AESRED'S

Because I am my father's son
God occasionally posts my bail
Or writes letters recommending me
For jobs I cannot really do.

HUMMUM

There are always ghosts in a bath house
They flirt in the shadows, complain
That the moon no longer loves them,
Drink tea they brew from dead leaves
And slantwise words. That one there --
So old it remembers my father as he was
Before he was born -- is no longer certain
Whether it was a cat before or after
Its great success on the vaudeville stage.

REVISED

Types in my line recur
If I'd not been, some other
Might have, at need,
Personated me well enough.
Perhaps when I come again
The new version will think
I could stand some polishing.
Making my vices gaudier
My virtues taller and more lonely.
Some things I wished to say
She will decide I said. Perhaps
It will turn out I could fly.

BAD COMPANY

Before committing his more serious sins
Ahashueros would loudly bid his soul
To go bide elsewhere for a time
Lest it be offended or incur some stain.
Who disobeys the King? The poor thing
Would slip past the soldiers at the gate
And visit with the bathhouse ghosts
From whom he learned to gamble --
At which he became surprisingly good --
And to swear, unconvincingly.

527

No wind; a few branches shift
Perhaps the tree dreams badly or
Wants me to think a breeze blows
That I'm too palpable to feel. A leaf
Falls, describing a plumb line.
I gesture just so, stretching my hand
So the scar on my left index finger
Shows white where a car's door
Decreed it would never quite straighten
The spells that made me may alter;
Who will finish this poem to you?

DATA

Joe Lampert could reach his open hand
Into mid-air, clench it shut and find,
Without fail, a chessman in his fist.
His watch was always five minutes fast
His shadow six minutes slow. My mother,
His daughter, told me his childhood friends
Mostly grew up to be gangsters.

BRAZEN

The golem, if she is one, felt I should write
A poem about the bronze statue of Achilles
Which stands in Hyde Park and is reputed
To be the ugliest public statue in England.
It’s 18 feet tall and made from melted cannons
Captured from the French by Arthur Wellesley.
It weighs 33 tonnes, which is, if you must know,
Seventy three thousand, nine hundred twenty pounds.
Originally nude, it somewhere acquired a fig leaf.
Its head belongs to the Iron Duke. He looks irate
At being exhibited nude in Hyde Park. How the golem
Got it through customs I cannot guess. She lugged it
Into my dreams two weeks ago and refuses to take it away
Last night, the standard anxiety dream I'd ordered
Turned into a farce. My accusers kept bursting into laughter
Or whispering "My God! Where did you find that thing?"