God, says Lucifer, exists
When He wants to and
These days He often doesn't
Or wants to just enough
To cast a green shadow
In Thessaloniki or perform
Six pale miracles in the lobby
Of the old Ritz-Regency
In Jaipur. I, on the other hand,
Am always present as much
Here in this garden as perched
On a locked and verdigrised gate
Watching souls waiting for it to open
"These are uncorrected proofs
Please do not quote for publication
Until you check your copy
Against the finished book."
Frankly, there's no trusting this writer
He may well decide to move every
Bit of punctuation to the last few pages
Making them a slurry of sleepy periods
Alarmed commas, confused semicolons,
Exultant exclamation points, warded by
Suspicious rows of parens. (Question marks?
Who knows what they feel or what
He'll do to them?) When we published
His last book he made us, at the last moment,
Replace the swans on page 96 with cats.
The cats refused to get wet so we
Had to put them all in little gondolas
The swans' reflections refused to leave;
The cats hissed at them; they hissed back.
The other poems complained but
What could we do? Trust us;
Do not quote for publication until
You check your copy against the finished book.
The angel of the burned city
Has made herself a body from smoke
And time and grains of yellow sand.
Every day between three and six-thirty
She stands stiller than stone
Where the market used to be. Shadows
Press scraps of paper into her hands;
Looking for … last seen … answers to …
Suppose Popeye every year vanishes
Last seen heading inland, shaking off
His pursuers (he is often pursued) so that
Wimpy and Brutus and Olive Oyl
Have to vamp frantically. Wimpy
Dances with surprising grace;
Brutus tells funny stories; Olive
Sings in a pleasant contralto. Somehow
They make enough to live until
Popeye's suddenly among them,
Plum blossoms scattered in his hair.
When my father died a few
Of his angels invited his wolfmen
And Ming the Merciless to a wake
His witches -- wicked but with
Strange kindness streaked through them --
Brought great piles of apples. As my plus one
I brought my grandmother at 17, before
She'd learned English so we spoke
In gestures or at least I think we did;
It may be that she wasn't revealing
Secrets hidden since 1901 but just
Felt like dancing.
Swing your left arm forward
Lift your right leg so your heel
Hovers just above the curb
Let the sun glint on your glasses
As you look at a point
Just beyond where your foot
Would come down if you weren't
Fated to spend eternity
Almost walking out of a tax photo
Of 27 Whitehall Street as it was
Late on a fall day in 1939.
Angels of my father's imagining
Were stick men with mitten hands.
They didn’t dress up for their work
But put on coats sometimes -- this world
Seems cold to them. They wore earphones
When they sat in attics recording
The thoughts of those living below
On huge reel to reel recorders
Or, when they took breaks, listening
To old radio shows. When Orson Welles
Intoned "Who knows what evil lurks
In the hearts of men?" they'd shrug
And answer “Who doesn’t?”
This new chair of mine,
Comfortable if a bit austere,
Comes from the bankruptcy sale
Of Europa's son Rhadamanthus,
King of Crete and Lord of the Dead.
Souls wishing to be judged
Will find me there most evenings.
Inspector Maigret sometimes suspects
The existence of an Anti-Maigret
Whose task is to unsolve mysteries
When Maigret takes a holiday, Inspector
Anti-Maigret takes a break from unsolving,
Cuts his hair, drinks dark Belgian beer
(The same brand Maigret drinks),
Prays furiously to gods who, spitefully,
Insist on answering his prayers despite
His certain knowledge that they're imaginary.
My grandfather said when he was a soldier
The Army issued everyone a new shadow
Promising they'd return the old one
When a soldier died or the war ended.
His luck! He wound up with a shadow
Older than he was. It limped and had been
Poorly repaired. He patched what was patchable,
Fixed what was fixable, and made it last
The rest of his long life. His first shadow --
Misfiled and ultimately sold as surplus --
Must have wondered whatever became of him
The war over, the old
Things were brought
From storage but no one
Had thought to catalog
Their shadows. Many
Had gone missing, perhaps
Carried off by soldiers.
Still, there were more
Than enough and those
Which couldn't pass
As belonging to this statue
Or that were set free.
Haphazardly
scattered; still abroad in the world
But using another name;
Some daylight, lost in a mirror since August 9, 1938;
A pocket watch; twelve notes from The William Tell Overture;
An unclaimed silver medal; a hand setting a pebble
On top of a gravestone; a story traveling
Forty years to find its true audience
Waiting for it, alone in the crowded house,
Drinking black tea from a chipped blue cup.
