Reading Yeats for Greats

 

Imagine that it’s been
A century since Yeats.
Imagine, and conclude
How meaningless are dates.
All of time gone by,
And not a second passed
For you who saw him first
And you who read him last.

He stepped outside to say
A line or two. It was
Out of time and place,
But no one cared because
No one had built a wall,
Nobody tore one down.
Beautiful women merged
There in Lissome Town.

When you are given away
Another century hence,
Your comely wisdom combined
Worth a couple pence,
The women still will walk,
And rebels stop and stare,
Nothing much to say.
Helen will not care.

Growing My Own

I’m growing heroes this year, each with vim

And rectitude.  Too proud to wear their masks

Or call themselves The Spanielled Cavaliers,

They will be known by what they do: The Lute,

My Sugar Beet, The Man from Polymath.

Muscles are nothing, candyland.  Their feats

Are vitamins and tiny nebulae

And comfort for the shopworn.  And the seeds,

Like starfish in a cup of broth, their shapes

Superfluous to what they will become,

Wait till it rains.  Wait till the worms have made

Them room to move.  Once they have sprung their shoots,

Who know if you can bear to watch them work

Or how many widows lay an extra place.

Pastoral Care

 

Rough winds on premises to let,

And summer’s lease is triple net.

The cuckold goldsmith in the sun

Makes melting pots of everyone,

While Amaryllis in the shade

Regrets the choices she has made.

Her bowered beau regrets no more

The nights he spent in days of yore.

Though Amaryllis shine too hot,

He will be spent when she is not,

Which, he suspects, the flock has known

Since they were fleeced, then left alone.

And greener pastures beckon.  Soon,

She will exclaim, this prick of noon

Will feel his autumn felix frost.

Then she is warm and he is lost

In fields of blasted corn and clover,

Rough winds at hand, and summer over.

No, Hope, Not Me

 

No Hope, No Hoopla: this is Low-Key Hell,

Where Glum’s the Word, the cocktail hour comes,

But the town is dry, the duck who guards the gate

Has three heads, as he ought, and devils are made

Of cooking oil and pink asbestos fluff.

There’s no spare change. There is no change at all,

Only the psalms of praise for other folks,

The ones who did not care enough to fight

For White After Labor Day or Rules Against

Perpetuities for everyone.

It isn’t fair, which, really, is the point.

Storyville

 

     This first appeared in Staple.

Just once? Upon a hundred million times
he woke and learned to speak and knocked her up
and watched her die and ran away and hid.

Each branch of this bears twigs, and each twig flowers.
The children live. The wife runs off. She finds
a man who loves her less and turns her out
to bus the tables of a mining town.

He makes a million - somethings. Dollars. Pails.
He trades the cow for beans. He plants the beans
and learns he loved her more than provender.
But it's too late. She's dead. Or wiping tables.
Or on her way to Jacksonville, where God
has called her to be Sister Angeline.

In one small blossom he is deaf and dumb
and sees his town in black and white reversed.
He finds her anyway. They stay. They live
ever after, just off Sueño Street.

When Lions Come

 

This appeared in Orbis.

When lions come to the door to drag you out
into the street, they won’t want elegy
or meditations on the Elder Breughel.
It’s commonsense and die with them: plain speech
is what they have time for. They’re not chimpanzees.

In camps, if you make it there, interrogation
occurs in prose, in real time, not in feet.
Elephants can do prosody; lions think
elephants have gone soft, wasting their gifts
on rumination, wallowing, and tusks.

Under the klieg lights lions want the truth.
They won’t even tell you, Soon you can go home.
Maybe they eye a haunch and hum a little.
Confess the truth and change for death: that’s all
the deal they offer, all they need to know—

lions don’t hope. They are. No note is sent
advising your next of kin you have been laid
with wildebeests and zebras in the pit
where herbivores accrue, praying, say lions,
they could be lions next. Not bloody likely.