AMONG THE AUTOMATA

In his swift copperplate hand the boy
Wrote "Do I have a soul?" Despite the sign
Saying "NO MORE THAN FIVE TURNS"
Some late visitor had wound his key
Six and a half times. The rabbi shrugged.
"I don't know. What does one look like?
I'm a ghost, not a magician." The magician,
Who seldom spoke, lifted painted eyebrows
To indicate he didn't know either.
"You had one last Thursday," said the windup girl
"It whistled at me, like a kettle, and winked."

NIGIDIUS FIGULUS

Where did I miss my turning?

Two thousand years from now

Who will say of me, “A grammarian,

A naturalist and a theologian,

He was also an astrologer

And magician and, on occasion,

A wonder worker?”

Thus the scholar Franz Cumont

Pricks at my conscience.

Really, could I not somehow work

An occasional wonder?

No. Worse, I have no answer

When my 3 year old self asks

“Why aren’t you a fire truck?”

Two Poems

She Complains of Him at Last

If he had been a poet and no magician

If he had been a magician and no poet

Things might have been well or well enough

But as it was, all was confusion.

His idea of me gradually turned solid

And began showing up at meetings

Raising obscure points of order

Or waiting afterwards with an umbrella

Worried that I’d catch cold from the rain.

Even dead I could not get away from her

She pleaded my case so well that heaven –

That cold and rooky place – made room for me.

My friends in hell think I’ve forgotten them.

On a July day in 1656 the lawyers’ men saw

In the entrance to the house Rembrandt had lost 

Twenty five paintings, including three

By his friend Jan Lievens with whom

He had shared a studio when they were young.

Also, two naked plaster children,

A plaster head and a plaster child (asleep),

Four Spanish chairs with Russian leather seats

Two black-seated chairs, a pine step-stool

And a shabby shoe. Since then, that shoe

Has been searching for its mate. I have seen it

Under a streetlight, on subway tracks and –

As a prop – in someone else’s dream.