ONE OF THE OLD ONES

I knew an angel so old

He remembered the universe that God

Did not make. He worked, as I did,

At the Tourist Bureau in Ghent

Answering the questions of people

Who’d meant to be in Antwerp

And ghosts seeking Bruges.

When the front office needed,

Or thought they did, a miracle

I would be sent to find him,

Angels can bilocate so he was often

In two places. During office hours

He might be off drinking with demons –

There are an awful lot of them in Ghent --

While also in the supply room

Playing cards with the shadows

Of clerks who died centuries ago.

They cheated, but so did he

Which may be why he was in Ghent

And not hanging about in Heaven.

BRUGES

When they brought the good news from Aix to Ghent
We Ghent folks shook our heads. "This news is too good;
There is no market for it here. Carry it to Bruges
Which is so ghost-ridden one must push them aside
Simply to order some cheese, some beer, some bread;
The dead are always looking for good news and will pay
In sound currency. Do not, though, bite their gold coins
To test their soundness; they may bite back.”

MORE FROM MY TIME IN GHENT

Only six angels live in Ghent ; three others

Visit routinely. One of those resident

Had the desk three over from mine when I

Worked for three bezants and a bent sequin

(When I could get them) at the Tourist Bureau.

He was a very old angel and had been, he said,

A sort of functionary in the old universe –

The one God did not make.

 

There had been some sort of fuss in Heaven;

The other clerks told me they’d heard

His praisesong had not been up to standard

While the other angels sang Hosannah!

Or “What glory can compare to His?”

He would mumble “God? A nice chap.

Generous. Holds His liquor well.”

So he had wound up in Ghent .

 

After office parties it was my job

To see he made it safely home. Some nights

He’d look in the street for a stray pin

And urge me to dance with him on its head

Or remember that angels are able to be at one time

In two places. We would reach his house to find

He was already there. We would rattle the locked door

While he pretended to be asleep.

FROM GHENT. ALSO FROM KALAMAZOO

The second thing they teach you

At the tourist bureau in Ghent

Is that there was no good news

And certainly not from Aix;

Browning made it up.

His eyebrows rising heavenwards

The chief clerk asks

“And who would give a horse

Their last measure of wine?”

On a narrow street in Kalamazoo

Where everything’s old and nothing is new

On a rainy day, in that shadowed way,

I stood a while and thought of you.

On every corner in Kalamazoo

A church stands. Ghosts have much ado

Beneath a steeple to pass as people

On Stuart or Westedge Avenue

The false is close kin to the true

The past will always claim its due

And filled with rue I dreamt of you

On that narrow street in Kalamazoo

Rabbits and Spain. Also Ghent

Questions multiply. I still haven’t figured out why the rabbits wanted to hide Spain, nor why they didn’t succeed better. Of course, it may be that they succeeded far better than any of us know, and the Spain we see is merely a small portion of the Spain we don’t. This blog has been accessed nine times by people in Germany – perhaps one person who keeps making the same mistake, typing “Shrewsburyclock.blogspot.com,” when he or she means to type “catvideos.org” – and one Venezuelan. If a German is willing to look into this question of what the rabbits are up to, the Venezuelan might be willing to translate.

Meanwhile, another poem from Ghent.

They tell you, when you begin in Ghent

The most junior Tourist Bureau employee

That you must never show surprise.

No one plans to visit Ghent

Yet somehow there are tourists

Each and every one of whom

Has taken a wrong turning.

Some missed the left at Alberquerque;

Others, midway in life’s journey

In a dark forest, paused

And Vergil passed them by.

Not Hell do they visit; only Ghent.

Help them make the best of it and never

Say what brought you here.

The third thing you learn in Ghent

For some reason I seem to have written a fair number of poems about the tourist bureau at Ghent. I hope the good folks of Ghent will forgive me, and the bad ones will stand me a drink when next I'm there.

The third thing they teach you
When you join the tourist bureau in Ghent
Is that the dead will sometimes shuffle in
And wait politely, though obviously confused.
Don't stare; it embarasses them.
The bus for Bruges leaves from the café
Two streets over.
If you advance them fare money tell them
The Banc de Jacauin has branches
Throughout Hell, and, in Heaven,
A night deposit box.