Get on his wrong side and Apollo, ancient as he is,
Can still stab you with a plague arrow. No one bid
For them at the great sale when his creditors
Sold everything else -- the famous bow, the golden chariot,
The swift-skimming boat -- at knock-down prices.
He lives simply, dresses plainly, rising at dawn,
To trundle the sun across the sky in a wheelbarrow.
"I don't know what I'll do if the barrow breaks," very far;
I may have to try just rolling it with a stick."
Suppose you were one who could
Call the wind and have it
Listen to your request
Usually saying no but sometimes
Saying yes and becoming still
Or returning a hat it stole
On a cold day in 1927.
The ghost of Former Governor Thomas E. Dewey
Occasionally turns up in my dreams not because
He's fond of me -- we get along-- or because he has some
Message he wishes to impart. He's bored and the dreams
He wishes to be in are closed to him. I tell him
To take heart. There is still an entire throughway
That bears his name and when she drives on it
She surely thinks of him. Also, so far as I know,
She never mentions Former Governor DeWitt Clinton.
Reluctantly, God has been
Searched into existence
He's used to it but this
Doesn't make it welcome
God has asked me to give Him a hand
By taking over the job of remembering
Akron, Ohio. He's getting older
And the universe still perversely
Insists on expanding though it
And everything else are simply
Ideas in His mind. What He forgets
Never was at all.
(Until after the Big Bang
God's job was easy
There were only twelve atoms:
Murray, Hildegarde, Norris,
Cindy, Li Po, Lizabeth Anne,
Hecate, Big Al, Patricia,
Nate, Juan and Gleb and they
Didn't really get up to very much.)
I admit it's true that I know
Almost nothing about Akron, Ohio.
Do they still make things there,
Of rubber? More than fifty years ago
I knew a pleasant girl named Mitzi
From Alliance, Ohio which was,
She said, the rubber-band capital
Of the Free World. Perhaps
She can tell me something
About Akron which is a mere
36.7 miles away from Alliance.
Maybe I'll have a staff under me
Who know the place backwards and forwards.
Anyway, though I'm unqualified,
A promotion is a promotion.
(Wikipedia says there are
290,469 people in Akron --
Will it be so very terrible
If I happen to forget one or two?
It may turn out that you'll like better
The ones I'll make up to replace them.)
It's supposed to be a day off but there's no one else so
He shrugs on a body, checks the equipment -- eyes,
Ears, hands, thunderbolts, a rudimentary conscience --
Flicks a few switches and, watching the board light up,
Calculates the odds of the relief man defying probability
By being sober enough to cover the night shift.
The poet has brought ink in a stone pot
A brush, an inkstone, and two servants
To stand quietly while he kneels, watching
The water flow by. He slows his breathing
And makes space in his mind for the poem
With which he has an appointment. Alas for him!
His poem and many others were met on the road
By Li Po and lie tangled in sleep after a long night
Toasting each other and dancing with shadows.
My grandfather Joe's eyes were brown
Much as mine are though they were grey
Until I was 15 or so; I called them hazel
After that. I have somewhere Joe's jeweler's loupe
Though I think he kept it for show. Except for things
Having to do with emotions, he could see anything.
I've seen him take apart a watch and look until
He saw the tiny speck of lodged dust which
He'd gently remove with a sharp needle.
"See?" he'd say but I never did.
My mother would say
"If wishes were horses
Then beggars would ride"
Bareback, I think;
Where would a beggar
Find money for a saddle?
Modest beggars might
Have one horse; small
And able to get by
On next to nothing.
Some beggars, though,
Wish with every breath;
Mighty herds
Would trail after them
Stirring up clouds of dust
Until the great men in coaches
Coughed and groaned
"If only there were fewer horses!"
And made things worse.
Chief Constable Heisenberg no longer exists;
As of today, CC Schrodinger has always been in charge
And will remain so until he isn't at which point
He will never have been chief constable.
Nothing will change; everything will be different. Remember:
Crimes occur when they are perceived as having occurred.
All suspects are guilty, not guilty and neither guilty nor not guilty
Until arrested. Duty officers may know their sergeant's location
Or velocity but not both. Yes, there is a cat in the box.
No, there isn't. Her name is Viscountess Tibbles.
An army of atoms that believes it's me
Gets into bed, blows out a long breath
And votes, by a slim majority, for sleep
Just then, a congregation of words flies in
And tells lies: "We're a poem! Don't get up;
We're extraordinarily memorable
Wait for morning; you'll find us arranged
Just as we are now and write us down."
One afternoon in mid-September, 1920
God pulled from His coat pocket
A handful of change, two matchbooks
And a small clockwork angel which He asked
If my Grandfather Joe could repair. "Of course,"
Said Joe, who could fix anything with gears.
"Come back in two days." Joe made the repair --
One of the cogs had a slightly bent tooth.
Time went by and God didn't return.
Joe occasionally put in the ghost of a dab of oil
And checked that the angel was still working;
It always was. It had rotors instead of wings.
After a few minutes it always returned to its drawer.
Azrael, a much larger angel, came by one day
Sent, Joe assumed, to pick up his clockwork kin
But he was there, it turned out, on other business entirely.
