11,000

The eleven thousand virgins of St. Ursula –

Each and every one of them a saint

Entitled to unlimited withdrawals

From God’s illimitable grace –

Have seldom accomplished much;

No one prays to them though Ursula,

When she remembers, passes on

A few of the prayers she gets

From archers, orphans and schoolgirls.

One of the eleven thousand – Sukey

(The virgins were originally just numbered

But over time some picked up names) –

Answers almost all of them. Most

Spend their days hanging about

Or making care packages for the damned.

Some have jobs. In Heaven

You can still pass a virgin
Sweeping the streets, nod to a virgin
Directing traffic, on your way
To drink coffee next to a table
Where three virgins will be discussing
The best way to make origami cranes.

Attempts to form a union have not,

Up to now, met with success.

STEEL

There is, there was, a metal bird
That wants me to remember it.
It was part of a balance toy
Of a sort once popular. A touch
Would set it moving. Sometimes
It moved when no hand came near
And no breeze blew. Memory,
Reaches for it, asks it to trace
One more perfect circle on the air.

FROM THE CATALOGUE

Defying the spectral code,
The ghost of Madame Homburg
Wears pink. She is willing
To be conjured up Thursdays
And alternate Mondays.
She coalesces by degrees,
Weeping. To dismiss her,
Play Mozart's Mass in C Minor
Or talk about politics.

GREEN JADE

A Buddha I once lost turned up twenty eight years
And eight hundred miles away. He seemed
Unsurprised to see me again but I suppose
Such reunions are all in a day's work for him
I keep him now in a small cabinet on the wall
Next to the ivory horse who's been looking
For his mates for decades and cater-corner
To a tired pewter frog. We all know the Buddha
Will take up his journey some time, perhaps
Taking along the frog. Maybe I'll go too.

CONJURING R

Need, if sufficient, or faith unfathomable

Can conjure up God, but never for long

The weight of thinking about forever

Is too great and God winks back

To wherever He is or isn't when not

Being conjured into being.

                                     Some 

Don't conjure but, looking around,

See two trees, a surly cat, a bus

Whose driver is disputing the fare

God offers for a ride downtown.

MING R

For some while the ghost of Zhu Youijan,

Last emperor of the Ming dynasty

Has held court in the shadow of Coal Hill.

This fact was little known in the West

Until my father (fl. 1926-2011)

Visited and later published interviews

With some of the ghosts who’d drifted

By ones and twos to see the Emperor until

They found they constituted a court.

One of the lesser officials was or is --

It’s never clear which -- a rabbi

Who, not knowing he’d died on the road,

Came to petition the Emperor for relief;

His synagogue and congregation’s homes

Had been swept away by an angry river.

The Emperor has been mulling over his response

Since 1647, three years after his death.

Meanwhile, the rabbi has been taken on 

As a deputy in the ministry of works. 

When the Ming dynasty resumes he intends

To present the Emperor with his plan

For a comprehensive system of flood control.

STAVES

The first staff was prentice-work,

Set aside when he became a master.

The next, showed the good still in him;

It exploded when he asked too much,

Scudding him years ago and miles away.

The third was strong but coarse-grained

Able to level a house but unable

To clean a dish. Cats stole it away.

The fourth staff was subtle and careful

Able to take his place for months at a time

Until it grew tired of being him and left.

The last staff is the one he made

When he was an apprentice. He uses it

To go up and down stairs.