THE MADONNA WITH A POMEGRANATE

There are nights when she badly needs some coffee,
A little fresh air, some personal space, so Botticelli's Madonna
Lets the child have the pomegranate and hands him off
To one of the angels crowding round her. Lifting her hem
To keep her feet from tangling in it, she climbs
Down from the painting. On her way through the Uffizi
She stops to chat with Venus, her older sister,
Asking her to check on Jesus should he start crying.
They know her at the  small bottega across the street;
She drinks her coffee, and smokes two cigarettes
Beneath the stars. Before returning to her painting
She stands in front of it for a moment, wishing
It wasn't quite so crowded and that two of the angels
Weren't resting their books on her.

WHY I DON'T SLEEP

Since you were written in light

I’d have translated you

Into my native tongue:

Gestures, smoke, echoes;

But you were living with numbers

Then somehow married a bone

The coffee I drank long ago

So I could see you still

Forbids me ever to sleep.

LOVE AND NIGHT AND COFFEE

Once in a while you would descend
To the library's basement where coffee
Was always available for the nyctambules
And nyctolops who studied or dreamed
Their nights away in the endless stacks.
Being chthonic myself, though not a god,
Gravity would have sometimes drifted me down
From my carrel on the third floor
Between the great steps and Eng. Lit.
But since you might appear at any time
I was required to go and drink coffee
More frequently.  Red-eyed, I developed

A caffeine twitch. and could only mutter

"Love, see what you have done to me!"

MYSELF AND I

Meeting yourself is meeting death, it seems.
Your reflection nods at you sadly;
You ride towards yourself at twilight
Wearing a green hat your wife has bought
But not yet given you? Order your affairs
Your time, I'm told, is almost up.
But why should this be so? Of myself
I am extremely fond. When abroad
I buy gifts to surprise myself at home.
My fixed intent, if I and I should meet,
Is to not lead myself down shadowed paths
To the last of all homes but to cry
"Well met at last! Come-- some coffee? My treat."

COFFEE WITH JOHN SCOGGIN

His name was Scoggin and, since he’d died

Five hundred years and more ago, we’d meet

For coffee near Union Square. The baristas

All smiled at him, waving off his attempts

To pay them in badly-minted old coins.

Last night he was whittling a chain of links

Out of an ivory scrap he’d found somewhere.

“For a child,” he said when I sat next to him,

“She’ll dream of it some night and wake up

Holding it in her hand – the left, I expect.

She’ll go places the Fates intend her not to.”

I objected; he expected it of me. “But I’ve read

That the Gods themselves cannot defy the Fates.”

“So they cannot, being gods. Dead jesters, though,

Are not wholly subject to the Fates. 

Makes them crazy; especially her with the shears.”

SOMEWHERE IT IS ALWAYS WEDNESDAY

Put on the music so that

She may sing that she lives

On cigarettes and coffee,

Missing him. He enters

As a trumpet, pleading,

Soaring, dipping, fluttering;

He runs away, pivots,

Leaps in the air; floats down.

       

Your station, said Habit; get up!

I was dreaming, though, so Habit

Had to make me stand then pilot

The two of us up the steps.

 

He paused at the corner; crossed

Walked down a street; up another

Bought coffee, saying a few words

To John, the Greek vendor.

 

In our office he flicked on the light

My nose tickled; “It would be to much,”

Said Habit, “to make me sneeze for you too;

You do that; I’ll see to the coffee.”