AGO

 

There's a picture of Death

Taken when he was young

And still feeling his way.

He's in a boat, leaning back,

Looking into the sky. A woman

Sits opposite him with the oars

Doing all the work.

HOW IT WORKS

 

At various points in the sky there are

Rabbits posted. Every so often they leave

Their holes (you cannot imagine a hole in

The sky because you are not a

Rabbit) and see the Sun barreling down at

Them. "You again!" they mutter and give it a

Hard kick to speed it on its way.

HESITATION

 

The crow flies off.

A moment later

His shadow follows

LOOKING FOR RELIGION

 

Every now and then Cotyto,

The Thracian goddess of immorality

Leaves a pamphlet in my mailbox

Or a flyer under my door handle

Advising me she's still doing business

At the old address -- the one

I never could find fifty years ago.

ANGER

 

I read that one overmastered by anger

Should pray to St. Jerome. Having no reason

To walk down Seventh Avenue, where he sleeps

Most nights in doorways, I haven't seen Jerome

In years but, being angry, sought him out.

We sat together, not speaking, being angry together.

MIRACLES

 

As if she didn't have enough on her plate

She wakes to find she's become a saint

With unlimited access to the illimitable Grace of God

She slams her coffee mug down, breaking it

Then irritably makes the pieces reassemble.

MONUMENT

 

As everyone knows, Gian Giacomo Trivulzio

Led the French invasion of Milan in 1499

And later commissioned Leonardo da Vinci

To build him a tomb which -- no surprise! --

Was never built. His tombless ghost haunts

Leonardo's designs, frightening no one

WORKMANSHIP

 

If we did our job right you'll scarcely hear it:

Just a very soft click when twilight starts

If we were in a hurry, though, there might be

A rasp or a shrill squeak. We've an arrangement

With certain corvids for such occasions.

Who make themselves conspicuous so you'll think

It was just a contrary grackle or some angry crows.

OUT

 

When he was a clothing cutter my grandfather Max

Didn't go home during busy season but slept,

As did the other workers, on the cutting tables

Or on piles of fabric. At the beginning of the season

Their dreams expected to find them in their beds

And, disappointed, might be seen moving slowly

Through the late-night streets, cursing their ill-fortune.

Max's friend Shepsie -- his real name is lost now

And may have been lost then -- had just one dream

It was ragged from having been dreamt so often

And though the tailors did their best for it,

Sewing up holes and patching it with remnants,

The police sometimes arrested it for vagrancy.

BLAME THEM IF THERE'S NO POEM TODAY

 

I was trying to write a poem

About the crooked and crabbed ghosts

Who haunt Vincent Van Gogh's picture

Of the Church at Auvers when

The Academy of Moral and Political Science

Without so much as knocking came in

And made themselves at home. "We've come,"

They said, "to live with you as you are 

The newest member and we mean

To teach you everything we know about

Moral and Political Science. To begin with

Morality is not a science. Nor is politics.

But enough of that for now! What do you plan

To feed us? And do you happen to know

The Female Poets of the English Language

Arranged in Chronological Order? We're told

They're well worth meeting."

YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE CAREFUL

 

One day you find a  thick envelope

With a letter inside, on parchment,

Telling you you've been elected a member

Of the Academy of Moral and Political Science.

Worse, the vote was unanimous. You protest

But there's no avoiding it. You must buy 

A monocle and a sash and learn at last

The proper use of the passé composé .

FLOWERING

 

According to legend, Clytie

After staring at Apollo in his chariot

As he each day rode through the sky

Became a sun-staring flower

Either a marigold or a sunflower

Or, some say, a purple heliotrope

Given how myths work I'm sure Clytie

Didn't get a choice or she'd have said

None of the above and stayed a nymph

Gods, though, do what they please

Most likely they were reassigning

Redundant nymphs so Echo became a voice,

Arethusa a fountain and Clytie put down roots

If the gods had asked me I'd have advised

Letting Clytie be or, if they were set on 

Her being a flower, I'd say marigold.

My father's gardens always had marigolds

Usually around the edges.

SIDEWAYS THROUGH THE PARK WITH WITTGENSTEIN

 

Whereof one cannot speak

Thereof one must shout

Or whisper insinuatingly.

Perhaps Truth will slam by

To see what the noise is about.

NB

 

Praying to a wine god is always

A chancy business but, if you must: 

Smiling Dionysus wins all hearts;

Angry Dionysus burns down houses

Not caring who's inside;

Faceless Dionysus is too drunk

To remember who he is. (Scholars say

He's the one who thought hitching panthers

To a chariot was a really good idea.)

PAINTED MUSIC

 

In Guercino's drawing of Mary Magdalene 

She lies on a beach, plainly troubled.

God or someone with the authority

To dispatch angels has sent her three;

Two of them loll on clouds. The third,

Wings outspread, hovers above her

Playing a violin. She looks surprised;

This strikes me as a fair reaction. 

(I've no good reason for my belief

That the angel is playing Stardust.)

APPEARING TODAY

 

You've rented an elephant and a giraffe,

Put Silenus on a donkey, hired sturdy Bacchantes

To keep him from falling off. You've a chariot

With panthers hitched to it and any number

Of gleeful drunken folk one of whom

Is blowing a long horn. Bacchus, though

Isn't here; drinking glass after glass won't bring him. 

Propped in his cart, loosely holding

The panthers' reins, is some local god

Without even a face yet. How beautiful he is!

How extremely terrifying!

SURVIVOR

 

This is possibly the worst scarecrow 

In the entire world:

An old hat and some ragged pants

Hanging on a cross with a long stick

Leaning purposelessly next to it. 

The farmwife throws up her arms

Telling the scarecrow it's all

A matter of attitude.

ATLAS

 

One day the authorities come by, saying

You've been selected to carry the world;

Atlas is forgiven at last and while they've nothing

Against you they've nothing for you either.

You protest, saying isn't Atlas huge, a very giant

And strong as a mountain? A common misperception

They say. He's actually small and frail;

A pipsqueak any wind could carry off. No one

Has the strength to carry the weight of the world. 

Atlas did it for the same reason you will: 

We're telling you to.

EDITOR

 

I've been trying to write a poem

About the Death of Dido but my tablet,

Having no respect for the classics,

Keeps  changing it to the Death of Fido

Which would be a different thing entirely.

AN ENCOUNTER

 

A stone in the middle of a sidewalk square

About an inch and a third long by three quarters

Of an inch wide. A little scuffed; if a rock

Can lead a hard life this one has. I pick it up

Of course -- I've been picking up rocks for most

Of my life. When I was a kid I'd bang them open

With a bigger rock not because I'd the makings

Of a geologist but to see the inside and to smell

The gunpowder smell two rocks pounded together make.

A grey stone, flat on one side, rounded on the other.

It can't have been on the sidewalk long; someone

Would have kicked it into the grass or the street.

Waiting for me, then. The round side fits

Into the hollow of my fingers, the flat accepts

My thumb rubbing it. A worry stone, perhaps.

I put it in my pocket. It may be that this stone

Was meant not for me but for Rebbe Aaron

My ancestor who was kept from floating off

By the stones in his pocket . He died in 1772 

But stones, notoriously, have only hazy notions of time.

FAMILY

 

Once in a while I write a poem about

My ancestor Aaron of Karlin who could,

According to legend, fly or at least float and who

Might have drifted who knows where if his wife

Hadn't put stones in his pocket. Recently,

I've become more interested in his wife who,

Like me, her descendant, couldn't fly

Or if she could didn't make a fuss about it.

DESCENT

 

About my  ancestor Reb Aaron tradition and my mother

Agree: he could fly. Nothing fancy, mind you;

He wasn't a show off and didn't do Immelmans

Or Figure-8s in the skies over Karlin. Mostly he floated

Just a bit off the ground, rising higher when he prayed

Or was lost in thought. His wife (who was also

My ancestor, come to think ofit) would slip rocks

Into his pockets so he wouldn't float away entirely.

STONES AND THE RIVER SCOUSE

 

When Virginia Woolf had had enough of being Virginia Woolf she

Put stones into her pocket (quare: pocket or pockets?

How many stones?) and went into the River Scouse

(Thirty-five miles long; considerably polluted now

But probably less so on March 28, 1941)

If you had to guess would you say she walked, dove

Or jumped headlong into the Scouse?

Or did she spin around, looking at the world 

(Just then, just there) so she could describe it if it fortuned

That she survived? And tell me something

About those stones -- smooth river-rocks do you think

Picked up idly and then inspiring the thought

"These would do nicely if I wanted to drown"?

Whatever became of those stones? Do they sit

In a vitrine somewhere, next to the bezoars?

"Stones found in a dead writer's pocket; stones

Recovered from the belly of a toad."

ITEMS

 

In the room a red teapot and

A grey-green rug. Three chairs and

A cat sitting on one of them. A shelf

Filled with sea-shells. A lamp.

Pen and ink and paper on

A thin-legged table. A box

Filled with sand. Old Ono No Komachi

Talking to her much younger self.

In a corner Death quietly listening,

His cup of tea growing cold.

SOME SHADE

 

The man whose shadow I am

Has begun to shrink but not rapidly

As would be proper. At high noon

He doesn't disappear and at sunset

He doesn't grow tall. Turn out the light

And he remains! According to him

Plato discovered that all things here

Are shadows of better things elsewhere 

So he is a shadow of his true self and I

Am a shadow of the idea of shadowness.

I ask if his true self ever treats shadowness

To a meal or at least a cup of coffee.

He says probably not since his true self

Hasn't the shadow of a thin dime.

NOTA BENE

 

Like the curate's egg

Parts of me 

Are excellent

The rest. though,

Are poison. Don't say

You've not been warned.

WIND UP

 

Old Man and his conscience never
Liked each other much so when it
Didn’t return from errands one day he
Shrugged and got the other old men
To build him a clockwork one. Mostly
It sat in the attic with the old-fashioned gear his
Grandfather had left behind but he dusted it and
Wound it up for formal occasions and all
Went well until the clockwork conscience built
Another one and they learned how to wind
Each other up and started bothering Old Man
In shifts except for Thursday afternoons when
They played card games and tried to fix an old

Radio to tune in programs off the air since 1956. 

ESTHER

 

When my grandmother was young

And hadn't met the man she didn't like

But married anyway she lived in an orphanage

Though only half an orphan and worked

In a cigarette factory in Lvov. She now refuses

To appear in my dreams as I remember her --

Small and grey; smaller and greyer

Every time I saw her -- but only as she was

At fifteen -- quick, sharp-tongued, defiant --

And the one girl who understood the workings

Of the tempermental Bonsack Cigarette Roller

Which could roll 5000 cigarettes an hour

If made to feel loved and appreciated.

LORETTA WANTS THERE TO BE A POEM ABOUT HER

 

There's a poem right now that's

Nohow mine but keeps buzzing around

Saying I should write it down before

Its words faint from exhaustion and leave

Punctuation marks hanging in the air.

It's for sure not one of my poems and seems to be

About a girl named Loretta. Loretta has

Her points and her problems but the poetry of her

Gets right by me. I try to go back to my book but Loretta,

Who thinks I should be writing, looks through my eyes

And wants to know what makes the book more interesting

Than she is. It's not that, I'm sure the right author

(Who isn't me) will come along and turn you 

Into a National Book Award and a life of

Reciting you at colleges and book clubs and

Perhaps a bowling alley. What's your book about? she says

And I say it's about Carnival season in Venice in

1755 and Casanova's having an affair with a nun

Who dresses as a man sometimes. How's it come out? she says

And I say Unhappily. The nun falls in love with

Another nun who leaves her for the French ambassador 

And Casanova grows old, sitting in a library and writing books.