The third thing you learn in Ghent

For some reason I seem to have written a fair number of poems about the tourist bureau at Ghent. I hope the good folks of Ghent will forgive me, and the bad ones will stand me a drink when next I'm there.

The third thing they teach you
When you join the tourist bureau in Ghent
Is that the dead will sometimes shuffle in
And wait politely, though obviously confused.
Don't stare; it embarasses them.
The bus for Bruges leaves from the café
Two streets over.
If you advance them fare money tell them
The Banc de Jacauin has branches
Throughout Hell, and, in Heaven,
A night deposit box.

My European readers. Also, The Astrologer's Child

One of the duties which come with a blog is checking the statistics – how many people are there in the world? And all of them not reading this? However, the three German readers seems to have mysteriously become one German, one Pole and two Ukranians. Plainly reading this blog may have unexpected side effects. Consult your physician.

He had lost count of his years but for all that

Was the Astrologer’s Child still, and the stars

Were mindful of him. They would call to him,

Even at midday, saying “Death sits beneath that leaf;

He watches from that window; he it is that brewed

The ale the widow offers you.”

As ever, the Astrologer’s Child would thank them

And look beneath the leaf at Death’s bright eye

Or climb to the window to see

What had so caught Death’s attention.

Whole days he would drink the widow’s ale

In cypress shadows behind her house

For my Aunt Edith who died long before I was born

The stories, restless, may shift owners

My grandmother it will be

Who listened every day to The Lone Ranger

Until the surprising day she didn’t.

Perhaps my father will have danced by the river

Or had his hair turn gray at 19.

There are no stories about Edith

Who died as a baby but time

May bring her some.

One day I may remember

That she had green eyes, or red hair

Or that her sister Rose – or was it Doris?

Once drew a picture of Edith smiling --

A tall young lady in a long dress.

A brief excerpt from someone's memoirs

          The Bells of Hell, not to be confused with the Belles of Hell, who can be visited alternate Thursdays between 2 and 4 A.M., nor with the Halls of Baal, where I worked for a few summers, doing re-enactments of The Death of Tiamat for the tourists. (“Thunderer, thou hast slain me! No more shall the parch-ed Earth cry for the bless-ed Waters of Heaven and be denied, and Thy puissant name shall be for a blessing! Yet forget not Mot ...”) used to be proper great things, made of primal gold and tainted brass, booming and clamoring until you could scarce hear yourself think. Which, given my thoughts in those days, was probably just as well. It didn’t usually matter what time it was in Hell, but when it did, we all knew.

          Then, around the turn of the last century, the noise of the things began to seem somehow quaint, and their names (Nebless Clem, Jenny Brazen, Ill-trusted Fido and the rest) an embarassment. All too medieval, too obvious without the spice of irony which was then popular in Hell. The bells were dismounted from their towers and left in a store room; the demons who pulled the thick ropes were found new jobs, or were killed, or refashioned. An array of incongrous instruments were hung in the campaniles -- dinner bells, bicycle bells, butter knives hanging from strings. By the time of the Great War, it began being bruited about that the Bells of Hell went ting-a-ling-a-ling. A certain cheap effect was gained, granted, like that of hearing a great hulking bruiser speaking in a piping falsetto as he goes about his business of breaking other folks’ bones. Still, I’ve always regretted the change; the Bells of Hell should shake souls with fear and wonder, not make them instinctively grope for change with which to buy ice cream.

Professor Blood speaks

A book I read – it was mostly about how various writers have reacted to Sundays and sabbatarianism – mentions that William James quotes his friend Benjamin Blood as saying that we should say about religion that we don’t know, but we should say it with good cheer and content. Somehow, perhaps because Benjamin Blood is such a wonderful name, especially for a friend of Henry James’ brother, I wrote this:

Bold Ben Blood from Boston Town

Draped in academic gown

Saying “God? I do not know

And am content to have it so.

Whether He is one or three

Does not matter much to me.

I hear He goes by many names

But, as I’ve told Professor James,

If He should turn up at my door

Some Sunday, between noon and four,

And does not ask to be adored

I think that I can manage “Lord”

And take it kindly if he would

Address me as “Professor Blood.”

On receiving two identical emails with the subject line "Blah"

One blah arrived and then there came

A second blah; twas just the same!

I searched my heart, my spleen, my knee

Why had two blahs befallen me?

What strange event, what dire misprison

Had said to two blahs “Be ye risen!

Though courage shrink and wisdom fail

Go both ye forth, ye twain e-mail!”

Perplexed, I went to ask the Shah

What could it mean, this double blah?

The Shah, a man of noble mien,

Was sipping from a brass tureen.

He bid me speak and have no fears

Though he’d been dead for thirteen years

I asked him plain: What should I do

With blah ‘clept one and eke blah two?

His fingers drummed his shaven pate

He said “My son, or soon or late,

To peasant, poet, saint and sinner

Asleep, awake, or over dinner

Reciting life’s do re mi fa

There must come the ill note blah

Why is this and whence come blahs?

No one knows, not even shahs.”

Two poems on a cold February morning

The first features James Joyce and his brother Stanislaus; the second the admirable Leonard J. Fleidner.

A few weeks after his mother died

James, the older son, brought a small table

And a chair into the garden.

To read his father’s love letters

Ribboned and kept by the dead woman.

(Frustrated at her hard dying, her husband

Had shouted “If you can’t get well,die

Die and be damned to you!”)

Watchful Stan, the younger brother, waited

Until the last letter was read.

“Well?” “Nothing. There is nothing for me here.”

The ashes of the letters he never read

Stan occasionally saw in his dreams.

Just before he died in Trieste

He called them up, and the chair

And the table and the garden

And ghost of his brother, reading. 

It cannot be that the principal, Doctor Fliedner,

Came to work in a high, stiff collar, wearing shoes

With buttons. Yet I picture him so, his pale face,

His quiet, watchful eyes. He seemed all greys

As if life had leached from him all color

And he walked without a sound. In the mornings

He’d stand sentry as we ambled or pushed inside

Then bear silent witness to our homeward rush.

Once in a great while, he would give in

To some unspeakable urge, sitting at the piano

Playing ragtime music, his body stiff,

While over the keys his long fingers danced.