BROKAW 12

Existing only in memory, the glass animals

No longer sit quietly but leave their cabinet

And start roaming the old house. They call

To the musicians, who climb from their painting

Carrying their instruments, their music,

Brilliant colored, floating above their heads.

The elongated scholars, who’ve stood so long

On either side of the bookshelf, embrace at last.

IRINA

Arriving just too late to save her, Irina’s angel
Gave her company the entire way from the roof
Of her apartment building to the pavement
In the courtyard. My great aunt
Had excellent reasons for stepping off a roof.
Her angel had his reasons, too, for being late:
There was something wrong with his visa;
His wings did not match, one being longer
Than the other, so that when he wasn’t careful
He’d fly long, lazy circles, repeatedly finding
The Bug River beneath him when he’d meant
To trace the Vistula. Also, he was absent-minded
Once saving an old woman in Dublin
When he was scheduled to rescue a child
In Warsaw.

                    Irina, my grandmother’s older sister,
Listened to the angel as they fell, occasionally
Trying to get in a few words. She was a musician
Though what sort I don’t know. For years
My imagination gave her a violin but now
It demands stranger things, as if she deserved
Krumhorns and sackbuts and tall therebos.
It could be that she sang; perhaps her angel
Provided some sort of counterpoint.

GRASSPAPER

My mother's walls had grass paper on them
As no other house I've known.
Rubbings of bright colored temple girls
Wore high headdresses and smiles
That made the bearded man with the clarinet
Urge his companions to play louder
(You could see their music; it condensed
Into bobbing circles over their heads)
The temple girls approved and clacked
Little cymbals that looked like egg cups.
Each book on the shelves -- so many shelves! --
Waited for my father to passionately read them
Leaving them filled with bits of paper
Which  still await him . "See: Li Po's dog," says one
"The rabbi thinks he is real," says another.

TRUMPETER

On his last voyage Columbus

Took a trumpet player along

Perhaps to play for the Emperor

If China was finally found

Where it should have been

If Mexico wasn’t there instead.

When I read of this I thought

Musicians and ghosts both wander

And surely the trumpeter

Made his way to the Emperor

Though after many trials

Taking gigs along the way

Following jazz up the Mississippi

Along the St. Lawrence, then getting lost

And following it back down

Finding at last the hidden passage

By which the waters of the Amazon

Mingle with the Yang Tse.

All this I meant to write about

But my father’s friend, Zhu Youijan

The last Ming Emperor, was not

Feeling musical. The trumpeter

Stood on the shore watching

The poem pull away without him.