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?"
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."
Pieces of darkness settle
On birch tree branches
Deciding -- provisionally --
To be a flock of crows
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.
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."
From their high gallery the women
Look through the pierced wall
At row after row of small ghosts
And Death himself, wrapped in a shawl,
His bony fingers clutching an old siddur
At which he never glances.
A debate, of course, breaks out;
Some say that if God asks them
They'll remind Him that some things
Can not simply be forgiven.
