AT THE END

His small rooms were filled with souvenirs
So extensions were quickly slammed together
Once it was clear that the suitors' ghosts –

Sighted on an old-fashioned boat
With masts of bone and cobweb sails
Riding against the wind towards Phaecia --
Were coming to see the dying Telemachus.
He lived among us here, had children,

In the long years after Ithaca was forbidden him.
We assumed these lordly shades of men
Princes, warriors, priests and magicians
Came to gloat or to extract revenge long delayed
But they seemed to see the dying old man

As if he was still the half-orphan child
They'd  helped to raise, spending nights
Comforting him, telling him tall stories
Making little animals of cedarwood and cypress.
Their ship’s spiderspun sails billowing with winds
None of us on shore could feel.

CORPORAL

One day a second corporal marched out of the fog
And fell in. So far as we could tell, he was identical
To the one we already had except, perhaps,
The scar under his left eye was a trifle shorter.
Also, he mostly spoke in a language none of us understood
He knew to obey the sergeant, could make a fire
From wet and rotten twigs and sod.
And remembered not to spit where the moon could see.
Schultz was afraid of him but Schultz was afraid
Of corporals in general so we didn’t wonder at it..

ALONG

That Tonto spoke Yiddish was no surprise;
From listening with her youngest to episodes
Of The Lone Ranger my grandmother knew
That Tonto could do almost anything.
After she died, he’d clattered up
To offer her a ride on Scout. They chatted;
Tonto, it turned out, was an orphan too.
He'd never seen Lemberg but had heard
That its streets were wide and that
The second oldest fish in the world
Lived in the waters of the Poltowa.

OFFICE

One slow Thursday the Unmoved Mover
Emanated an office which naturally
Soon filled with file cabinets, desks,
Cubicles, phones, shredders, agendas,
Interns and some things which are,
So far as can be told, people. Serving
The Unmoved is not easy. Aristotle
Decided it should spend eternity
Contemplating itself contemplating
Itself contemplating. Aristotle
Believed this would be great fun.
Efforts by the publicity department
Have not persuaded anyone
That Aristotle was correct.

CRESCENTIA

St. Crescentia's miracles

Are delicate, filagreed things

Covered with tiny bells,

Shards of seaglass,

Or, sometimes, feathers

From imaginary birds.

The one I know best

Includes a cage

Where old moonlight

Sits behind mouse-bone bars.

It was made in answer

To prayer not made

By a man I did not

Turn out to be.

KNOW

Since she doesn't exist
The angel Ayin
Cannot answer prayers.
She listens, though,
To all who want
No one to hear.

PREFECT

The prefect's statue does not accept that he is clay
Nor that the state he served fell centuries ago.
He stares back into each face peering at him
In the display case where he keeps his office.
Some day the vandal who chipped his nose
With a stone idly tossed will surely return;
The prefect will arrest him in the name
Of the Empress Regnant Wu Zhao.