WHEN SHE SLEEPS

Baba Yaga sleeps outside under a rough blanket
Of remnant shadows pinned together with thorns.
Her own dreams wandered off ages ago
Except for one, of a night filled with snow.
Through that snow, the memory of a cart
Quietly pushes its way.

KEYS

All the lost keys in the world wind up at last

With Baba Yaga; she has long forgotten why

Some years, St. Balderamus, patron of locksmiths

And the Flamen Portunalis, priest of the god of locks,

Turn up with a long train of exhausted camels

Who swear fearfully, having no liking

For cold weather. Men and beasts are drunk

On grain vodka because water freezes

And because the Flamen distrusts

Water which isn’t part of an ocean or river.

Two days are spent, sometimes three,

Loading the camels with great loads of keys.

Baba Yaga feeds the men and camels porridge

Out of an enormous caldron. The camels spit

But the men say thank you. On the way home,

Almost every key contrives to get lost again.

If the flamen and Balderamus reach Trieste

With 70 or more keys between them,

The Triestines greet them with flags and song.

NOTES FOR A PROFILE

Baba Yaga cannot remember
Not being Baba Yaga. Surely
She wasn't born old. Her cat
Says the two of them once
Made a clockwork lizard which sang
And did simple arithmetic. For a time,
She was available to answer prayers
Or to thwart them. Her voice
Is surprisingly soft. The souls sleeping
In the red box in her cupboard
Do not look unhappy.

MOUSEBONE

She sees in the dark so Baba Yaga
Carries her mouse-bone lantern solely
In order for others to see her.
The storm, rapidly approaching,
Has left her the only god
Walking along the beach tonight.
If you must pray, be careful.

BYOS

Baba Yaga remembers when snakes
Walked about like other folk,
Wore hats, told elaborate stories
With terrifying morals. Even now,
She says, it us mostly lack of ambition
That keeps them on their bellies.

THE EMISSARY

Baba Yaga has refused for days to leave her house

The other gods fear she’s plotting against them.

From a poem they pick Amphinomous,

The most nearly successful of Penelope's suitors,

To go and talk to her. Amphinomous

Wants no part of this. The last time he agreed

To visit a woman he ended up staying years

And being killed by Telemachus, whom he’d liked.

Too, he is not sure these are really gods.

Who is the thin black man with a top hat?

Why is that the woman next to him

Balancing a cup on her nose? Still, he supposes

That he’ll end up going. He almost survived

Ten years courting Penelope; how hard can it be

To have a glass of tea with Baba Yaga?

HUT

It is well known that Baba Yaga's hut
Has chicken legs and a will of its own.
It is bigger inside than out. Some say
That a man might wander for years
Down its ever-branching corridors
And emerge in good time to witness
His own birth. One may leave prayers
Under the doormat; they will be delivered
Though not necessarily to the gods
For whom they were intended.

COLLABORATION

At the very entrance Baba Yaga

Stands with a torch. I had no intent

Of her being in the poem but

She never listened to me when she

Was just a witch; why should she now

That she is among the gods?

My fault, I know, thinking the gods

Could use a witch among them

After Hecate put away her phltres.

I had ordered from my supplier

A very superior sort of moonlight

Which never arrived so the torch

Is the only light available.

It would be appreciated it you

Would pretend the light offered

By a nearly toothless old woman

Smoking an indescribably foul pipe

Is soft and romantic. Ready?

We begin.

ACCOMODATION

Find a hut with chicken legs;

Set it loose somewhere in Russia

Sooner or later you’ll find

Some baba yaga living there.

When she first wakes up

(She sleeps on top of the stove)

Her horrible black pipe

Will already be alight.

CONSIDERATIONS

All those who appear in my poems
Bear my warranty. My brother
Is played by himself when young.
My grandfather's ghost is not
Some spirit for hire on whom
I've slipped rimless glasses
And taught to make watches
But the ghost himself. (Easy enough
To conjure spirits. Harder
To make them leave. Because
I wrote of them, the Addled Parliament
Deem me a member, entitling them
To my protection and, occasionally,
A cold drink on a hot day.)

                    II

I cannot without danger
Of losing my shadow forever
Bid God or Satan or Baba Yaga
Appear when I want them
But neither can I shoo them out
When they've a mind to stay.

LAST MINUTE

He seemed to feel it was enough

To say “I am the Duke’s nephew”

And sit in on my dreams last night.

I admit he sat quietly

Even when Baba Yaga lit her pipe

By striking a match on him.

Baba Yaga was not supposed

To appear in last night’s dream

But one of the flower fairies

In the dance sequence

Had developed peritonitis

And fallen in love. I am not sure

These two things are related.

In any event, she was unavailable

And – it’d be better without the pipe –

Baba Yaga can do a very credible

Battement fondu avec sauce de cerise.

THE OLD STORY

… there is a Russian tale about a prince
Who every day rides a hundred leagues or more
And every evening finds old Baba Yaga waiting
With a courteous greeting and a pot of stew.
After a very long time he notices
That each Baba Yaga is slightly younger
Than the one he saw the night before.
In its only surviving version the story breaks off
When the prince is chatting with a Baba Yaga
Whose hair has just started to go grey.
I've often wondered how the story ends
Or if it has ended at all. Perhaps the prince
Now meets Baba Yagas so young
He must bring in kindling and light the oven.
Perhaps he sings to them or tells them stories
Of all he's seen and of the other Baba Yagas
Each of them a day's ride from the next.
Or maybe one morning he says
"Come along, Baba Yaga! Climb up behind;
A brisk day's ride waits for us both
And stew, a hundred leagues away."

ONCE MORE

If there was reason enough, I suppose
Baba Yaga could make a rough figure
From dust and twigs. St. Anthony might find something
Very like my soul, perhaps caught in a hedge
Or loitering with La Golue and Boneless Valentin.
The Lvoviner would recite a nine syllabled name;
His wife would correct his pronunciation.
The mad king would provide music; Li Po
Would bring wine and amuse the cats.
The magician's wand -- not the ebony one
Chased with gold but the plain ash stick
That works -- would be tapped three times
And there I'd be.

ANOTHER ON BABA YAGA

When Baba Yaga appeared among the gods
Her house -- the one with the chicken legs --
Determined to improve itself. Day after day
It does deep-knee bends for hours. The owls,
Who have colonized the rafters, complain
That they’re turning into doves;

Baba Yaga lets them keep their talons
And has added phosphorescent eyes and fangs.
The mice in the straw have discovered

They can do conjuring and grant wishes;

The doves say this spoils their taste entirely.

IT IS EARLY MORNING, I HAVE HAD NO COFFEE AND BABA YAGA IS ALREADY ON MY CASE

"Your muse is worried," said Baba Yaga,

"Two years almost you've been retired

And you still have not written Paradise Lost."

"Why should I even want to? John Milton beat me to it."

"Dazhe tak, we feel you're growing slack. Even Cardea,

Goddess of door hinges, said so the other day."

"As far as I know, I am Cardea's last worshipper;

If she wants me to write Paradise Lost, tell her

She should, like a proper goddess, come tell me so

In a riddling dream which I can misunderstand

Or disguised as Madonna or Justin Bieber."

IN A BOX

When I cannot write I grow cranky
So it was a relief when, towards midnight,
The FedEx driver brought me a large box
From the muse I hadn't seen for weeks.
It was mostly empty but God was in a corner.
I was nonplussed. I am not a religious poet
Despite the gods and saints and demons
Who populate my poems. Still, I do not court peril;
Muses are not to be ignored. God said nothing
But did not seem discontent.

                                                 In late August
The City empties. Baba Yaga was almost alone
Eating cherry pirogis in a Third Avenue dairy restaurant
Which closed in 1964. She waved me over.
I ordered borscht, a thing I cannot eat
In any other place. "The Muse has sent me God
In a box," I told her. She nodded, nothing
Surprises Baba Yaga. "What sort of box?"
"Large. Cardboard. No foam peanuts. Just God
Sitting in a corner."
                                      "Angry?"
                                                "He doesn't look angry."
"Not him; you."
                             "More puzzled. Why would the Muse
Send me God in a box?"
                                                "So you would let Him out
Of course."
                         "My father saw God, you know."
"Yes, you've written about it, more than once."
"You read my blog?"
                                        "From time to time.
Your father did not put God in a box.
But you do. Roust Him out, is my advice.
You limp already, what more do you think He'll do to you?"
"Turn me upside down? Invite worship? Kill me?"
"Pfoo; he killed you when you were born.
And look how that’s turned out for you!
Go home, boy; be polite. Make some tea
I have business to attend but I'll stop by later
And see how the two of you are doing."

A CUP OF TEA

Though I am wary of drinking at Baba Yaga's
My strong black tea has been brewed
By my high school principal, Dr. Leonard Fliedner,
Who was sitting across from her when I arrived
Like an old friend of the house. He nodded to me
And went to make tea, pulling loose leaves
From the pocket of his grey striped suit jacket.
He used a pocket watch to time the steeping
Then measured  a third of a teaspoon of sugar
And one squeeze of lemon into my cup
(Though I have taken milk since some time in my 20's)
He is not someone I would expect to know Baba Yaga
But I smile to see him, so neat and grey and quiet
That he might as well have been alive.
I suppose I felt much as a Christian might
When he discovers his great-great-grandmother
Had been a barmaid at some dim saloon
Much patronized by saints who, for her sake,
Might work a small miracle or forgive a gaudy sin.

ADVICE FROM BABA YAGA

“Some day,” said Baba Yaga, “you will look for me

And I will not be found. Against that day, prepare!

Get your own sentient hut on swift chicken legs;

Find a cat who knows how to hold her tongue

When the angry King of the Cats demands answers.

Be not one but many – scholars may count three

Baba Yagas, but there are far more than that.

Send your heart upon its way; should there be need

It will find a road back to you, perhaps in time.

Above all, remember that there will be no day

When I cannot find you; never walk unarmed.”

MORE NOTES FROM POST-WAR HEAVEN

Once, Hephaistos Amphigueus' little brass goblets
Would fill themselves and walk about the table
Politely pausing before guests. These days
The god mostly avoids men, living among apes,
Still grateful that they nursed him back to health
When he was thrown headlong from the sky.
The goblets, though, remain. When Baba Yaga's hut
Strolls through Heaven on its long chicken legs
The goblets follow, thinking they've found their mother.

AMONG THE GODS

Baba Yaga, bored, has been reading about herself

“Did you know,” she asks Perrun, who drops by

To talk about the weather, “that I am often associated

With certain types of mushrooms, a type of cake

And also a pear? I am kin to evil Czech wood nymphs

As well as a slow-moving Lithuanian sort of elf.

I appear in a list of deities in Mikhail Lomonosov’s

Great work Russiiskaia Grammatika

There are, it says, sometimes three of me; all

Called Baba Yaga. One of them is sometimes kind

Which one do you suppose I am?” Perrun says

“Not the kind one, I think; I have been here an hour

And you have not offered me any food; no tea

No mushrooms, no pear, and certainly no cake.”