TRYINGS

Before he became the great essayist, Montaigne
Was thrown from his horse. Servants carried him home
Unconscious. He lay for days, groaning and thrashing
But, when he awoke, remembered only a pleasant dream
About riding with his father. You can read all about this --
Many have -- in the Essais. Since their first printing

 Unconscious folk with no other place to go
Have slipped into Montaigne's dream.
Montaigne and his father have given up
Trying to figure out who we are, why we ride
So badly and why so few of us speak good French.

REROUTED

On the train last night one of
Stevie Smith's tall and angular angels
Was punching tickets, sending passengers
Places to which they had
No intention of going. I am now
In Hy Brasil which has no trains leaving
For the next thousand years and,
Technically ,
Does not exist

SKETCHES

 

During the hard times brought on

By Phillip II's 1596 repudiation of debt

Christ economizes, replacing the Apostles

With a dozen crash-test dummies. El Greco 

Draws them tentatively coming to life. Peter's beard

Is unconvincing. Thaddaeus has two shadows;

Bartholomew none. James the Less wonders

"Would I look more distinguished if I wore

A tarnished silver halo, tipped at an angle?"

QUEENS

 

When the ghost of Anne Boleyn came by I rather hoped

That she'd shyly confess that had I only been alive

In 1526 Fat Henry wouldn't have stood a tinker's

Chance with her but, as usual, she pretended that

She'd just dropped by to see poems being made.  Tourists, she said,

Were saying they'd seen her spirit at Fotheringhay Palace

Looking shabby and forlorn and dropping her cut-off head

So that it bounced. "Can't they tell me from Mary Queen of Scots?

I'm almost a foot shorter and more delicately made;

It took three axe-blows to take off her head; one sword-stroke

Did for me. Her head's lips moved for fifteen minutes afterwards

While mine maintained a discrete and politic silence."

6 A.M.

Pieces of darkness settle
On birch tree branches
Deciding -- provisionally --
To be a flock of crows

DOPPELGANGERS IN THEIR YOUTH

Since he's three years older than I am I never saw
My brother when he was a baby but there are
An infinite number of pictures of him every one of which
I've copied so I cannot be mistaken. The child
Pictured in a book I saw is his double and, ten months old,
Peers at me with that "I am an impenetrable mystery " look
That I could never master . The two former babies
Are roughly of an age; perhaps they met;
If they did, dollars to donuts it did no go well.

A BRUSH WITH FAME

 

It turns out that a writer I've never much liked

Had a chicken when she was six years old

That walked backwards. This apparently made

A fair stir; there was a newsreel about the two of them.

Knowing this is a relief. If her ghost comes by

Wanting to know what I think of her books

I'll say "Nemind that. Talk to me about chickens."