SELF-KNOWLEDGE

 

Old man always knew he could

Turn into a coyote. Never saw

Much point in it.

SITUATION

 

God and I find ourselves at the top of

A very tall tree which is surrounded by

Hungry wolves or perhaps coyotes or, for all I

Can see from up here, tanuki or just possibly

Wombats. God, with His excellent

Eyesight probably knows what they

Are but I refuse to give Him the

Satisfaction of telling me.  Finally I

Say “What should we do?" and He says “I've 

Been kindof hoping you'd have an idea”

NOT AN AUBADE

Cold day. Old man
Walking. Wind decides
To knock him down.

PRUDENCE

Old man, knowing his name may
Run off and not come back, keeps
A drawer full  of aliases

KEKORO

 

Not an oiran nor a tayu nor even 

The lowest grade of geisha 

Just a kekoro standing in a boat

Wearily beating a small drum

To announce she can be rented

For a very small price. Katsukawa Shunsho

Made a quick sketch of her; she's in

The background of a few prints 

And once appears as the main subject.

She turned up here six months ago

Saying  "The Agency said 

You might have some work for me."

She's not survived the final cut

In any poem but has worked enough

To have an ID and is entitled to eat

In the commissary. 

                     What? Of course there's

A commissary for my regular crew

Where soup is always available.

Do anything long enough involving

Irregular workers and one day there is

A commissary where those with IDs

Are entitled to eat soup twice a day

Some days' soup is better than others

But soup is still soup except on Thursdays

When it's stew. (The actors I can afford

For my poems mostly look like 

Free soup is welcome.) There are rumors

Of an executive dining room but

I've never been asked to eat there.

534

Dawn at the docks
Ghosts unloading boats
Other ghosts setting out

RUBBER STAMPS

 

I imagine God deals

Quickly with most prayers

He has stamps

"Answer clearly"

"Answer obscurely"

"Answer ironically"

"Refer to Satan"

"Ignore." He prefers

Those needing

No action from Him

Being simple reports

"Dear God, it's cold"

"Dear God, it's late"

"Dear God I'm tired"

"Dear God I never wanted this."

SPIDERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD

 

If Jonathan Edwards 

Was God, He'd spend

Day after day burning

Spiders. Read, if

You can't avoid it,

Sinners in the Hands

Of an Angry God;

His hatred towards

Arachnids is

Disturbingly clear.

DISSATISFIED

 

The poem looks at the words I’ve given it and says

“Tailor’s grandson it will have to do; there's no time 

To start afresh. Do what you can about the drape of it;

Perhaps where you have that bit of muddy green

In line five, another color? A bit of something 

Blood red might just pull the look together.”

LOST

 

My Destined Death has no sense

Of direction and anyway cannot drive so

Though I know he's doing his best to

Reach me I occasionally get calls from 

Him asking -- as if I'd know! -- things like why

He's in a mall near Topeka and can I suggest 

Some way he might make a few dollars there since

Even Tools of Destiny need to eat now and then.

THE TOWN FORMERLY KNOWN AS

 

The town where my grandfather Max grew up

Was, after the bombs, the fires and the exterminations,

Allowed to have a sort of life on condition

That it take an assumed name and change

The street names too. (The river is still permitted

To go on calling itself The Bug but must

Report to the authorities every two months.)

It is not an easy place to live. Street signs

Daren't use the old names but fade to illegibility

Within days of being put up. Occasionally

A pile of rubble will insist it's still a building

And start accepting tenants. Ghosts in these times

Flood in from places where things are even worse.

The odds are that you cannot travel to this town now

But if your dreams bring you there take a moment

To give my regards to the ghost of my Great Aunt Irina

At 6 Zebro Stolowe Street, Apartment C.

If she's in a good mood she'll play you something

On the memory of her violin. (According to her sister

Irina had an uncertain temper and a rough tongue

But her music made her welcome everywhere.)

BUS PASS

 

It is never safe to think that something you've lost

Has not made its way to Baba Yaga's hut so that

You'll be sitting there, drinking tea from a chipped glass

When you notice the bus pass stolen from you

In 1969 underneath a pile of silver feathers

Tipped with gold. Even if Baba Yaga says "Take it --

The boy who stole it has no need of it now!"

Let it lie there.1969 has no place for you now.

REMONSTRATION

 

Shakespeare, says Iago, you use us ill 

Making me yourself, the playwright in the play 

Bending and interweaving lives to make

More interesting patterns. You decided Romeo

Can't grow old with somewhat-beloved Rosalind

And made Othello a soldier unable to understand

The ruses and ambushes that are half his trade.

Had I my will-less will, Othello would understand

And see right through me.

BEHAVING

 

In my years under his care did Leonard Fliedner,

My high school principal, exchange twenty words with me?

I doubt it. Still, death has left him a degree of authority

So when I've advance notice that he's been cast

In one of my dreams I check to see that my cuffs

Aren't ragged and warn my unruly prepositions

To behave and not flaunt and fleer themselves

At the end of every other sentence.

BARGAINS

 

Tad's Steakhouse once sold

Steaks which must have come

From bootleg cows because

They charged $1.99 and 

Threw in a large baked potato

And a very reasonable facsimile

Of butter. My good friend Nat

First brought me there

Fifty-seven years ago. In those days

He knew and taught me the names

Of the marooned men finishing their lives

Ruling Fourth Avenue's old book stores

Trapped by dusts, by words, by shadows

BETTER NOT TO ASK

 

Baba Yaga, who resists talking about her first term

As a goddess, tries to distract you,

Fiddling with your grandfather's watch 

(Bought for five dollars in 1930),

Flipping a silver half-dime (lost by you in 1976)

Then letting it hover in mid-air

(As if 1976's luck would be any good now!)

Lost and broken things make their way to her;

She offers you good tea in a mug whose shards

Have put themselves back together almost perfectly

Except for one side of it it; there, a beaming

Wedgwood sun hangs upside-down.

OPEN FOR BUSINESS DURING ALTERATIONS

 

Haberdashers do not go mad

Selling the things that madness made

So when he finds the hats have learned

To whisper "Buy me and I

Will make you a woman whose cold stare

Could freeze a basilisk" or "Wear me

On a sunny day and be a man made 

Of unmeltable butter" he does not think

To close up shop and retire but only

That this is how the world is now,

Adjusts prices accordingly and puts up signs

To stay clear of the loose-weave ties

That have knotted themselves into a hissing ball.

ADVICE TO THE FIRST-TIME BUYER

 

When shopping for a god walk by

The thunderers -- what use to you

Are loud noises? Ignore the ones

Who obsessively count things -- feathers,

Grains of sand, deaths, deaths, infinities

(Some, more, enough, a whole lot

Will generally serve). If you're not clever,

Avoid those with more or less than one shadow.

Me, I favor gods who don't hold grudges

And have some useful talents -- ones who know

One end of a needle from another. This, though,

May just be me; my grandfather was a tailor.

MANDATES

 

My father knew pretty much

All the dynasties including

The Qin, The Western Han,

His kid sister the Eastern Han, 

The Xin, the Jin, the Sui, the Tang, 

The Wu Zhous, the Song,

The Yuan and the Quing but

Was friendliest with the Ming.

None of them, he said,

Much liked the others but all

Agreed that the thing with

The Mandate of Heaven

Was totally a pain. When you lost it

The country went to pot while the gods

Took their sweet time

Making a new one for another dynasty.

Also, the damned things had a talent

For getting lost, melting away,

Falling down a well or into a river

Or just vanishing without warning.

If you put it in your sleeve

(Pockets are beneath a dynasty's dignity)

It would slip out through a hole.

Nothing worked, not even writing your name

On it in big ideograms with a 

"If found, drop in any mailbox;

Postage will be paid by the Eastern Han."

SISTERS

 

Moll Hackabout having taken a look at

The last picture in A Harlot's Progress

Knows how Hogarth means to end

Her story so on this rainy day when

She has no customers she amuses 

The sympathetic bunter with plans

To escape into another print. "I think,"

She says, "I'd make a good Salome

Or perhaps Judith if the light is kind.

Either way, why don't you come along

And bring that tray with you?

We can put the severed head on it."

UNDELIVERED

 

On July 16th, 1834 Jones Very found a shell and

Pressing it to his ear, heard a voice say

"Do not, whatever you do, marry Ted Hughes!

Pass this message faithfully on to other poets and you

Will appear --in brief excerpts --  centuries from now

In anthologies of Early American Literature.

Do not break the chain! Brasseya Allen did

And nothing much happened to her. Ever." 

So Very left a note to William Cullen Bryant

Who gave it to Edgar Allan Poe who

Lost the note but mentioned it to

James Russell Lowell (despite Lowell writing

That Poe's poems were two-fifths sheer fudge)

Who left word to Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson,

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Walt Whitman, and

Cosmo Perlow Baker (who never wrote anything

But meant to). Ezra Pound overheard it in his cradle and told

Amy Lowell who -- sniffily -- told Elinor Wylie and

Edna St. Vincent Millay who both meant

To repeat it but somehow never did so that

What happened to Sylvia Plath is Simply Not Her Fault.

PHOTOGRAPH

 

My father took a picture of ruins

Fifty years ago. Today I stand

Next to his ghost as the shutter clicks

And say " nice lighting! Good focus!

But where are we?"

AN EPIPHANY

 

Thursday at about six o'clock

A very small goddess -- a bit more

Than seven inches tall --

Appeared in the Yoshiwara

She hasn't spoken but somehow

Everyone is convinced that she

Is looking to rent space

And set up shop. Rumor credits her

With any number of miracles

But only a handful can be proven.

When I dreamed of her a loose button

On my shirt sewed itself tight.

MYSTERIES

 

God, who knows everything, still wonders

If the servant girl in the Haarlemkirch

Really likes the stories He tells her or

Is it just an excuse to sit for a while?

"I'd have finished my errands sooner, Ma'am,

But you know how God loves to talk!"

Also, when that tall waitress 

In the Sakai-ya Teahouse suddenly stands

Quite still, staring into space, one hand raised

And the other hidden in her sleeve--

What is she thinking about?

A MORNING IN THE SECOND MONTH

 

Such a wind! A samurai loses his footing

And goes rolling down the street

Still clutching his swords. A pedestrian,

As if used to such things, ignores him.

He looks at the sky, trying to read

Words torn from their poems

Making a long and mapless journey.

LOOKING FOR GOD

 

After leaving my grandfather's manufactory, God

Wandered for a long while, stopping now and then

To make money for the next stage of His journey;

When all else failed He'd find work as a scarecrow

So when I went looking for Him I talked to scarecrows

Who'd left their fields for life in the City.

They said God had excelled at scaring crows but at last

Had changed sides and, rising into the air on black wings, 

Zig-zagged towards the west, cawing harshly.

OH. HIM.

 

The one of my grandfather Joe's generation

You'd think I'd be likely to not remember

Would be Solomon-called-Sam

Who died at 13 in 1901 when Joe was 7 but

He insists upon himself as a fact, arguing

That since his four brothers

And two sisters are now long dead 

He has an equal right to appear in family poems

Or dreams -- small roles usually and often

Simply as part of a crowd. No, it's Pinney, 

Colorless and quiet and kind

Whom I actually knew whom I usually forget

(If he were one of Disney's dwarfs he'd be Bashful)

I have tried to write of him but every time

Some other relations hijack the poem.