POEMS!

Someone -- Verlaine, I think --

Who, after all, did more than

Drink absinthe and

Shoot Rimbaud and 

Live in a house with

His mother and four

Unborn brothers in bottles

On a kitchen shelf and

Drink absinthe --

Said a poem is never finished;

Just abandoned

But I dunno. Some poems

Of mine have done

The abandoning themselves.

After I've been faithful

For years, one morning

They're clean gone without

Even a note only

To turn up in the arms

Of Martin Tupper who

Is wheezing with laughter, saying

"Really? He thought 

You were a sonnet?"

CRAFT

It's easy enough for an angel

Who needs a body to make one

From air or leaves or the sound

Of tired men climbing a stair but

Souls are harder; it's all 

A matter of precise folds 

In proper sequence and

Always the newmade thing

Makes some slight adjustment

Changing everything.

SITUATIONS

 

In The New York Times for July 19, 1921

Which records there'd been 

A fire in a cheese factory fire 

And that my great grandfather,

With his friend Sam, bought a tiny building 

On a street that no longer exists) there are ads

For situations wanted. It's hard to get situated;

Though I'm not sure what we'll do

I've decided to hire the middle aged widow 

Willing to run a house or be a companion

Or, really, do almost anything; the schoolgirl;

The quickwitted stenographer and the young man

Willing, for a moderate salary, to be generally helpful.

MOMENT

Popeye the Sailor stands on

A hill watching the cherry trees

Late night; no moon; 

If he could see the cherry trees 

He'd see they're not in bloom. His Japanese 

Is fluent; he understands every word

The oni are saying about him. "Shrink him, 

Turn him to ivory and he'd look well

Dangling from the inro of a disgraced baron."

 

DECORUM

His shadow felt that 

Three days buried with 

Li Po showed just

The right amount of respect;

More would have been

Mere ostentation.

REHEARSAL

Forgetting its lines again the poem 

Stands foolishly in the spotlight

Fiddling in its pocket, pulling out some string

Which it glares at, avoiding my eye.

(Why do my poems have pockets and why 

Can they always find string there?)

"From the top," I yell."You're a haiku;

Seventeen syllables; a seasonal reference;

Too much for you?"

BORROWING A DOG

 

There is a dog who 

Will not stop barking

I know this because he lives

In a Billy Collins poem and

Whenever I check he is

There and still barking.

I've been meaning to

Borrow this dog and 

Put him in a poem of mine

Perhaps as a foil to

The giant nude statue of

Napoleon whose agent has  

Been pestering me to

Use his client though no one 

Reads the two poems 

I wrote about him years ago.

Collins will be fine; his poem

Will still have Beethoven,

An orchestra, a conductor 

And the owner of the dog

Who will not stop barking.

7040

Though Ursula is supposed to be shown 

With all eleven thousand virgins

Who were martyred with her

No one ever fits in more than six hundred 

And three. While every virgin

Looks like all the others, 7040

Is painfully aware that not once

Has she ever appeared. She tries 

Not to think about it but her friend 

8009 -- who has appeared 43 times 

In paint, plaster, polychrome and ink

And came very near to a featured role

In a print reproduced by the thousands --

Thinks it is unhealthy to sit polishing

Ones halo until it has edges as sharp

As a carbon-steel razor.

DREAM ANIMALS

I am not one of those who dream

Of horses so when one of them --

White, unsaddled, with a trace 

Of melancholy about his mouth 

And the customary eyes of bleak fire --

Began turning up, racing through fields 

In my rural dreams or leaping

From roof to roof in those having

An urban setting, I knew he wasn't mine.

Somewhere, there's a nine year old girl

Who, leaping onto the back

Of a surly large and lop-earred rabbit

Rides away, searching for adventure.

DISCORD

Of them, only the first viola suspects

They're not themselves but merely

A recording being played for

The seven-hundredth time. Knowing

There'll be no consequences he intends 

After the allegro con spirito malagrosso

To hurl his instrument at either 

The tall clarinet who always grins

Or the fat oboe only casually acquainted 

With soap and water. 

ADDRESSED TO ELEANOR COLVILLE

Think of dying at 16

Two hundred years ago

Leaving to posterity

A letter sent you 

By your aunt, a semi-

Famous writer telling you

A humorous story 

About a christening.

This letter, a hundred years on,

Her great-niece will put

In a collection, completing 

A chain of aunts and nieces.

BABA

Someday this baby will be

Baba Yaga and live in a hut

That struts on chicken legs.

She'll be so strong that 

When the hut grows tired

She'll roll up her sleeves 

And carry it. Be kind to her 

While she's still small. Someday

She'll smoke a short, foul pipe 

That never goes out and be

A sorceress who'll need to be

Three witches, two goddesses

And the Lady Mayoress of Minsk

To do everything that needs doing.

The ghost of high school principal 

Leonard J. Fliedner will visit her 

To chop wood and drink tea

With spoonfuls of jelly dissolved in it

From tall chipped glasses. By then, 

She'll be taking over poems

Never meant to be about her.

FOR AESRED

The duke's nephew has a clockwork 

Image of death which once stood

On Strasbourg Cathedral where

It hourly danced with the magi.

Given its age -- 500 years, give or take -- 

It still dances pretty well. Afternoons,

The two stroll in Hyde Park wearing

Medals to which they're not entitled

And hats a few years out of style.