In the narrow hall
Painted musicians
Three of you? Four?
Intent on a tune
Which floats above you
As balls and streamers.
Your acrylic selves
Keep apart pictures
Of sages wishing
You'd play quietly
But if you did
The dancing fat men
Two rooms away
Couldn't hear you.
After a few days of fever Joseph Stroud
Was visited by the poets Li Po and Du Fu
Guised as squirrels. According to Stroud's poem
Li Po read to him from the Tao Te Ching
(I'm not sure what Du Fu did; chased nuts, maybe)
There are squirrels around here constantly;
Sometimes one gives me a puzzled stare
Or asks if Phil Rizzuto is having a good season
But that's pretty much it.
Seven samurai stand
Holding umbrellas against
The slanting rain to which
They oppose their bodies.
Six basilisks glide
Holding begging bowls
Whoever approaches them
Turns to stone.
Five arguments wait
For deployment
Shaking dice,
Tunelessly whistling.
Four dowagers climb
On each other
Intending
To reach the sky.
Three bezoars offer
To cure diseases
No one's had
For centuries.
Two unicorns fight
Over a virgin
Who, long ago,
Ran off with a centaur.
On a lightless street a tired shadow
Falls asleep leaning on a wall
Of course in Heaven they
Issue new halos made to
Exacting specifications so
It's not hard to find boxes of
Used halos at yard
Sales or in junk shops.
This one, though, was
Unusual -- made not
Of gold or sardonyx or
Even tin foil but iron. It's
Roughly polished and one
Edge, either by intention or
Design, is razor sharp.
High noon on a sunlit day
A draped figure, face hidden
Under a pulled-up hood
Stands at a bus stop.
An iron halo, dim-gleaming,floats
An inch above her head. The Q44
Pulls up. She offers the driver
A transfer that expired in 1926
But he accepts it, nodding her
Towards an empty seat.
Coming in from overhead, drifting down
Towards the hospital ship, you notice her
The nurse with red hair, the one who's six feet tall
Or a bit more. It's D-Day and she's twenty-four
She's as strong as she'll ever be which is very strong
And doesn't limp as she will when she's old.
Because it has to be done, she's been carrying bodies,
Live ones and dead ones, putting them in beds,
In boxes, in rows. She cleans, cuts,
Sews neat, quick stitches, tells dying soldiers
They'll be fine and knows that she
Can and will not sleep for days and that her dreams
Will be such as she can bear. She sees you, of course,
And says "If you're not here to help, go away."
High noon on a sunlit day;
A draped figure, face hidden
Under a pulled-up hood
Stands at a bus stop. There is
An iron halo, dim-gleaming,
Floating over her head. The Q44
Pulls up. She offers the driver
A transfer that expired in 1926
But he accepts it, nodding her
Towards an empty seat.
Once a year, at Seders, the Wicked Son
Makes an appearance, asks his question
And is sent off, rebuked, into exile.
My father, though, could not leave things so
But sought him out, finding him talking to birds
Near the half-built gazebo in Fireman's Park.
He looked, my father said, an ordinary man
Except that the birds -- pigeons, ospreys,
Grackles and a very old blue grosbeak --
Were listening closely to his every word.
Oh faithless alarm! Once again
You've woken up the wrong me!
Tell him to part his hair on the right;
Remind him to feed the cat.
My grandfather Joe stood
So very straight that the Army
Sent him to slouching classes.
The first Encyclopedia Britannica
Was written, mostly, by serious men
Who drank too much and died young.
According to them "It was the
Peculiar privilege of goddesses
To be represented naked on medals."
In my time I've enjoyed many privileges
Some of them were peculiar enough
But this has not been one of them.
The Emperor Ming of Mongo
Seldom gave the same answer twice
As to how he became merciless.
He was born merciless; he became merciless
By degrees or quite suddenly. His ability
To feel mercy was stolen from him
Or given away or sold for
A vast sum or a few pennies. Doctors
Were baffled by his case or found it
All too easy to explain. Once only
He told the simple truth, during a fight
On the slope of an erupting volcano
But Flash Gordon -- how typical of him! --
Wasn't listening
The jail-keeper's beautiful daughter insists
I've wronged her. At the last minute, I cut her
From a poem I wrote because she threatened
To upset its balance. She says the trio
Who replaced her -- a rat, a roach and a spider --
Haven't any of her star power but that
Is precisely why they're in a poem whose star
Mightn't like being eclipsed. The daughter
Has threatened to complain to her union
(Who knew that jail-keepers' beautiful daughters
Had a union? Or that it was affiliated
With the Teamsters?) unless I soon
Let her have a poem to herself. So far,
I've refused but I'm wavering and have asked
Her father for advice. All he talks about, though,
Is his career as the hangman's beautiful son.
He's still a considerably handsome man
With flecks of gold shining in his beard.
God, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent,
Is much to be pitied. He is bound
To every atom, every particle, even
The half-imaginary ones, throughout
An appallingly vast universe. Compared to this,
Crucifixion is a walk in the park on a sunny day.
And there's worse still. Knowing everything,
Not being limited by time, God never
Gets to say "Whoa -- I didn't see that coming!"
Bored, scattered, stretched, save for us,
His lockpicks, His sun glimpsed through a tiny window,
The rat or roach or spider He's taught to do tricks,
God would surely lack all hope.
