A FEW QUESTIONS ON HIS RETURN

The boat you launched
On the river of shadows
What became of it?

Your logic was so strong
Your wit so sharp
Why did they always fail you?

That mystery you found
When did you know
It was not yours to solve?

ANOTHER OF AESRED'S

It was too heavy for my chest
So I put my heart in a wagon,
Gave it a tin cup, sent it begging.
Now I find it driving a black car
With vanity plates.
What foolish authorities
Decided it deserved a license?

SO

You were dead so when the thunder
Asked me where you were I shrugged
And said you were in Kamionka Strumilowa
Some years before you were born
Teaching your father -- he was 10 or so --
The jokes he'd tell you when you were a boy.

You were dead so when the tree which nodded to you
Even when there was no wind said "Where is he?"
I spread my fingers wide and said you had gone undercover
Cleverly eluding the combined forces
Of Ming the Merciless and Dr. Destructo
And had found work as an invisible detective.

You were dead so when you asked me where I was
I pulled my beard and said "In the great boat of morning
Three cubits from the stern there is an oar
Which no one pulls. There I used to sit
But there's no telling where I've gotten to now."

CALLING THE MOON

"I remember," the old muse said,
"The first time the moon was called
As witness to a poet's love;
The excitement! The daring!
Others had picked leaves
Or thrown stones (What says passion
Better than a well-aimed rock?)
But to insolently summon the moon--
I half thought the poet would die
Right then. She thought so too
And braced herself against a tree.

But the moon was pleased
And raised her voice when the sea
Was minded to drown you all."

BAKER'S MAN

I was born in an oven, says the Baker’s Man,

And I fear no rakehell nor hellrake

Nor pitch-pine Jack. I will go hellward

At my own pace, strolling and nodding

To the dotterels and dastards on the way

Munching on a fresh-baked loaf.

Oh, the cats will rejoice when I am gone

But the whores will weep, by the clock,

For a hour and seventeen minutes.

DESANGELADO

Neither good nor bad angels attend the desangelado
Who must, if he is wise, leave men and mostly live
In the company of cats. Among the cats he will find
Angels who never delivered their messages
And now try to sell them, centuries past their due dates.
"Flee Nineveh!"  urges one; "Check the oven!"
Cris another. The last time I drank with the desangelados
There was an elderly angel who shrank from my eye.
I suspect he knows the answer I should have given
To a question which was posed to me in 1975.

LOCUSTS

The locusts, it is known, have no king

Cats, however, have one, and also

A prince-in-waiting, a regent,

A power behind the throne,

A power beside the throne,

A power beneath the throne,

Three pretenders, a shadow cabinet

And an Empress Dowager.

It is hard for an ambitious locust

No king to disobey; no god

Whose existence he denies.