TWO WOMEN IN A SMALL TOWN

The woman on the left is trying
To see past the photographer,
Wondering who I am and why
I act as though it is my right
To approve her posture
Or her curious left ear
Peeping out from her hair
She is not hostile, hoping
I am her grown old or perhaps
Some descendant who smiles
To recognize his own ear.

The woman on the right, though,
Does not like me one bit.
Let him stare! she thinks;
Poor unborn thing! Never
Will he know what book
Lies facedown on this table:
Never will his fat fingers
Reach past me to straighten
The blurred picture of fruit
That hangs on the wall over my head.

REST ON THE FLIGHT

Jane Morris has wandered from where Rossetti left her
Over into one of Caravaggio's paintings. There,
She has plonked the baby Jesus-- himself a refugee
From middle-stage Rubens -- on her lap and fallen asleep.
She's so tired that she takes her surroundings
For granted. Next to her, a wing brushing her shoulder,
A teen-age angel plays the violin for Joseph and a donkey;
Joseph holds the music up but the angel's gaze is inward
The donkey watches over Joseph's shoulder
Gravely attentive, following the melody.

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.

AUGUST SANDER'S PHOTOGRAPH LABELED "OFFICE WORKER"

The picture is dated 1928 so
The smiling woman is not
My mother, who was a baby
In New York and not yet qualified
To do office work in Berlin.
An alternate version, perhaps.
Her desk is immaculate --
Another strike against her.
Right angles were never friends
To my mother. A typewriter sits
In a lowered part of the desk.
My mother typed so fast
Her fingers blurred while words
Scrambled and tumbled toward her
Trying to reach her before
She needed other ones entirely.

HORNPIPES, FOUNDLINGS AND GEESE

When John Thomas Smith was two
Nancy Dawson, the hornpipe dancer,
Died and was buried under a stone
Bearing only her name. It is still there,
Behind the Foundling Hospital.
Sixty years later, Smith noted her death
In his sort of an autobiography.
There she is, a few pages after
The goose Smith's mother once knew
Who worked with a cheesecake woman
In Greenwich, honking at regular clients,
Moving on if they said "Not today."
Immortality comes on its own terms.

TOP OF THE NEWS

How strange! My mother's voice
From sixty years ago, reading
The first lines of a children's book.
My Noah's ark is my favorite toy
It has a little girl and a little boy.

Reading my father's journal about a trip
To Iowa to see my wife's parents
Where he saw the picture that now
Looks at me from across the room.

SMALL GODS AT THE LAUNDRY

Saponix, if not appeased,
Makes the water hard so suds
Will not last. Dhergo
Loves to tie clothes in knots.
The sophisticated demon
Klikiklak suddenly appears
All steam and lullabies, lulling
Tired laundresses;
They slip on the wet stones
And fall into the water.