At least 800 gods attended, checking their attributes
At the door so that you couldn't tell one from another
Most of them lost their claim tickets and just grabbed
The first things they could find. Some of them
Were very good at grabbing which is why Baba Yaga
Is now in charge of love, war, shellfish, mold,
Marzipan, kittens, pied horses, chess bishops and
Tuesday mornings between five-thirty and seven.
Every few centuries Sobek renews
His license to be a crocodile. If being a god
Becomes impossible, he'll still be able
To make a living. He finds New York cold
Though he's been here for years.
Having nowhere else to be an hour
After the sun's left its posts
I see him spellbound by a Christmas window
Watching automatons repeat themselves endlessly.
Baba Yaga knows the names and addresses
Of the eight hundred gods of Litosk
The seven hundred demons of Goray
The five hundred golems of Neisau-Hrodnay
The four hundred demigods of Wilniu
And the three hundred nameless spirits
Who are forbidden to enter cities and sleep
In fields or in haystacks. Prayers meant for them
Must go through her. Some she forwards.
Some she answers. Some, refashioned,
She sends out to look out for themselves.
The provincial players are rehearsing
Waiting to be background for the miracle
To be performed when the saint --
Or an angel? Or God Himself? --
Arrives from the capital. Professionals,
They don't complain that no one
Has told them what the miracle is to be.
The fainting woman -- she does Mary the Virgin
A treat at Depositions -- is practicing falling backwards
Into the arms of an ostler and a smith. The man
Who runs by without noticing the Important Event
Is doing his stretching exercises. The child
Of indeterminate gender is feeding the cat
She'll tease once things get going. The extras
Discuss whether they should arrange themselves
As three small groups or one big one.
(The horse and the chickens are there in case
This is one of the miracles that require livestock.)
I have seen at least a thousand
Pictures of Mount Fuji but
If it passed me on the street
Would I recognize it at once
But preserve its incognito?
Would I shout "Mount Fuji!
Welcome to New York!" Perhaps
I'd walk right by or would assume
It was some other distinguished mountain --
Poroshiri, say, or Arakara or Ibuki --
Examining the statues in Seward Park.
I don't know if this is still so but
In Union Square the pigeons
Used to study the men and boys
Playing chess, preparing
For the change in the world's mechanics
That would require them to take up the game.
(There were few girls and women
Hunched over the boards back then
But perhaps in high summer
Some would hide in the leaves of
The trees -- Siberian Elms in particular --
Playing lightning rounds of chess,
Making small bets and occasionally
Dropping nuts on the men below.)
When Nishikawa Sukenobu forgot to lock his landscapes
Characters from other pictures would walk in
And act as if they belonged there. In one of them
Two geisha from different prints mean to comfort
A third who walks ahead of them but unfortunately
They've been distracted by butterflies and purple flowers.
A servant walks behind them, carrying lunch. In another
Some old men, an old woman and two young ones
Enjoy Nishikawa's gently unfurling road.
One of the men has his head on wrong making him always
Peer into the sky. His companions seem unconcerned
Knowing that that in some other picture
They'll find the tools and men to help put it right.
A half moon races across the sky; two black birds,
Jokesters, tell each other outlandish stories.
If only the doctor or one of the nurses
Had thought about it I'm sure someone
Would have said "This baby's born -- wrap him
And his mom in blankets! Circus starts
In five minutes just across the street. Hustle!
I bet we can all make it in four."
On the paper's front page it said
BEST BABY EVER, KILLED!
Well, the words were "Palestinian mother
Holds baby daughter killed in air raid"
But I knew this was the best baby ever
Since they all are. As a Kohain I am,
If you push back far enough to get
To the Bible, the grandson of Aaron
The first high priest. This means Moses is
My great uncle, more or less. Kohains
Are entitled to wear a turban and a sash
And to collect five shekels at a bris. Also
We're supposed to obey all sorts of rules
Including never looking on a corpse.
See one? Take off your turban and sash;
Don't enter prayer houses until you've been purified.
So, what purifies me after seeing the small corpse
Of the best baby ever? I asked Uncle Moses
Who said, really, he'd never gotten over
All those Egyptians drowning in the Red Sea.
"I grew up in the palace, remember; I knew
Most of those soldiers. Thousands of years it is
But ask and I'll sing you one of their songs."
After all these years Mount Fuji still
Does not understand Basho's poem
About the frog in the well.
My father's ghost says "Fuji,
The frog, too, is mystified."
I find it oddly pleasant that you,
Appreciating my aesthetic value,
Look on me without fear. Perhaps
You don't know I am a curse
Captured in wood. If you were wise
You'd drive a nail into me
Forcing me to turn on my axis
And defend you from the enemies
I see hovering around you.
Though there's plenty of space they crowd together:
Four women, one man, all wearing hats.
The youngest woman has a muff too.
The oldest rests the tip of her folded umbrella
On the bare ground. The next to youngest woman
Speaks for them. They've come to take up the job,
Subject to approval, of being your ancestors.
Their demands are reasonable; the woman all are gloved
The man wears a well-kept derby. Go ahead; hire them!
Maybe it's all about my shadow and my role
Is simply to get him where he's supposed to be
Or -- would this be worse or better? -- my point
Is to do things his shadow can note down
In the notebook she always carries.
So far no one has mentioned
That my shadow has an apprentice
Trailing behind him. I'm not sure
She's really cut out to be a shadow
She seems to take many rest breaks
Also, she climbs trees and then
Has to be helped down from them.
There's a scissors hanging from her belt
And a pencil and a notebook and --
I find these last disturbing --
A curved knife and a powderhorn.
I heard that the head of one of Ursula's virgins
Wrapped in green silk and in a wooden box
Listed in an inventory as belonging to the Duc de Berry
Had been found and was on exhibit in the Municipal Museum
All eleven thousand of us had to go see it, of course
If you're a saint -- all of us are, though suspected
Of being fictional -- they let you in after hours;
They even open the box and very carefully unwrap the skull
None of us notice that Ursula was there until she speaks
In that decisive "I am a beautiful English princess
And a saint of God" voice, asking "Well? Which are you?"
The skull opens and shuts its jaws a few times perhaps wondering
How it could talk without lips or tongue and says
"Wouldn't you like to know!" Then I know it was mine.
I may not be the old man I think I am
(It would not be the first time
I’ve made this sort of mistake)
But an entirely other one,
Quieter, shorter, with eyes
Of a quite different but still
Indeterminate shade and attended
By different regrets – not tall gentlemen
With good manners and iron pincers
But rough harridans with clubs
And flint-bladed knives. It may be
That, after a few years in what
I’ll think my grave I’ll hear voices saying
“Good Lord! What’s he doing here?
Move on, you! And be quick about it.”
The regrets who used to attend me
Stayed for many years – good natured
And gentlemanly when off duty
I’d see them strolling arm and arm
On their regular days off; we’d nod
Or exchange a few words. I never asked
What they did when not holding my heart
In red-hot tongs or making me relive
Days I wanted to forget but they have
One by one grown old or moved on
So I make do with itinerant regrets –
Enthusiastic but without manners or training;
Ask them for references and they laugh.
I am a measuring spoon but I
Have never been happy in this drawer
With the other spoons and cups
And funnels and the small kitchen scales.
Help me, twenty month old child!
Only you know how I long to hide
Behind the jars of rice or perch
Defiant on a tower of cat food.
My mother read every poem Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote
And some she didn't but my mother thought she did
And a few my mother knew she hadn't
But would have if she'd thought of them
Just back from a trip Li Po
Empties his bag of stray lines
And thoughts for poems. Near the bottom
My father's curled shadow sleeps
On some bales of loose-woven moonlight.
Astley's Spanish Horse lived
Forty-two years. It knew how
To set plates and cups on a table,
Bring a boiling kettle from the fire
And make tea. It could also
Unsaddle itself, wink at pretty girls,
Perform small bits of magic
And wash its feet in a bucket.
In toothless old age it lived on bread;
When it died, Astley had its hide
Made into a drum.
The shadows had been sent to forage so when
They returned at dusk there is no one
To greet them. They consider the evidence:
A torn newspaper; a broken violin;
A tight-corked bottle, a slosh of light trapped inside.
Cats emerge; the shadows feed them
And then draw lots to determine
Who must start pretending to be people
I wake up early because many years ago
An orange cat would bite my elbows
Wanting to be fed. Once dressed,
I open the shade so a tortoiseshell ghost
Can read the future in the scutterings
Of birds and squirrels. At breakfast,
A black and white ghost reminds me
To never leave a milk pitcher unattended.
I've known a cat who could levitate and one
Who walked on her hind legs, startling my mother.
One cat spent her whole life trying to be
In any room where I wasn't. Another
Followed me everywhere.
I was walking downtown and noticed God
Was leaning against a building looking serious;
There was a patch on His jacket – not the decoration sort
But the “there's a hole I mean to cover” sort.
I asked what He was up to and He said
“Remembering all the people who’d died today;
There were an awful lot of them, though.”
I asked if I could help and He said sure
And scootched over to make room for me;
We leaned on the wall together, thinking dead folk.
It was hard work at first but got easier and faster
At last I said “God, I’m pretty sure I’ve remembered,
Some dead folk who never were alive.” He said it was okay;
We were too far along to turn back and He would mark
Anyone I’d invented by teaching them a secret handshake
So they could recognize each other and be able
To get extra servings of mush in Heaven.
(I was surprised to find out there’d be mush in Heaven
God said what sort of Heaven wouldn’t serve mush?)
The very old muse has not for a while
Brought me a poem that only works
In Linear B or in Ural-Altaic. Today,
Looking pleased, she brought a poem
In a living language but one of which
I know only a handful of words. It's true
That I can give an eloquent warning
Due to years of reading subway doors:
Aviso! La via del tren subterraneo
Es peligrosa! It has great dignity, I think
Be advised! The way of the underground train
Is perilous! Not only perilous but with perils
Who are female -- peligosa, not peligroso.
Still, unless the poem means to urge young folk
To generally avoid walking on subway tracks
It should probably find another poet.
