TO PASS THE TIME

A week before the end, Franz Schubert
Wrote to his friend von Schober
To say that dying was boring him.
Did von Schober happen to have
Any new books by James Fennimore Cooper
Or, indeed, anything good to read?
If so, Schubert's brother could pick up
Things left at Frau von Bogner's coffeehouse.

A GRANDFATHER

My mother’s father Joe and I didn’t suit each other

He was small and neat and had clever hands

As well as a suspicious mind. A watchmaker,

He thought the world did not keep accurate time;

Something wrong with the gears perhaps

Or – he deemed this likely – the Great Maker

Had put something into the works backwards

He took precautions; his own watch was always

Set fast so that he knew to never trust it

His brothers and sisters had been born

At European ports as his family slowly felt its was

Towards America. The eldest was Russian

There were Germans too, and one from Liverpool

Before my Grandfather, the New Yorker.

When Joe’s young wife died Ase, his brother,

Der Englisscher, took him in. Ase played poker

But for Joe he learned to play chess. Mabel,

Ase’s smart and stringy wife, did added cooking

And cleaning for two years until Joe could manage

Crookedly to survive. I am not sure

He ever managed to forgive them for this.

On his deathbed – my father was a witness –

Joe woke for a moment and muttered

“What a wonderful, wonderful world!”

KRAKEN

Alfred Lord Tennyson was tall

And smoked cigars. He swore

With enthusiasm. He’d recite Maud

Even when no one asked him

(Perhaps especially when no one asked him)

A lesser poet would not have dared

To wear hats so ancient and terrible.

On his deathbed he opened his eyes

(A peculiar shade of hazel they were)

To ask a visitor if she’d been taught

How to dance a sarabande.

He interrupted his death to rise

And make a slow demonstration.