BEFORE DAWN

The most important

Poet to emerge

In France since

World War II

Is being pursued

Through the streets.

The least important

Poets to emerge

In France since

World War II

Nod to each other;

Today they’ve found

Something

To write about.

WHY I HAVE SO FIRM A GRASP ON LATE 17TH CENTURY ECCLESIASTIC POLITICS

Certain memories I store in the episcopal palace
So its ghosts are used to me, nodding
When I come searching for the box where I keep
The stairway I climbed every day for most of 1975
Or putting away again the Krebs Cycle
Which I memorized in 1969; I've come near
To tossing it a dozen times but somehow
Never have.

In the garden stroll the disgraced bishop
And his highborn but slightly damaged mistress.
Following them at a discreet distance
Servants sweep out their footprints
Or would if ghosts left footprints.
At night, I have reason to believe,
The bishop -- something of a scholar,
Something of a rascal, something of a poet --
Rearranges the boxes I keep in his palace
And hides some of his memories with mine.

MEETING

The poem arrives first
So defined it's shadow
Could be weighed on a scale.
It’s an important poem,
Or thinks it is.
It fidgets, shoots long cuffs,
Looks at its gold watch,
Shrugs and lights a cigarette.
The poet slowly coheres
From the bluish smoke;
The glance he gives

Is not a friendly one.

DANGEREUSE

If I were, say, a duke and a troubadour
God might let me have a mistress
Called Dangereuse whose portrait
I would paint on my shield. When the Pope
Demanded I return her to her husband
I’d mock his nuncio for being bald.
Being careless, I might lose an army
But the great Abbey of Fontevraud
Would call me founder. I would sing
That my love's touch made dead men sigh
But her wrath could kill from miles away.

How poets and mistresses have dwindled!

CALLING THE MOON

"I remember," the old muse said,
"The first time the moon was called
As witness to a poet's love;
The excitement! The daring!
Others had picked leaves
Or thrown stones (What says passion
Better than a well-aimed rock?)
But to insolently summon the moon--
I half thought the poet would die
Right then. She thought so too
And braced herself against a tree.

But the moon was pleased
And raised her voice when the sea
Was minded to drown you all."

PATRONAGE

Patron of the poor! Also of poets,
Poultry farmers, printing presses,
Fugitives, babies, scholars,
Mariners, midwives and milkmaids!
All these and more is Brigid.
Somewhere, a poor scholarly poet,
All agrime with printer's ink,
With a baby under one arm
And a chicken under the other
Looks to flee the midwives' wrath
By taking to the sea. Alas for him!
Brigid also smiles on nuns
And blacksmiths. Even now,
A burly bride of Christ speaks a name
To the red metal of a new-forged sword.

A MOMENT IN 1933

Most powerful, I’ve heard, the spell left undone;

Just one gesture more and a new world

Spins in our place. The wizard drops his hand

And we go on, unknowing, unthankful.

But I do not think that this is so.

On the Holyhead train in 1933 two men sit,

They do not speak (they’ve not been introduced)

The elder is white-haired, word-haunted, lean;

His fingers are too long; he half-shuts his eyes

And asks himself if the moment’s come.

When the train makes its halt, near island’s edge,

The youth is ten seconds older than his years

And remembers two things he never saw

A curlew calls in the sun by the water’s edge;

A rook flies against the dark at day’s end.