When you wake up
Look in a mirror and say
"I am no shadow"
Until you believe it.
Next, gather substance.
Stand without flickering.
Remember not to change size
Too radically. Hire servants --
You'll need at least four: one
To attend you outdoors; one
To appear by artificial light; one
To be invisible to all but you; the last
You must not acknowledge
When you meet again.
At Captain Thomas Coram's Foundling Hospital
There was a side entrance for desperate folk
To leave infants, often with notes or tokens --
A blanket, a toy, a bright bead, some coral.
One morning they found one, small and sick,
Wrapped in a basket with a letter pinned
To his blanket saying "This is Death. Please
Take care of him. I'll come back
If things ever go better for Me."
In my career, says Sparafucile, I fulfilled the terms
Of almost every contract. Hire me and your worries
Were gone or replaced at least by ones more interesting;
You could go right home and start thinking
About what to wear to your enemy's funeral.
Really, I was that good. Killing the Duke
Was nothing special for me; I'd killed kings!
I gave Rigoletto a bargain price; I liked him
And yes, I know that I mistook a slender soprano
For a bulky tenor but it was dark and she, remember,
Was trying to fool me. You'd think there'd be operas
About the many times I killed the right victim
But no -- there's not even a poem.
In the picture it is late 1955 and you
Have on an admirable fake-leather hat
With earflaps which I thought
Fairly marked your status as
A seven year old and the oldest
Of us. At half-past three
I, having no say about my headgear,
Wear a shapeless wool thing
Made by an aunt who'd obviously
Accepted her sister's dare
To shut her eyes and knit a hat
While wearing boxing gloves.
An angel -- not one of the major ones but still
Powerful and scary -- having read a copy of
Harris' Guide to the Ladies of Covent-Garden
For the Year of Our Lord 1790, asks your help
Reviving all of the ninety-one women listed there
From wise Miss Allan ("middle-sized," "dark eyes and hair")
To careless Miss York ("fair complexion and full eyes ...
Vibrates even her feet to the motion of every fiddle").
You supply the craft while he draws upon
His account with The Illimitable Grace of God.
You've not much to work from - smart grey eyes,
Melting blue eyes, strange green eyes
That are small or big or shrewd. A willingness
To use a whip. A willingness to be whipped.
A reluctance to swear. Traces of a good education.
Expects five pounds and five shillings for the night.
Charges a guinea. Charges a half guinea.
Takes whatever's offered and is glad of it.
Has a temper. An accent. A scar. A sister. A sad story.
Bodies. Teeth. Legs. Bosoms. Breath.
The work is extremely challenging --
Exactly what shade is "melting blue?" Just how tall
Is "middling sized?" You can't believe how long it takes
To get the shadows right! -- but you bring them back.
Not one of them thanks you and the angel
When you ask for a favor says there are limits
Even to The Illimitable Grace of God.
It's not true that my father understood
The language of animals -- just cats
And birds and some of the dialects
Stray dogs use with each other.
The comic book villain, usually
More genre-savvy than the hero,
Thought the story would be longer.
Despite robbing bank after bank
He somehow has no money so
He checks the ads but they're all
For air-guns or x-ray specs,
For lovable sea monkeys or for jobs
Selling a newspaper called Grit.
("Everyone loves Grit!")
In time the ghosts lose hold
Of their names but remember
What they charged. "Five pounds
For a night in a well-furnished room."
"A half-guinea for an hour in a shed."
"Some pennies for three minutes against a wall."
The executors' inventory revealed
King's painter François-Hubert Drouais
Left behind an army of spoons each of which
Knew its place, as did François-Hubert.
Aside from a brigade of miscellaneous spoons
Willing to do almost anything there were
Soup spoons, table spoons, tea spoons,
Coffee spoons, dessert spoons, salt spoons,
Olive spoons, gravy spoons, sugar spoons
Jam spoons and one spoon that scorned
To touch anything but mustard.
