KEYS

All the lost keys in the world wind up at last

With Baba Yaga; she has long forgotten why

Some years, St. Balderamus, patron of locksmiths

And the Flamen Portunalis, priest of the god of locks,

Turn up with a long train of exhausted camels

Who swear fearfully, having no liking

For cold weather. Men and beasts are drunk

On grain vodka because water freezes

And because the Flamen distrusts

Water which isn’t part of an ocean or river.

Two days are spent, sometimes three,

Loading the camels with great loads of keys.

Baba Yaga feeds the men and camels porridge

Out of an enormous caldron. The camels spit

But the men say thank you. On the way home,

Almost every key contrives to get lost again.

If the flamen and Balderamus reach Trieste

With 70 or more keys between them,

The Triestines greet them with flags and song.

AFTER DREAMING ABOUT STANISLAUS JOYCE

A fine thing! Your brother has a destiny

So strong it casually picks you up in Dublin

And deposits you in Trieste

Where you teach English for many years

The poems you never wrote mourn for you.

HOW I WRITE

You know how it is; 4 a.m. and an indefatigable bird
Has decided this is the very time to pour out
His profuse strain of unpremeditated art
On the river birch beneath my window.
There's nothing for it but to shrug on a robe
And struggle downstairs to try to write.
"Muse!" I say, "There is a poem I wish to make
About Nathaniel Johnson, Samuel's brother,
About whom almost nothing is known except
That he died at 24, perhaps by his own hand.
"Sorry," the Muse says. She is the very old one,
Filling in for my regular muse, who is on vacation
Wandering in Calabria. The old muse offers me half
Her cheese sandwich. "What of Peter, Erasmus' brother?"
She says. "I think I could inspire a sonnet on him."
I refuse; we compromise on Stanislaus Joyce
Who, she says, used to take her dancing in Trieste.

DOWN THE TIMAVO

Near Trieste there is an old entrance to Hades

Once popular with Romans but little-used now.

Stanislaus Joyce, stranded in the city

By his brother’s destiny, had entertained himself

By tracing the way there on maps he would make

Late at night and burn before going to sleep.

After he died, he haunted for a while the school

Where he’d long taught Irish-flavored English

To hapless Serbs and Italians, who loved him.

Many of them died in the war; their ghosts

Importuned him to come along with them

Down the Timavo River to where it feeds

Into the Styx. He hadn’t the heart to say no