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?
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.
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.)
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.)
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?"
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).
Szymborska, I cannot read Polish
But I have a fat volume of your poems
Translated into Portuguese
Which I also can't read.
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.)
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.
The first time you smell it
You think " There;s no mistaking it;
That's the smell of burning bone."
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.
Suppose for just one day
Iron's child knows how to burn
Sunset makes things as before
Except the world's full
Of drifting steel ashes
Thx for yr order
Regret infrm o/o nightingales
Cn supply nightmares, nightjars, nightrobes,
Martingales or gallowglasses.
Lightning rods on order expect soonest
We appreciate yr bsnes
During the present
Emergency my great uncle
Dan has agreed, grudgingly,
To play Hermes but only the
Psychopomp bits. Caravans to
Hades will leave each
Afternoon at 3:45 and arrive
By 11 the next morning because
That's how long the Twentieth
Century train took to get from New
York to Chicago when Dan
Rode it in 1938. Those wishing to book
In advance are advised to purchase
Tickets from Dan's wife Jenny and
Not from Jenny's brother Joe.
The purpose, old Ruskin said, of Art
Is to arrest a sunset. Never mind the charge;
We'll figure one out later. Mixed, unlicensed colors
Have smeared streaks across the sky?
Rely on it; something illegal's happened!
An ancient Greek actor, if he'd read the manuals,
Spent hours before performing lying
On his back, summoning the voice
Of the character he was going to play.
He'd lie down again afterwards,
Letting the voice and character go.
This was a dangerous moment;
An interruption might leave him half Orestes
Or two-thirds Queen Jocasta.
His wife had little money so the tombstone
Was roughly made and the lettering's uneven.
After two thousand years, though, it still
Wishes you well, passerby, and wants you to know
That Stracco the gladiator fought fairly, won eight fights,
And would've won nine but for a treacherous judge.
Portunalis was the god
Of keys. Or, some say,
Of harbors or gates
Or perhaps the warehouses
Where the Romans kept wheat.
There's no record of anyone
Ever praying to him nor
Sending him thanks for
A found key or because
Their stored wheat stayed dry.
Forget about sacrifices! His flamen --
The Flamen Portunalis --
Had only one job which was
Once a year to ceremonially grease
The weapons held by a statue
Of Quirinus, a more important god.
That a poem's now been comissioned
For Portunalis puzzles me but,
Though I write poems, I don't know
Why most of them are written.
