SAME RIVER

“You cannot,” said Heraclitus,
“Step into the same river twice.”
“You’re on!” I said and so
We spent the rest of the night
Jumping in and out of rivers;
We both caught colds.
Turns out he was right
Though some of the rivers
Were quite similar the second time.

Heraclitus, though, after a few drinks,
Can never leave well alone.
“If  horses,” he said, “had a god,
He would look like a horse.”
“I’ve got you there!” I answered
“The God of Horses is my fifth cousin.”
(Due to an unwise bargain I have
An uncountable number of cousins;
They're like the pillars at Stonehenge)
“He looks nothing like a horse.”
There was no choice, of course,
But to visit my cousin who lives
Some versts north of the last subway stop
In the Bronx. For my mother’s sake,
Pitr welcomed us warmly
After innumerable cups of tea
He showed us around. Though as a god
He has access to infinities, his apartment
Was small, and crowded with the ghosts
Of horses. Horse angels were constantly
Coming and going and horse prayers
Were piled so high that miracles were needed
To keep them from crashing down.

"Alright then," said Heraclitus, "you try
Coming up with something pithy and memorable
Which wittily illuminates the human condition!"
"How about 'The weed of crime bears bitter fruit?’ "
"Wasn't that The Shadow's motto?"
"It was. You didn't ask for originality.
And didn't Xenophanes say that horse thing?"
Heraclitus shrugged and thought for a moment.
"You know," he said finally, "the weed of crime
Is, properly considered, a vegetable."

MORE ON THE LAST PUBLIC LETTER WRITER

By the terms of her contract
The last public letter writer
Cannot retire. Nowadays
She often writes for bears
And pigs and angels and those
Who mistrust machines.
When she takes a break --
Going for coffee or ducking
Into the secret bathrooms
Beneath the Plaza hotel --
Her cat uses her quills
To draw pictures of flowers
And horses and cats
Walking upright, with glasses
And dressed as if for golf
Sometime around 1925.

IN MEMORIAM AES

“Just before dawn,” Mr. Stefanacci told us,
“A messenger on a tired white horse
Comes galloping into an Italian town.
Standing in the stirrups he shouts
‘Constantinople has fallen to the Turks;
The Middle Ages are over! It’s the Renaissance!’
The town bursts into activity, with banners
Appearing everywhere and crowds cheering
As the Mona Lisa strides past, arm in arm
With Michelangelo’s David.” After a pause
He went on: “That isn’t how it was; History
Does not happen that way.” There was, I now think,
A note of regret in his voice. It is because of him
That this messenger who never was
Still comes to me sometimes, on his tired horse,
And I join the crowd, cheering for the Renaissance.

CART

In dreams I can drive
Not cars but horse carts
My hands easy on the reins
Talking to the horses
Who know all my stories
But listen anyway.
In the cart behind me
The cat-headed man dozes
Holding still his crook'd staff.
Some debt is between us
But which way it runs
I have long forgotten.
If I asked the Lvoviner
He might be able to tell me
But he is a long four years dead
And liable to be cranky.

UNCUMBER'S HORSES

            There’s not much you can’t find in Heaven if you look long enough, through the right sort of eyes. Sometimes you’ll even find me. I keep an office there, over St. Uncumber’s stables. Like most things in  Heaven, the stables are achingly clean, startlingly beautiful. The horses, though, are bad to the bone, with bright red eyes and sharp teeth. They’re bored too, and no wonder; they were specially bred to take men to Hell, and nobody has ridden them there in years. When my rent gets too far behind, I help out in the stable or exercise some of the nags.

            For a saint, Uncumber is a nice old gal. From the looks of her you’d never guess at a scandalous, pagan past, nor that women with inconvenient husbands used to pray to her, and their prayers were sometimes answered. I imagine the price would be different now, but then it was a peck of oats, left at an altar. In return for the oats, if Uncumber was in the mood,  a horse would come trotting up to the worshipper’s door one day, and ride off with a bewildered husband – and him still carrying, maybe, his stick of no greater thickness than his thumb --on its back.