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.