SALT

 

For love of my mother, her step-grandmother Jenny

Shook herself into something like she'd been

And made a last and very beautiful loaf of bread

To celebrate my mother's firstborn, my brother.

No one could figure out how this long loaf

Had fit in Jenny's small oven nor how

Such swollen, stiff fingers had braided the dough

Into a masterpiece of the baker's art. Age, though,

Spitefully tripped Jenny up. Baking is a dance.

But when the music said "reach for the salt

And throw in just enough of it" her mind wandered.

There was no salt in the bread at all. It was beautiful. 

It was inedible. Had their just been some salt

My brother's life, I think, might have been different.

RISING

 

When Ragnorak comes, says Snòrri,

Roosters will desert their farms

And crow in graveyards until

We dead folk wake up. It's not quite clear

What our role's meant to be; the scheduled battles

Seem mostly to involve gods and monsters. 

It may be we're to fight the heroes

Who've been training for centuries in Valhalla 

Or the b-team heroes from Freya's Hall.

If so, don't bet on us; we're not the ones

Who got buried in armor with swords and war-axes

And spears and seaxes and shields

With twisty dragons painted on them.

Perhaps we're meant just to watch,

Making a knowledgeable comment now and then

"Well hammered, Thor! Nicely bitten, Fenris!

Ooh, bit of bad luck there, Odin!" 

If roosters try to wake me I mean

To throw a shoe at them and go on being dead.

PICTURE

 

Yes, we know that we

Are Tragic Lovers

Whose Unfortunate End

Is Inevitable. Still,

There's no reason we

Cannot pause to watch

The sunset and have

A quiet smoke together.

ASSESSORS

 

Five of your old teachers have summoned themselves

From the darkness -- two women, two men 

And a kirk grim who is both and neither and, disguised

As a mouse-brown woman with sharp eyes, taught literature

In a girls' boarding school. They are, of course, discussing you;

Almost you can hear their words. They seem to be set

For a long session, lolling or sitting up too straight

In comfortable chairs. Two of them have a chess game going.

They've all apparently been watching you closely

One of them leans forward, as he always did

And holds one hand flat, tapping his palm

With two fingers of his other hand as if some truth

Will skitter away unless he nails it down with smaller truths.

The kirk grim shrugs and grins -- what a lovely

Yet in the end irrelevant truth. She's waiting her moment

To tell a lie worth all the truths in the world.

THE REASON WHY

 

The three great Norns are named

Was, Is, and Will Be but, while master weavers,

They don't weave the lives of ordinary folk.

This is left to crowds of smaller norns;

Some of them well-skilled but many

Just muddling along, barely knowing

A warp from a woof. This is why, like as not,

Your fate has loose threads and perhaps

A patch or two, snipped from another's destiny

And sewn on with huge, uneven stitches.

CIRCUMSTANCE

Wrapped so heavily against the cold
I no longer know which one of us I am.

VISITING

 

Every time Innana, goddess of love,

Sex, war and politics visits her sister

Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld,

She has to gradually divest herself

Of pretty much all that makes her Innana -

Her jewels, clothes, and then her body

Except for most of her bones. When she arrives,

Ereshkigal will strike her dead (It's a sister thing)

And hang her skeleton from a hook for three days.

By now, Innana's used to this and makes arrangements

Her reflection sits on her throne and answers

Emergency prayers. On her way down to Hell

Her shadow follows, carrying empty boxes

Into which it will neatly stow her jewels,

Clothes, flesh and stray memories. She also

Carries a light lunch for when Innana wakes up.

Having been dead for more than a hour or two

Always makes Innana hungry. 

WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO NOTICE HER

Harunobu's Woman With a Black Hood
Slips into a Kuniyoshi print
Of the Forty-Seven Ronin. She's looking
For just a little conversation;
It's all very well being
The Woman With a Black Hood
Bur she gets lonely.

TO THE KOROMO RIVER

 

Riding by

Yoshitone glanced

In a pond.

His reflection

Stayed there

Hiding

Among the weeds.

In the forest

His shadow

​Lost itself

In pieces 

Too small to reassemble.

JOINING THE ARMY OF THE DEFEATED EMPEROR

 

I believe it went something like this:

The Ming Emperor has killed himself

His adherents -- few enough and growing fewer 

Trail in a long line away from the capital,

Joined by some who'd fought for the other side

But are moved by the sight of the Emperor's ghost

Wringing its hands and weeping. A soldier

Perhaps Chow Chu, sees, centuries off,

Someone reading about him and says

"One of us, I think? Come along!" and so

My father finds himself a partisan of

The most lost of all lost causes.

SUMMER

 

Auguste sleeps on a bench

In the garden. Köbes the crow

Drops on him leaves and small branches

Until he is satisfactorily hidden.

HER EARLY YEARS

 

When Esther was young she and her sister 

Somehow decided that Esther would be

The practical one and Irene would go on

Looking beautiful, playing her violin and 

Making what looked like people 

Out of smoke of which there was a lot

In Lemberg, stored there because 

If the war came there'd be a shortage

And a smart man with a warehouse 

Full of smoke could make a thaler or two.

Esther was 14 when she began working

In a cigarette factory and became 

A timekeeper and might have made a career 

There but the factory burned down;

This wasn't, she said, a bit funny since

It put her out of a job. She asked Irina

For a turn being the pretty, musical one

But Irene said no and Esther married Max.

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."