IN ROME

 

A minimally-staffed door needs

At least three gods. If there's a key

It needs a god too. Windows,

Have no gods and fend for themselves

SUFFRAGE

My mother's death drops by to say
She'll be twenty this year and next year
When she's old enough to vote
She means to vote for dead candidates
Since they'll understand that death
Is serious business and not to be trusted lightly
To strangers and children. I tell her the voting age
Is now eighteen; she could have voted last year
She says "Why didn't you tell me? Now
I'll just have to vote twice."

GRACE'S LETTER TO THEODORA

 

Is so long it can afford to spend several pages

Describing a new-made dress which has 

A deep bottom ruffle, about 12 inches wide

A narrow ruffle and a gathered ruffle

Almost as wide as the bottom one.

The overskirt has a mourning roll of velvet and folds

Of velvet and silk. The sleeves, cut open

Almost to the elbow, are decorated with Malta lace.

There's a black bow in front and one in back

And many, many buttons. Theodora

Might have the same dress made so she and Grace

Can be twins unless Theodora (who will soon

Decide to be Sarah instead) would rather be twins

With Bessie Winthrop, who has a new fringed velvet dress

Though fringes aren't cheap and black velvet costs the earth.

GETTING TO GUANGZHOU

For every Icarus who falls

Headlong from the sky there is

An Anti-Icarus who digs a hole

All the way to China, remembering

To make a sharpish left turn when he's

Gone about two-thirds of the way

So he doesn't drown in the Pacific.

ELIMINATING ALTERNATIVES

 

Melancholy is not clinical lycanthropy,

(The state of suspecting you're a wolf)

Nor is it kuru (when your nipples

Are thinking about killing you 

By suddenly inverting and attacking

Your interior). It isn't sadness simple;

It isn't grief unmixed nor agenbite

Of inwit. Saint Theresa says that

The pain of God setting your soul on fire

Isn't really melancholy either. Durer 

Thought melancholy had a beard

All that's known for certain is that

Melancholy is cold, dry, dark and heavy.

Lucifer's been called the first melancholic 

But insists that was God, not him. "This was,"

He says, "back before the first day so there

Was no light; the mistake was natural."

JOURNEYING

 

Having suitably prepared yourself

Having dressed in appropriate colors

Having bid your reflection farewell

You shoulder your pack and move out

Your shadow shoulders his pack too

Heavier than yours and filled

With what you meant to leave behind.

MISSION

 

To weave through alleys the moonbeam

Must act as light was never meant to

Moving in slow spirals, cultivating a taste

For music played subtly out of tune.

It must ignore silver and pretend

Its pulse quickens at the sight of gold

(Where did it acquire a pulse let alone

One that could plausibly quicken?

Must it have blood too then, and veins

And arteries to hold its blood and then

A body to hide veins and arteries and all?

It must.) Learn to swagger and sway, walking

With exaggerated care after long nights spent

Drinking down by the docks until two dim moons

Shake their heads and ask why you've not found

A certain scatter of unblessed bones.

EVERYWHERE

 

Used to ubiquity, God

Going up a hill

Nods to Himself 

Coming down 

But tells St. Lucina,

Who's walking with Him,

"Don't stop to talk;

We'll be here forever."

JUST AS WELL YOU DIDN'T WANT TO BE KING

 

Since you're not Banquo or Macbeth

We're not witches right now; we have

No prophesies for you. Our cauldron

Is filled with soap and boiling water;

Return to us when you have laundry.

AFTER THE DEATH OF SMALL ENEMIES

 

In synagogue, will everyone rise

For the mourners' kaddish?

Will you light yartzeit candles

Every day just when twilight

Forbids your eye from telling

A blue thread from a green one?

Will you wonder: all those destroyed worlds --

What would they have been like?

PRAYER

 

The oni's god is powerful

But dangerous. He is also 

Deaf. Before praying 

Try banging on a pot for

Fifteen minutes or so

To get his attention.

CHANGE

 

After years of threats and promises my better self

Has found at last someone else to be better than. 

This has, of course, required considerable paperwork

And an administrative restructuring. For now,

I am myself only on nights and weekends

While working -- provisionally -- from my better self's office

(He left his file cabinets locked but my worse self

Opened them with a paper clip.)

GENERAL FITZWILLIAMS' WILL

 

To the maid Mary Rocke he left 

Stocks, some cash, an annuity

All his shirts, two nightgowns,

His lace ruffs, a snuffbox

With his dear wife's picture on it 

And his gold dumb repeater watch.

(A dumb repeater keeps time 

Just as well as those that speak; 

It simply doesn't brag about it.)

NB

 

I am a note in the middle --

I think I'm in the middle --

Of a very long notebook. The author

Wrote me down meaning, I'm sure,

To return and work me into a poem

But he never has. I blame his habit

Of writing in no order so page 17

May be written after page 206. Also,

He often writes in the dark. I am,

I'd say, quite a good idea. If you know

The author tell him he could do worse

Than look again at page 551 

Of Notebook 46B, about halfway down.

SIGNS

 

When she's six blocks away

The windows begin to shudder in their frames.

When she's five blocks away

Every towel in the linen closet refolds itself.

When she's four blocks off

The credit cards in your wallet cancel themselves.

Three blocks? Your inherited silverware

Now has strangers' initials deep-etched in.

Two blocks; there's no time to find a new reflection;

You must comb your hair and shave without one.

When she's one block away, all the doors in your house 

Unlock, then lock and then unlock themselves again.

LOOKING AT THE FIRE

 

Anne Damer, sculptor, stands on the roof

Of Richard Cosway's house, watching 

The Opera House burn; her left arm 

Rests on a concrete sphere, gilded 

To lool like the Sun; her right hand touches

A statue of Minerva which will speak

If it's in the mood and finds you attractive.

A spark flying across Suffolk Street

Lands in her hand leaving a scar

In the shape of bird in flight. Years later,

Dying, she'll write a will directing

She be buried with a mallet, the bones

Of her favorite dog, an apron 

And a selection of new-sharpened chisels.

THOUGH AN UMBRELLA MIGHT BE MORE EFFECTIVE

 

Though the Third Avenue El 

Was torn down in 1956

You find enough of its shadow

To take shelter from the rain

RIDERS

 

Most of the stray shadows in this town --

Never claimed or lost or on the run from enemies --

Drift in time to the scrap yard where the disjoindered pieces

Of the Third Avenue El's shadow were hauled in 1956

Along with the bent and battered shadows of conductors,

Engineers, passengers, token sellers and pigeons.

When funds are available, everything

Will be soldered back together and the men and birds

Will board, no matter where it's going, the first train to rumble in.

WAILING

 

My Aunt Sadie, of course, was the one

Who remembered that Max, now dying,

Had somewhere acquired a banshee

Who'd have to be gotten to the hospital.

Max always had to be different; the Feingolds,

The Rappaports, the Zimmers  -- they all had proper dybbuks

And three blocks over from Snediker Avenue

A golem, living over a shoe store, could be hired by the day.

If a druj nasu -- an Afghanistani corpse fiend --

Had come to Max he'd have shrugged and hired her

"How could I not? She was down on her luck

And such a long way from home."

AZTECS

 

In the museum there is a flint knife named

Mictlantecuhtli who rules the underworld

And one named Tlaloc who tells the rain

It is time to fall and a third whose name

Has been lost; some think it's never had one. 

If your soul was unwillingly liberated

By Mictlantecuhtli you might have found

An administrative position among the dead.

Tlaloc-taken souls run errands on Earth

During the winter rains. Souls freed 

By the third and sharpest flint knife must wait 

For the day it finds its name.

THE ONLY ONE

 

One thing about being the son of a tailor is this:

When Death comes by he may wrap

What was you in a blanket your father

Made from scraps and remnants that looked

Like no other blanket in the world.

MOVING DAY

 

If Mount Fuji said

"I am tired

Of being here;

I want to be there"

Who would dare say no?

(Well, possibly

A cat. Cats 

Are not afraid of mountains.)

TAKE NOTE

 

Death expects you to type his name

In bold caps like this: DEATH.

If there's a loose button on his shirt

DEATH expects you to repair it.

When you overhear his name DEATH

Wants you to whip your head around

And strain to hear what's being said of him.

DEATH will not answer petitions beginning

"Yo, DEATH! How's it hanging?"

LOVE POEM

 

I have no picture of you, just one you took

Of a tall house, its windows lit against the night.

I was there; you borrowed my camera to take it

(In those days I always had a camera with me

And three or four extra rolls of film in little jars 

Tied to the camera-strap). 

WISLAWA

 

Szymborska, I cannot read Polish

But I have a fat volume of your poems

Translated into Portuguese

Which I also can't read.

PERSPECTIVE

 

If Mount Fuji said

"I am tired

Of being here;

I want to be over there"

Who would dare say no?

(Probably a cat.

Cats are not impressed

By mountains

Or anything, really.)

NB

 

There's no reason you need now to know 

But someday it'll be useful, maybe, to've been told that

Three or four or seven blocks away from 

Your starter house (where you've been 

For thirty-two years because it's

Sometimes hard to get started and there

May be no good reason to since if destiny's

All this while been desperately looking for you 

What hope it'll find you if you blow along

Before every stiff wind?) there's a storage room where

Unemployed shadows, some in almost mint condition

And others with the ragged look that comes from being

Too long on the run from their enemies, gather.

Perhaps you'll have sudden call for a new shadow

That can't be traced or possibly you'll be looking

For advice on entering the shadow trade 

Or maybe you'll never have call to remember

That to find your new best friends it's important

To turn left then right and don't look back.

SMOKE

 

The first time you smell it

You think " There;s no mistaking it;

That's the smell of burning bone."

BELONGING

 

My Grandfather Joe was a changeling

Small and precise and wary and 

Out of place in a large, vague family.

His brothers and sisters wore glasses;

He could count the feathers on a bird

Three miles away. (I started to write four

But his ghost shook its head at me).

He was not one to forget an injury

Over time he found that the grudges

His soft-natured kin couldn't keep

All came to live with him. 

Through intermediaries

The demons who'd left him as a joke

Offered to take hin back but his family

Refused. He knew this because Lena,

His sister, told him during a chess match,

Hoping to put him off his game.