering through a red telescope aimed
Somewhere far to your left. Worse, she's brought a friend
To carry an umbrella and to also not look at you.
If you choose to linger and look at them,
That's hardly their fault, is it?
I have never met your grandfather so
I will loan you one of mine for
The duration of this poem. Would
You rather the good-humored tailor who
Died locked inside himself or the
Moody, suspicious watchmaker who
Died praising this well-made world?
