Get on his wrong side and Apollo, ancient as he is,
Can still stab you with a plague arrow. No one bid
For them at the great sale when his creditors
Sold everything else -- the famous bow, the golden chariot,
The swift-skimming boat -- at knock-down prices.
He lives simply, dresses plainly, rising at dawn,
To trundle the sun across the sky in a wheelbarrow.
"I don't know what I'll do if the barrow breaks," very far;
I may have to try just rolling it with a stick."
Suppose you were one who could
Call the wind and have it
Listen to your request
Usually saying no but sometimes
Saying yes and becoming still
Or returning a hat it stole
On a cold day in 1927.
The ghost of Former Governor Thomas E. Dewey
Occasionally turns up in my dreams not because
He's fond of me -- we get along-- or because he has some
Message he wishes to impart. He's bored and the dreams
He wishes to be in are closed to him. I tell him
To take heart. There is still an entire throughway
That bears his name and when she drives on it
She surely thinks of him. Also, so far as I know,
She never mentions Former Governor DeWitt Clinton.
Reluctantly, God has been
Searched into existence
He's used to it but this
Doesn't make it welcome
God has asked me to give Him a hand
By taking over the job of remembering
Akron, Ohio. He's getting older
And the universe still perversely
Insists on expanding though it
And everything else are simply
Ideas in His mind. What He forgets
Never was at all.
(Until after the Big Bang
God's job was easy
There were only twelve atoms:
Murray, Hildegarde, Norris,
Cindy, Li Po, Lizabeth Anne,
Hecate, Big Al, Patricia,
Nate, Juan and Gleb and they
Didn't really get up to very much.)
I admit it's true that I know
Almost nothing about Akron, Ohio.
Do they still make things there,
Of rubber? More than fifty years ago
I knew a pleasant girl named Mitzi
From Alliance, Ohio which was,
She said, the rubber-band capital
Of the Free World. Perhaps
She can tell me something
About Akron which is a mere
36.7 miles away from Alliance.
Maybe I'll have a staff under me
Who know the place backwards and forwards.
Anyway, though I'm unqualified,
A promotion is a promotion.
(Wikipedia says there are
290,469 people in Akron --
Will it be so very terrible
If I happen to forget one or two?
It may turn out that you'll like better
The ones I'll make up to replace them.)
It's supposed to be a day off but there's no one else so
He shrugs on a body, checks the equipment -- eyes,
Ears, hands, thunderbolts, a rudimentary conscience --
Flicks a few switches and, watching the board light up,
Calculates the odds of the relief man defying probability
By being sober enough to cover the night shift.
The poet has brought ink in a stone pot
A brush, an inkstone, and two servants
To stand quietly while he kneels, watching
The water flow by. He slows his breathing
And makes space in his mind for the poem
With which he has an appointment. Alas for him!
His poem and many others were met on the road
By Li Po and lie tangled in sleep after a long night
Toasting each other and dancing with shadows.
