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.

POSING

 

Arcadio, the studio assistant who calls himself an apprentice,

Was dressed as Mary so we could do preliminary sketches

For an Annunciation  -- a big job and a rushed one

So those of us who had a right to call ourselves apprentices

Had all been pressed into service. We intended later

To put some wings on Cardio and a harness for more sketches

But then an intrusive angel turned up -- they were, that summer,

Everywhere in Florence -- telling us in that queer echoless voice

The angels all seem to share that he brought news of great joy.

Arcadio hiked up his skirts and ran off. None of us blamed him.

HOW THINGS WORK IN HIROSHIGE PRINTS

 

The nobleman has given it

The merest toe-tap but the ball

Soars into the sky where it hangs

Pretending its a stitch-seamed moon

BERNINI'S ANGEL WITH A SCROLL

 

A finished sculpture

Of an unfinished angel

One wing is entire

The other stops halfway

Allowing him to fly

Only in circles so that

He walks when tasked

With some miracle or,

If it's urgent, runs. 

FLIGHT

 

The Portuguese writer Antonio Lobo Antunes 

Often dreamed of flying as did my father;

Lobo Antunes flew by himself; my father

With the assistance of angels. Sometimes,

If they were in a hurry, the angels

Would toss my father back into his bed

Through an open window.

This never happened to Lobo Antunes

Who had, however, problems of his own.