My grandfather Joe worked up lather
From a bar of rough soap and shaved
With a straight razor, his hand
Unnervingly steady. The razor was kept sharp
With a strop, not a stone. If there was something
Joe needed to think hard about he'd shave
With his eyes closed, trusting his hand
To know what it was doing.
Surrounded on every side by a story
She sips her tea, apparently content
To be mistaken for an illustration.
My Great-Uncle Arnie was
Loathsome but so rich that
His shadow had a shadow
Of its own -- a poor thing who
Could never get her timing
Right, stretching out at
Noon and shrinking so as
To be almost invisible
And a trip-hazard when
The Sun was going down. It went
Missing at my Aunt Tamara's
Wedding and was finally found
Sleeping in a heavy lead-crystal
Bowl that was meant to be
Almost impossible to store.
Gustave Flaubert paid so much attention to punctuation that
His commas and periods developed free will.
Those not trapped in books when he died
Nor in his interminable letters fled through loose-shuttered windows
And are still at large. They live cautiously, taking small jobs;
Never staying long. For a few weeks one of my poems
Enjoyed a small degree of perfection, hosting a comma
Flaubert had put in and removed no fewer than three times
In a near-final draft of Bouvard and Pécuchet
Due to a misunderstanding, a print of the actor
Ichikawa Danjûrô II has lately been hung beside
A painting of St. Justina who is Patron of Padua
And stands in for St. Mark when Mark takes time off
From being Patron of Venice. As per her contract
Justina is shown as a peerlessly beautiful blonde
With a long sword transfixing her breast.
After weeks the second Danjûrô -- not a timid man --
Breaks the silence between them and asks
"What master stabbed you right through the body
Without leaving a single trace of blood?"
"I've wondered about that too," she answers;
"He looked a very ordinary man."
Some of the village's dead --
No one knows how they're chosen --
Wind up in the forest Tatsu-no-mori
You can visit them if you want
They don't speak but seem
Reasonably content. Lately,
An old person from Minamizawa said
That if you go by the forest late at night,
There are two unknown girls
Standing around aimlessly.
Perhaps some other town's
Forest of the dead is full
Or has been closed by the authorities.
In Boston there is an Egyptian ivory statuette
Carved 4000 years ago of a nude woman
Smiling and resembling my grandmother Esther
So I asked her ghost about this. She was pleased
I'd conjured her but said only that whatever
Happens in Ancient Egypt stays in Ancient Egypt.
