PRIVILEGES OF RANK

As the well-attested case of Sweeny shows

Mad kings gain the gift of flight, sleep rough,

Perch in trees, speak the language of birds.

Mad princes hover a few inches above the ground

And can follow a conversation among sparrows

A mad archduke gains a modicum of grace

And the grass does not bend beneath his feet.

When a commoner is found doing loops

Five hundred feet up the government

Immediately raises him to the peerage.

BY THE WATER

After a day swimming in the lake at Patchogue

My mother would hear her father’s car horn;

She’d climb on the running board and ride home

Clinging to the car. What model was it, I wonder;

How far did they go? Did they talk on the way?

Did she close her eyes and listen to the wind

Or did she watch the world flowing by?

How easy it would have been to ask her!

My father’s mother when she was young

Danced by some river in Galicia.

There was an emperor then: Franz-Joseph

She rather liked him. I imagine it must be something

To have an emperor. Perhaps you feel sorry for folk

In ordinary countries, who have only a king

Or the poor people who must get by

With an archduke, an elector, a president.