Before time begins, Time reaching way back,
Kicks his foot high over his head as if
He was Juan Marichal having a good day
At Candlestick Park. Whipping his hand forward,
Walloping his foot down, his hard throw
Sends God tummulting through space
Desperately creating itself ahead of Him.
Barry Gifford said there are
No birds in Hell. Plainly
He’s never been there
Around 3 o’clock
On a Friday afternoon.
My green Buddha, who is almost
Five-eighths of an inch tall, is considering
Taking the place of his 180 foot tall brother
Who was destroyed in 2001.
"I will sit up very straight," he says.
Abundance left hastily,
Rolling off in her chariot
Just before she could be arrested.
An old peasant woman
Plods along, quietly cursing
Every stone in the road.
She carries Abundance's luggage --
A bundle, balanced on her head,
And a small basket.
Although he's politely translated the Ten Commandments
Into Dutch only one person -- a woman
Holding a tureen the same green shade
As her blouse -- is glancing at them. Otherwise,
The huge crowd is dreaming,
Chatting, joking, balancing vases
On their heads or looking out at us
Thinking "Well, you're not reading the words either,
Are you?" Also, a quiet satyr has slipped in
Wearing a laurel wreath in his hair.
For Rembrandt's engraving of Death
Rising From The Grave To Greet
A Newlywed Couple, Death posed
For almost seven hours and was
So exhausted when it was finished that he
Drained the cup of wine he was holding,
Waved a vague blessing and fell asleep.
The moon is, of course,
A lifeless, spinning stone
But also of course
An old woman whose feet
Get tired, a rabbit
With a mortar and pestle
And a lantern Osiris
Hangs from a nail
Sobek pounded into the sky.
Baba Yaga, barging into
A poem where she doesn't belong,
Runs into my father who
Is looking to slot in a reference
To his sister Edith who, dying as a baby,
Hasn't featured in many poems.
Baba Yaga complains that she lately finds
Her chicken-legged hut cold at night
"Alt ist kalt" my father sympathizes.
He says the warmest blankets
In the world were those his father
Sewed together from scraps.
Blankets like those don't just vanish;
They're no doubt still somewhere.
The god Sobek arrived tonight
From Port Mahon aboard The Charming Betty
Which brought also barrel upon barrel
Of ammunition. The Lord Chancellor
Was rowed out to greet the god and,
After a lengthy meeting and an on-board dinner
A joint communique was issued. Sobek
Said he knew that many were surprised
That a male crocodile had been appointed
Goddess of Love but, given a fair chance,
He might surprise us all. While seldom
In his long career associated with love
He had, after all, invented backgammon
With which, as he understood it, love
Had quite a few things in common.
If you dream of Wislawa Szymborska holding a stick
In her right hand it means “This year
You will once again not win the Nobel Prize.”
A stick in her left means “Stop watching your phone;
The Committee hasn’t even heard of you!”
Sticks in both hands means “I’m busy right now;
Why not go see what Czeslaw Milosz is doing?"
The shadow quietly walking behind me
I found carefully folded -- left behind
As a debt-pledge and then forgotten.
I use it when I'm trying to look important;
It's the sort of shadow who knows five languages
Or how to quell thunderstorms with gestures
And the rattle of coins in a silver box.
At some point it must have occurred
To certain schools of Japanese monks that
Wearing a large basket on one's head
Makes it difficult to see. Why, then,
Did they start doing it? Perhaps to have
More drama in the world, allowing
Those moments when the basket
Is flung aside, revealing the demon lover,
The avenging son, the faithful monster,
The ghost with promises to keep or
A monk who tells of a sleepless night
On the roof of an abandoned temple
While spirits snarled and snapped below.
Occasionally in pictures which
Have nothing to do with her I find
My grandfather's second wife
Fanny. She looks implacable;
Having made her way into the photo
She'll not be gotten rid of. In time
People will say "Oh, that must be Dora
Or Hepzibah or could it be Elinor
Who put on a few pounds once Al died?"
They'll be wrong, though; I know Fanny
When I see her. My mother told me
In our last conversation "Fanny
Was very hard on me but then I
Was not an easy child to raise."
Max's children had names
Only Max used. (My father's
Was Sock and after 1956
No one ever called him Sock)
Of the names he made up
I know three: Sock, Napugi
And Gininganoy. (I write them
Lest they be lost too.)
Were there nine names or eight?
My Aunt Edith died as a baby so
Perhaps there hadn't been time?
Nonsense! How else could Max
Have greeted her slight spirit
Or told her it was time to depart?
Though the god of poverty's pockets have
Holes in them he never lacks things
Of no use to him or to anyone
Chipped marbles, bent nails, inkless pens,
The key to a house that burned down in 1946
A picture of that house with a dead man
Smiling on the porch and a dead woman
Looking out from an upstairs window.
Long ago someone gave me
A Buddha. He's green and about
Three-fifths of an inch tall and
Easily lost. Fortunately
He can take care of himself
And always turns up again
His left hand saying welcome
His right saying no fear.
Scrawny, half-grown gods
Used to haunt the sails of ships
Doing well or woe to sailors -- a knot
Made double-tight, a patch that held,
New canvas that tore when the wind blew.
They taunted the cats, killed the rats
And fed on oaths and tales and smoke
From banked fires. Some of them now
With a knack for it haunt trading houses
Leading numbers astray and making winds rise
In corridors where no winds should be.
The Angel of Death, having a rough night,
Was none too pleased to find Max
Attended by Thuisko, Tzontemoc, Hermes,
Maeve, Libitina, two of the Nameless Ones
And a banshee (A banshee of all things!
He hadn't seen one in years.) A wayoob
Was taking Max's pulse; the banshee,
Stirring something that kept changing color,
Looked willing to stir forever. Hermes,
One of the Nameless, Maeve and Libitina
Were playing cards; Hermes called
"Take a hand! Libitina's just playing
To be polite; she doesn't know the rules."
A ghost at 10:30 on a cold morning
Stands on the memory of
His left foot since he can no longer
Remember his right one clearly.
He thinks he was fond of it
But it's no use; he only manifestS
What he recalls precisely.
(It's fortunate he stared so much
In mirrors; he'd feel foolish with no nose.)
He hops off, stopping at corners,
Waiting for lights to turn green
Though what harm could cars do him now?
Since he can't recall why he's come back
He begs forgiveness from everyone he sees
Who's wearing a hat; he forgives the hatless
Unless they also wear gloves in which case
He whispers "Some things cannot be forgiven!"
One morning the train to work was rerouted
No Plandome. No Great Neck. No Auburnadale
Nor Woodside, where all must change.
Tus there was and Merv, Samarcand, and Balkh and Bukhara.
The conductors promised we would eventually
Reach Penn Station but I detrained at Nishapur
Famous for its pots, its grapes and its wines and
For Omar Khayyam who wrote about them.
No one here speaks English and it seems to be
Only a few hundred years after the Hejira
Say, 1150 by my reckoning. I get by;
People here are used to lost men; we have our own
Burial association, a flag and a rousing anthem.
Great Aunt Mabel, who was thin and
As sharp as four needles
Married soft, kind-hearted Azie
This was fortunate. Had she chosen Joe,
My grandfather -- a twice-bitten soul
Who reserved always the option
Of turning sideways and disappearing --
Great cities might now be dust and smoke.
Before she was a death spirit the banshee
Was a washerwoman so, as a professional,
She glanced at the hospital sheets on the bed
Where Max was taking his time dying. "Pfoo," she said
(In Galitzianer Yiddish, though Max had, over the years.
Picked up a fair amount of Gaelic) "a speckled hen
Would feel shame dying in such ill-washed sheets;
Wait you here -- I'll have a word with them in the laundry."
Superbly fat and self-assured Old Mercury
Rarely flies now though the tiny wings
On his hat and soft-sided boots still function.
His days are spent looking after his investments
And his nights drinking with thieves. As part
Of his plea-bargain he acts as a pro bono
Guide to Hell. For a fantastic fee, it's said,
He'll smuggle souls back to life, leaving them
At Charing Cross, with forged papers and car fare.
In the Victoria and Albert Museum
Is a glossy hat that has waited
For its true owner to return
Since 1910. It's half-promised
When this happens to plead
For the liberation of a pair
Of fawn-colored spats last worn
In 1896, at a society wedding.
