TEACUP

Though W. H. Auden had a teacup
Whose crack opened a lane --
Quite a narrow one, mind you --
To the land of the dead, do not
Expect this crack in this teacup
Also leads there. Most of the time
Such cracks lead to alleys
In places with names like Slurry
Or Fliednersham's Folly.
By the time you make it home
Your tea will be stone cold and,
Like as not, your replacement
Will have thrown your shoes away.

THINKING OUTSIDE

After a while Schrödinger could no longer bear the suspense
And opened the box to see if his cat, which had been
Neither dead nor not dead, neither alive
Nor not alive, had made up her mind. The box was empty
Save for a note in Sanskrit. Translated it said
"You forgot the other set of alternatives -- in the box
Or out of the box. I am now both in and not in your closet
Where I am and am not taking my revenge
On your best pair of shoes."

CRUSADERING BLUES

Woked up this morning the Pope was at my door

Yes I woke up this morning Mister Pope was at my door

Said he don’t wanna see me round this place no more.

I got a demoiselle lives just the other side of town

Oh, I got a demoiselle lives across this here old town

Sometimes my demoiselle likes to fool around.

This wine is weak and I ain’t hardly drunk

This wine’s so weak that I ain’t hardly drunk

My demoiselle’s been foolin with a barefoot monk

Gonna sell all my land, go on a crusade

Gonna sell my land, gonna go on a long crusade

Cause my demoiselle’s just so doggone mean, babe.

Got a wife in Rheims and one in Italy

Got a wife in Rheims and one, maybe two, in Italy

What good are wives when my demoiselle don’t love me?

Put my new shoes on gonna walk to the Holy Land

Put these new shoes on gonna walk to the Holy Land

Probably leave my bones resting in the holy sand.

Tell the Saracens baby and then go tell the Jews

Tell the Saracens babe and go tell it to the Jews

A man can surely die of the crusaderin’ blues.

A NEW CHARACTER ENTERS THE SOLDIER'S STORY

          Standing behind a bar, I can make a drink that will have you crying “Ambrosia is nothing to this!” and set you thirsting for it’s like for many nights and days to come. “The man who mixed that drink was, surely, no man at all,” you’ll mutter some time to a brindled cat as the two of you hide in the shadows, and you’ll be speaking truly.

          A corpse, still astonished to be so suddenly reft of life,falls to the ground while, a mile or more away, the gun that shot him clatters down a chimney. “The man was never born who could make such a shot!” say the police, and they have the right of it.

          I can tell you a story that will break your heart in pieces and then mend it so you’ll be a different man entirely. I can fit you with a pair of shoes that will take you off the path the fates carefully marked out for you and bring you safe through a thousand dangers. All this I can do; all this I have done.

          But I do not make toys. I have been an unlikely savior, myself having no soul, and a skilled crafter of deep damnation. There are few tasks I have not set my hand to, and none which I cannot do past perfection. Save only this one. Nothing I make opens its wooden beak and quacks when a three year old pulls it on a string. No dolls, no tops, no robotic wonders that imitate life to make a child laugh.

          Nor ever have I known an elf that does such work. Your enemy’s downfall? No better accomplice can you find, look where you will. A song to shake a king off his throne? The price will be high, but the last notes the king hears as his head falls in the basket will be of our composing. A dream to set you seeking down strange roads for treasures you’ll never see by day’s own light? Anytime, and no charge at all. Dreams such as these are our advertisements.

          But toys, as I’ve said, are not in our way. Nor saints for that matter. I know who works at the top of the world, and never a one of them was an elf. Save only me, and it was by no will of mine that I went there.