S.D.

After his third drink
And before his fifth
He was perceptive,
Witty, charming.
His fingers became long
Leaving trails of light
As they flew about
Illustrating, pleading,
Pointing, mocking.
The ghosts in whom
He had no faith
Gathered behind him.

KAMIONKA STRUMILOVA

Kamionka Strumilowa is 41 kilometers from Lvov

And is called Kamionka because of the huge

Rocks which wandered in with the glaciers and,

Liking the look of the place, stayed on.

Esther never thought much of Kamionka;

She was of stately Lvov which could,

If it were hungry, have swallowed Kamionka

And had Przemysl for dessert. Max, though,

Was fond of his home town and their son,

Born 7,182 miles away, knew the names

Of every street and every family. When ghosts

From Kamianka find themselves in New York

They sometimes come by though my father,

Since he died, is seldom found at home.

DREAMING

From time to time, Ming the Merciless,
(Relentless foe of Flash Gordon,
Former emperor of the planet Mongo)
Turns up in my dreams. Most often,
He has a character role -- an old soldier
Down on his luck, or a traffic cop
Trying to persuade angry chickens
To keep on their side of the road. Once
We were beggars and shared a tin bowl
Of quite horrible soup. My father
And Ming were for some reason friends.
Having recovered from seventeen bouts
Of certain death  -- including being tossed
Into three volcanoes and twice being thrown
Off cliffs and once being thrown off a cliff
Into a volcano -- Ming insists that
My father may return not much the worse
From having been buried for six years.

MAKING DO

The roosters having urgent business
Which demanded they be elsewhere,
Monsters perched on low branches
Caracolling to wake us. The jays
Were in conference; djinns had to steal
Shiny objects incautiously revealed.
The dead refused to acknowledge us;
The mayor called for volunteers
To rattle chains and haunt the living.

CATS

Lembergoise cats never hurried.
Gossiping idly in the sun
Exchanging barbed stories
About the folk who fed them.
(If I find a cat from Lemberg
He will remember things I forgot
Years before I was born)

Some sleepless Lvov cats always
Padded along the wide streets
While the others slept uneasily
(My father spoke the language of cats
With a heavy Lvov accent.)

In Lwow, the cats learned
To walk upright and to open jars
When war came, they vanished
Through tunnels they'd secretly built
(When I meet one of their descendants
We exchange complicated signs.)

A Lviv cat is simply a cat.
These days this is more than enough.

TODAY'S FOUND POEM

"Blue beans"
Are bullets or shot.
Three small bullets
Or large shot in a bladder
Would make
An excellent rattle
For a child.

SOCIAL NOTES

In the purlieus of Pawling the Comtesse
Begins her summer progress. On request,
She will sing or tell stories or dance
Among the tombs to keep the fiends at bay.
Since there is no king in Pawling, the dapper ghost
Of Thomas E. Dewey touches against scrofula;
The Comtesse gives thin gold coins to the victims
With her picture stamped upon them.