BARGAINS

 

Tad's Steakhouse once sold

Steaks which must have come

From bootleg cows because

They charged $1.99 and 

Threw in a large baked potato

And a very reasonable facsimile

Of butter. My good friend Nat

First brought me there

Fifty-seven years ago. In those days

He knew and taught me the names

Of the marooned men finishing their lives

Ruling Fourth Avenue's old book stores

Trapped by dusts, by words, by shadows

BETTER NOT TO ASK

 

Baba Yaga, who resists talking about her first term

As a goddess, tries to distract you,

Fiddling with your grandfather's watch 

(Bought for five dollars in 1930),

Flipping a silver half-dime (lost by you in 1976)

Then letting it hover in mid-air

(As if 1976's luck would be any good now!)

Lost and broken things make their way to her;

She offers you good tea in a mug whose shards

Have put themselves back together almost perfectly

Except for one side of it it; there, a beaming

Wedgwood sun hangs upside-down.

OPEN FOR BUSINESS DURING ALTERATIONS

 

Haberdashers do not go mad

Selling the things that madness made

So when he finds the hats have learned

To whisper "Buy me and I

Will make you a woman whose cold stare

Could freeze a basilisk" or "Wear me

On a sunny day and be a man made 

Of unmeltable butter" he does not think

To close up shop and retire but only

That this is how the world is now,

Adjusts prices accordingly and puts up signs

To stay clear of the loose-weave ties

That have knotted themselves into a hissing ball.

ADVICE TO THE FIRST-TIME BUYER

 

When shopping for a god walk by

The thunderers -- what use to you

Are loud noises? Ignore the ones

Who obsessively count things -- feathers,

Grains of sand, deaths, deaths, infinities

(Some, more, enough, a whole lot

Will generally serve). If you're not clever,

Avoid those with more or less than one shadow.

Me, I favor gods who don't hold grudges

And have some useful talents -- ones who know

One end of a needle from another. This, though,

May just be me; my grandfather was a tailor.

MANDATES

 

My father knew pretty much

All the dynasties including

The Qin, The Western Han,

His kid sister the Eastern Han, 

The Xin, the Jin, the Sui, the Tang, 

The Wu Zhous, the Song,

The Yuan and the Quing but

Was friendliest with the Ming.

None of them, he said,

Much liked the others but all

Agreed that the thing with

The Mandate of Heaven

Was totally a pain. When you lost it

The country went to pot while the gods

Took their sweet time

Making a new one for another dynasty.

Also, the damned things had a talent

For getting lost, melting away,

Falling down a well or into a river

Or just vanishing without warning.

If you put it in your sleeve

(Pockets are beneath a dynasty's dignity)

It would slip out through a hole.

Nothing worked, not even writing your name

On it in big ideograms with a 

"If found, drop in any mailbox;

Postage will be paid by the Eastern Han."

SISTERS

 

Moll Hackabout having taken a look at

The last picture in A Harlot's Progress

Knows how Hogarth means to end

Her story so on this rainy day when

She has no customers she amuses 

The sympathetic bunter with plans

To escape into another print. "I think,"

She says, "I'd make a good Salome

Or perhaps Judith if the light is kind.

Either way, why don't you come along

And bring that tray with you?

We can put the severed head on it."

UNDELIVERED

 

On July 16th, 1834 Jones Very found a shell and

Pressing it to his ear, heard a voice say

"Do not, whatever you do, marry Ted Hughes!

Pass this message faithfully on to other poets and you

Will appear --in brief excerpts --  centuries from now

In anthologies of Early American Literature.

Do not break the chain! Brasseya Allen did

And nothing much happened to her. Ever." 

So Very left a note to William Cullen Bryant

Who gave it to Edgar Allan Poe who

Lost the note but mentioned it to

James Russell Lowell (despite Lowell writing

That Poe's poems were two-fifths sheer fudge)

Who left word to Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson,

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Walt Whitman, and

Cosmo Perlow Baker (who never wrote anything

But meant to). Ezra Pound overheard it in his cradle and told

Amy Lowell who -- sniffily -- told Elinor Wylie and

Edna St. Vincent Millay who both meant

To repeat it but somehow never did so that

What happened to Sylvia Plath is Simply Not Her Fault.