TRYINGS

Before he became the great essayist, Montaigne
Was thrown from his horse. Servants carried him home
Unconscious. He lay for days, groaning and thrashing
But, when he awoke, remembered only a pleasant dream
About riding with his father. You can read all about this --
Many have -- in the Essais. Since their first printing

 Unconscious folk with no other place to go
Have slipped into Montaigne's dream.
Montaigne and his father have given up
Trying to figure out who we are, why we ride
So badly and why so few of us speak good French.

REROUTED

On the train last night one of
Stevie Smith's tall and angular angels
Was punching tickets, sending passengers
Places to which they had
No intention of going. I am now
In Hy Brasil which has no trains leaving
For the next thousand years and,
Technically ,
Does not exist

SKETCHES

 

During the hard times brought on

By Phillip II's 1596 repudiation of debt

Christ economizes, replacing the Apostles

With a dozen crash-test dummies. El Greco 

Draws them tentatively coming to life. Peter's beard

Is unconvincing. Thaddaeus has two shadows;

Bartholomew none. James the Less wonders

"Would I look more distinguished if I wore

A tarnished silver halo, tipped at an angle?"

QUEENS

 

When the ghost of Anne Boleyn came by I rather hoped

That she'd shyly confess that had I only been alive

In 1526 Fat Henry wouldn't have stood a tinker's

Chance with her but, as usual, she pretended that

She'd just dropped by to see poems being made.  Tourists, she said,

Were saying they'd seen her spirit at Fotheringhay Palace

Looking shabby and forlorn and dropping her cut-off head

So that it bounced. "Can't they tell me from Mary Queen of Scots?

I'm almost a foot shorter and more delicately made;

It took three axe-blows to take off her head; one sword-stroke

Did for me. Her head's lips moved for fifteen minutes afterwards

While mine maintained a discrete and politic silence."

6 A.M.

Pieces of darkness settle
On birch tree branches
Deciding -- provisionally --
To be a flock of crows

DOPPELGANGERS IN THEIR YOUTH

Since he's three years older than I am I never saw
My brother when he was a baby but there are
An infinite number of pictures of him every one of which
I've copied so I cannot be mistaken. The child
Pictured in a book I saw is his double and, ten months old,
Peers at me with that "I am an impenetrable mystery " look
That I could never master . The two former babies
Are roughly of an age; perhaps they met;
If they did, dollars to donuts it did no go well.

A BRUSH WITH FAME

 

It turns out that a writer I've never much liked

Had a chicken when she was six years old

That walked backwards. This apparently made

A fair stir; there was a newsreel about the two of them.

Knowing this is a relief. If her ghost comes by

Wanting to know what I think of her books

I'll say "Nemind that. Talk to me about chickens."

ATONEMENT DAY SERVICE

 

From their high gallery the women

Look through the pierced wall

At row after row of small ghosts

And Death himself, wrapped in a shawl,

His bony fingers clutching an old siddur

At which he never glances. 

A debate, of course, breaks out;

Some say that if God asks them 

They'll remind Him that some things 

Can not simply be forgiven.

WORD

"Days like this," said God,

"I'm glad I don't exist." 

PICTURE

 

The ox pauses, one hoof in the air;

The girl leading him by a thin rope

(Which he could break in a second if he chose)

Has stopped and looks off into space

She hears something or has just, perhaps, interceped

A message meant for you but delivered

To her, nearly two centuries away

Just as the afternoon turns to evening

Near the sixty-sixth station of the Kisokaido Road.

FORM

 

The angel assigned to check on Schrodinger's cat

Has had her job since 1935. After each visit

She submits a pre-printed form that says

"Schrodinger's cat is/is not/is not not alive."

Under "Additional Notes" she sometimes writes

"Changed litter. Fed. Cat wants to know

Why Schrodinger never takes a turn in box;

Told her I don't make rules and have never

Had a raise or been named Employee of the Month."

CHECKING

 

An angel comes by now and then

And knocks on the box, saying

"Cat! Are you alive?" 

The cat says "yes" or "no" 

Or "yes and no" or "neither yes

Nor no" or, if it's feeling cranky,

"Who is it wants to know?" 

COMPANEROS

 

When I was in college I wrote

Any number of poems in which Death and I

Were close friends. In some we rode motorcycles;

(The wind blew his cowl back as we sped along;

How hard he worked to keep his robes untangled!)

In others we wandered or fought or looked for jobs 

Or called each other on the phone or looked at stars

Until we fell --almost -- into the sky.

I haven't written such poems in years.

The Death I deal with now is young, efficient

Humorless; he wouldn't know

One end of a scythe from the other.

WHO

Wrapped against the cold

I no longer know

Which one of us I am.

A BURIAL

 

They were buried sitting upright

She was in his lap; his arms around her waist.

The man was given cleated hel-shoes

To make easier his march into death.

The woman was not; it was presumed

She'd ride in a wagon pulled by dead horses. 

Archaeologists think they'd each been given 

A pouch filled with foreign coins

Though the woman wound up with both

Because even dead witches have their tricks.

A spear was thrown into the grave just before

The dirt was shovelled back in to say

"Your way is forward; do not return."

SALT

 

For love of my mother, her step-grandmother Jenny

Shook herself into something like she'd been

And made a last and very beautiful loaf of bread

To celebrate my mother's firstborn, my brother.

No one could figure out how this long loaf

Had fit in Jenny's small oven nor how

Such swollen, stiff fingers had braided the dough

Into a masterpiece of the baker's art. Age, though,

Spitefully tripped Jenny up. Baking is a dance.

But when the music said "reach for the salt

And throw in just enough of it" her mind wandered.

There was no salt in the bread at all. It was beautiful. 

It was inedible. Had their just been some salt

My brother's life, I think, might have been different.

RISING

 

When Ragnorak comes, says Snòrri,

Roosters will desert their farms

And crow in graveyards until

We dead folk wake up. It's not quite clear

What our role's meant to be; the scheduled battles

Seem mostly to involve gods and monsters. 

It may be we're to fight the heroes

Who've been training for centuries in Valhalla 

Or the b-team heroes from Freya's Hall.

If so, don't bet on us; we're not the ones

Who got buried in armor with swords and war-axes

And spears and seaxes and shields

With twisty dragons painted on them.

Perhaps we're meant just to watch,

Making a knowledgeable comment now and then

"Well hammered, Thor! Nicely bitten, Fenris!

Ooh, bit of bad luck there, Odin!" 

If roosters try to wake me I mean

To throw a shoe at them and go on being dead.

PICTURE

 

Yes, we know that we

Are Tragic Lovers

Whose Unfortunate End

Is Inevitable. Still,

There's no reason we

Cannot pause to watch

The sunset and have

A quiet smoke together.

ASSESSORS

 

Five of your old teachers have summoned themselves

From the darkness -- two women, two men 

And a kirk grim who is both and neither and, disguised

As a mouse-brown woman with sharp eyes, taught literature

In a girls' boarding school. They are, of course, discussing you;

Almost you can hear their words. They seem to be set

For a long session, lolling or sitting up too straight

In comfortable chairs. Two of them have a chess game going.

They've all apparently been watching you closely

One of them leans forward, as he always did

And holds one hand flat, tapping his palm

With two fingers of his other hand as if some truth

Will skitter away unless he nails it down with smaller truths.

The kirk grim shrugs and grins -- what a lovely

Yet in the end irrelevant truth. She's waiting her moment

To tell a lie worth all the truths in the world.

THE REASON WHY

 

The three great Norns are named

Was, Is, and Will Be but, while master weavers,

They don't weave the lives of ordinary folk.

This is left to crowds of smaller norns;

Some of them well-skilled but many

Just muddling along, barely knowing

A warp from a woof. This is why, like as not,

Your fate has loose threads and perhaps

A patch or two, snipped from another's destiny

And sewn on with huge, uneven stitches.

CIRCUMSTANCE

Wrapped so heavily against the cold
I no longer know which one of us I am.

VISITING

 

Every time Innana, goddess of love,

Sex, war and politics visits her sister

Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld,

She has to gradually divest herself

Of pretty much all that makes her Innana -

Her jewels, clothes, and then her body

Except for most of her bones. When she arrives,

Ereshkigal will strike her dead (It's a sister thing)

And hang her skeleton from a hook for three days.

By now, Innana's used to this and makes arrangements

Her reflection sits on her throne and answers

Emergency prayers. On her way down to Hell

Her shadow follows, carrying empty boxes

Into which it will neatly stow her jewels,

Clothes, flesh and stray memories. She also

Carries a light lunch for when Innana wakes up.

Having been dead for more than a hour or two

Always makes Innana hungry. 

WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO NOTICE HER

Harunobu's Woman With a Black Hood
Slips into a Kuniyoshi print
Of the Forty-Seven Ronin. She's looking
For just a little conversation;
It's all very well being
The Woman With a Black Hood
Bur she gets lonely.

TO THE KOROMO RIVER

 

Riding by

Yoshitone glanced

In a pond.

His reflection

Stayed there

Hiding

Among the weeds.

In the forest

His shadow

​Lost itself

In pieces 

Too small to reassemble.

JOINING THE ARMY OF THE DEFEATED EMPEROR

 

I believe it went something like this:

The Ming Emperor has killed himself

His adherents -- few enough and growing fewer 

Trail in a long line away from the capital,

Joined by some who'd fought for the other side

But are moved by the sight of the Emperor's ghost

Wringing its hands and weeping. A soldier

Perhaps Chow Chu, sees, centuries off,

Someone reading about him and says

"One of us, I think? Come along!" and so

My father finds himself a partisan of

The most lost of all lost causes.

SUMMER

 

Auguste sleeps on a bench

In the garden. Köbes the crow

Drops on him leaves and small branches

Until he is satisfactorily hidden.

HER EARLY YEARS

 

When Esther was young she and her sister 

Somehow decided that Esther would be

The practical one and Irene would go on

Looking beautiful, playing her violin and 

Making what looked like people 

Out of smoke of which there was a lot

In Lemberg, stored there because 

If the war came there'd be a shortage

And a smart man with a warehouse 

Full of smoke could make a thaler or two.

Esther was 14 when she began working

In a cigarette factory and became 

A timekeeper and might have made a career 

There but the factory burned down;

This wasn't, she said, a bit funny since

It put her out of a job. She asked Irina

For a turn being the pretty, musical one

But Irene said no and Esther married Max.

IN ROME

 

A minimally-staffed door needs

At least three gods. If there's a key

It needs a god too. Windows,

Have no gods and fend for themselves

SUFFRAGE

My mother's death drops by to say
She'll be twenty this year and next year
When she's old enough to vote
She means to vote for dead candidates
Since they'll understand that death
Is serious business and not to be trusted lightly
To strangers and children. I tell her the voting age
Is now eighteen; she could have voted last year
She says "Why didn't you tell me? Now
I'll just have to vote twice."

GRACE'S LETTER TO THEODORA

 

Is so long it can afford to spend several pages

Describing a new-made dress which has 

A deep bottom ruffle, about 12 inches wide

A narrow ruffle and a gathered ruffle

Almost as wide as the bottom one.

The overskirt has a mourning roll of velvet and folds

Of velvet and silk. The sleeves, cut open

Almost to the elbow, are decorated with Malta lace.

There's a black bow in front and one in back

And many, many buttons. Theodora

Might have the same dress made so she and Grace

Can be twins unless Theodora (who will soon

Decide to be Sarah instead) would rather be twins

With Bessie Winthrop, who has a new fringed velvet dress

Though fringes aren't cheap and black velvet costs the earth.

GETTING TO GUANGZHOU

For every Icarus who falls

Headlong from the sky there is

An Anti-Icarus who digs a hole

All the way to China, remembering

To make a sharpish left turn when he's

Gone about two-thirds of the way

So he doesn't drown in the Pacific.

ELIMINATING ALTERNATIVES

 

Melancholy is not clinical lycanthropy,

(The state of suspecting you're a wolf)

Nor is it kuru (when your nipples

Are thinking about killing you 

By suddenly inverting and attacking

Your interior). It isn't sadness simple;

It isn't grief unmixed nor agenbite

Of inwit. Saint Theresa says that

The pain of God setting your soul on fire

Isn't really melancholy either. Durer 

Thought melancholy had a beard

All that's known for certain is that

Melancholy is cold, dry, dark and heavy.

Lucifer's been called the first melancholic 

But insists that was God, not him. "This was,"

He says, "back before the first day so there

Was no light; the mistake was natural."