Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard

 

    This appeared in the British magazine Candelabrum.


I started a list of what you never saw,
dead before Epsteins lived, dying while yours
wore roundheads, dead a long time, dead so well
your stones look more like sponge. I gave it up.
Who wants a list of cars and compact discs?
Who could explain epinephrine to the dead

and chronically short of breath? Still in their spheres,
the stars were not impeded by your lights;
but lacking National Geographic, you
never pinned up the Horsecrab Nebula.
It says here you’re not lost, but G N B RE.
Someone has trimmed this turf 300 years,

and still it wants to grow. The River Wye
asks no eponymous questions, flows while green
returns to grass, which is the epitaph
other grass grew. That they’d be picturesque
in increments of centuries would make
the dead rise, if they could. I wait. They can’t.

Boxing Day

 

I wrote this down in perfect confidence

And cannot read a word of it. It was

Etruscan, maybe, or the speech of mimes

Running against the wind, their lips sewn shut.

It was the scent of peaches when the trees

Have been uprooted, pulped, and turned to tales

Describing a girl converted to a peach.

Apollo took her home. Artemis ate her.

I made this up in perfect confidence,

While walking the dog. I don’t recall a word.

Something about a peach, miming the fate

Of man in late September, while the rain

Didn’t feel like the fall of man, but might

Come to that, with some mulching in between.

A Little Learning

 

Only a woman’s hair, he kept repeating,

Proving that erudition didn’t work.

Precedent wasn’t a cure; it wasn’t then,

And repetition didn’t make it so.

And anyway, the dresses weren’t. The shoes,

The winter coats. Or little socks. A hair,

Now that was synecdoche, which, it was known,

Couldn’t be traded on the heart’s exchange

For love or money, blood or Latin verse.

The Dainty Dishes

 

The End Is Near said every sign

Every Saturday. They came,

Forecasting death and sometimes rain.

Their name was Legion, just the same

As ever. If you had a home,

You wouldn’t come, predicting rain,

I thought, but that was foolishness.

One wore a bed sheet, one a kilt,

And you a tablecloth or lace.

You warned of blood which would be spilt

And drank your chocolate milk, a fault

Indigenously out of place,

But loveable. The girls displayed

The follies of their fashioning,

And gawkers liked the sight they made

And joined in on the final sing.

Death advertised its local sting,

Picturesque and a little lewd.

The sting was in your parlor, stuffed

With bread and money, left a card

There on the mantel, never left

The doorway where it knocked too hard,

As if no one had ever heard

Or ever wept or ever laughed.

Othello: Crib Sheet

 

When they say Moor, they mean a lad 

Of color.  Black like pitch or coal,
though multi-colored in his soul.
Polka dots.  Paisley.  Tartan plaid.

His wife is white.  As pale as whey.
She has a hanky bleached with salt.
The dark chap has a Tragic Fault.
(He likes to fight.)  (She likes to play

at wifery.)  His sword is keen.
His adjutant is keener still.
At peace, there's beaucoup time to kill,
and we all know what that can mean:

the blackamoor is dead as dirt.
The pale-faced squaw is stiff as stone.
The villain rules the room alone
and will not speak and will be hurt,

which he minds not.  Oh, what a waste.
The colors of our rainbow run
red everywhere, black as the sun
behind the moon, perversely placed.

The Power of the Pen

 

I sharpened my pen, attacked the bad

Bad men. They were still standing when
I finished. I would make them sad,
I thought. They would be sorry then.

They weren’t. I gave them bitter names;
I called their mamas out. They kept
On being what they were. In flames
I sent my pages. Jesus wept,

But they declined. They were afraid
Of neither noun nor nib. My room
Was lit by indignation, shade
Of Johnson’s inspissated gloom

Hooting from where the restless go
When weight has fled. They did such deeds
As penmen perish not to know
And burned the barns and ate the seeds.

Nicene You

 

When I’m a bishop, I’ll communicate

With anyone who wants a wafer, mostly

Vanilla, but not requisite. If sin,

If stainless as a watch’s crystal, same:

Remission if your substance is like mine

Or if it’s not, if con or trans or bland

As angels fallen and they can’t get up:

But not till I’m a bishop. As a dean,

An 'umble shepherd, pastorally blue,

A spelunker who lost his ball of twine,

I am not worth attending to: I bleed

And count my corpuscles. We are too few,

Too scattered, and too thick about the ears.

I’ll call some Council, maybe. But not yet.

Boyz II Men

 

They softened us up first with comic books

of Bible stories. God, our God was mad

a lot of the time—flood and frogs and plagues.

He had it all, and used it. No one said

just why a pillar of salt. When condiments

were made (on the third day?), did salt act up?

I know. I know. I missed the point again.

Today a boy becomes a man: more Jews

to keep the covenant, to pass along

the stories we cannot forget, the rules

we cannot understand or like and yet

have graven on the bedposts in our sleep,

all because in sweet Crayola colors,

the comic books were clear, He made the rainbow.

Lordy, Lordy, I

from These Denver Odes

Lordy, Lordy, I can't believe I heard
   you dredge up that old line last night.
     So, did it work?  Never mind.
I'd hate to hear an almost matron,
   almost popping her bustier, bit
     that chestnut.  Time flies, my ass.

When Quintus said it, I don't know, maybe
   it already had a Bronze Age
     sheen to it, Buck.  Antique rose
petals fell for Herrick to gather,
   and the cartwheels creaked Marvell heard.
     And this mother of three swooned?

Well, we can understand, old thing--the flat,
   bubbleless glass of warm champers,
     and the wilting gray canape,
and the laddered hose.  Women despair
   for less, have fallen far further
     than you, Buck, on a bad night.

And maybe you were right, Quintus no fool,
   and the lady's sensors wide
     and wise to pull in the last
cupidous excitement she'd ever
   glom on to, even in the arms
     of an old anthology.

How Green

 

In valley towns the elder ways

hang on like dad’s chums; they struggle

to pass their habits on, their genes

long since committed, best they can.

And if the kids, and the kids’ kids,

break out into docklands and loft

flats and little gated enclaves,

the valleys shut up.  Keep mum mum,

keep dad, too, ligature thin, hope

he doesn’t speak, he’d only cough,

a lucky strike, a lost best hope.

The kids spread, their new jeans low slung,

vaunting how they quite disavow

vernaculars, forget the terms

for tucking in.  The valley mouth

shrinks.  There are runes hidden inside

cereal boxes, bottles filled

with elderflowers.  The kids come

for funerals; haply they praise

famous men, the powerful wind.

The Boy in the Iron PJs

 

Older by seconds, thus the King of France,

A wig so big the star can’t constellate.
(He hath decreed and fears nor scorn nor sneer.)
A lettre there, a duc by title here,
Leave to wear lilies on his velvet pants:
A little one, whose priors are his fate.

Pent in a donjon, eating mexicorn
From a melmac plate, his eyes like metal dust,
His prayers bouncing off the crumbly mortar,
He waits for the interminable porter
To celebrate the day when he was born
And let him dawn the elder, only just.

We Do Brown

 

Since you would be in Britain in the spring,

The states must suffer. Here we only have

The toughest daffodils, the snowdrops who,

More thew than delicacy, make a swift

And wan appearance; there, there is the show

Of countless flower, gaudy garden, green

Of glib variety. Here we do brown

In many ways. It does not tempt you, here,

Since you would be in Britain in the spring.

Remember us, who cannot tell the weed

From scrawny flower when we try to pluck

The memory of you. We cannot grow

What will not bloom. We cannot fertilize

The misplaced and misplanted; but we find,

Whatever we may look upon, the face

And color and soft scent of the Welsh rose.

Sow You Shall

 

I planted carrots; jawbones grew,

fitted with teeth, hinged as if fresh.

I planted onions. Inching up,

electric cord. I cut the plugs

off and saved them in a dark drawer

till fall. Meanwhile the copper wire

exfoliates. I dug a hole,

hoping to find a broken pot

breded and lacquered, lost and found

and lost again, the art of house-

hold detriment. But what I turned

up on the sharp point of my spade—

just anecdote and parsley flakes

and cumin-scented calendars

and rubber bands. I turned them down

to fertilize. The coming storm

will make my bed a slough of mud

and battered silt. These are the grounds

I use to justify my lines—

chile and radish and runner bean.

The Judgments of Paris

 

If Aphrodite has the sweetest voice,

Athena’s song is written best. What tunes

The smitten sing teeter towards the silly,

And they don’t care. Athena crams her songs

With polyglottal, multivalent stuff

The other goddesses cannot even spell.

(Hera never sings. She will whoop and gloat

In victory and smirks at fealty,

If other than coerced. Her hawk-like eyes

Half the time fail to see you and don’t ask

Whether you like her song or not. You won’t.)

Towards whom do you extend the golden apple?

Skin buckles, loses elasticity.

The most tyrannical grow old and weak,

Leaving to other brokers all their vassals.

The vessels even of the wise constrict,

And they forget their shoes and Mother's name.

So where do you trust? You ought to know that war

Ensues from every possibility,

Slaughter and carnage, orphanage and rape

And plague and wholesale urban extirpation.

So choose now, if you please. It’s what we do.

2 Epigrams

 

      from The Greek Anthology

It must be dirt that keeps me quiet.  Weight
     like this no child should have to bear.
     I cannot move.  They do not care,
Who bore me early and have left me late.


     Reciprocity

I learned to write these epigrams
from reading J. V. Cunningham’s.
I know that I should be too proud
to witness such a debt aloud,
since he has never shown a sign
of learning much from reading mine.

If You Go Out in the Woods

 

Our bread crumbs didn’t last and did no good,

Except to fatten teeny birds of prey,

Waiting for us. So we just ate the bread,

And berries from whatever bush we passed,

Thinking that every mouthful was our last,

And there we were, Hecate’s Hideaway.

The sign said we should walk right in; the birds

Had fallen back and shut their eyes. A door

Marked Either Push or Pull in steaming words

Was decorated with a rampant bear.

We changed our minds, my little sister said.

There are more pleasant ways we could be dead

Than eating eaves and downspouts and veneer.

The windows showed a shape behind. We spoke

Never of Deadly Stepmother, who broke

Our daddy’s arms and will. We turned the knob,

And every bird of prey began to sob.

Get over it, I said. At least we’re here.

Exercise equipment and jars of pills,

Portraits of cats and pollywogs en croute,

These the nefarious accessories

They feared? These spooked the spotted peccaries

Who trampled children? Home without a doubt,

We hung our sweatshirts in the polished halls

And settled for adulthood and a style

Of limited means. We paid the local tax

And mended squeaky hinges. In the loft

Were comforters and all the clothes we’d left

Behind, outgrown now. From a metal box

We drew a deed written in blood and bile.

It’s all yours, and it always was, we read

On the appended Post-It. We fed the birds

And omnivores who visited in squads

And raised a ruckus when somebody tried

The wooden gate. No lawyers came to call.

Our footprints, first obscured, were gone by fall.

Final Exam

 

The fractious verbs, the adverbs soppily

Lagging behind, explaining as they weep—

What good are they to those like you and me,

Schooled by an inkhorn buried by the sea,

A preposition long since put to sleep?

Announcing that you are a proper noun,

A little rusty from a lack of use,

The adjectival nature of the town

Laying its nosy hands on Cinder’s gown,

An oxymoron cooking its own goose,

You are the part of speech making a speech

Superfluous, a body proving rest

Is myth and metaphor: the teachers teach,

And back behind the church, the preachers preach.

The final sentence is the final test.

Among School Children

 

I was invited here to speak
About the labyrinth of art,
The darkest places right in here
(I tapped my fist upon my heart),
The places where the adverbs seek
The mortises which disappear.

I haven’t got a thing to say.
(They didn’t look a bit surprised.)
All I can do is write and read
And keep my heartbreak supervised.
That lights, but can’t provide, a way
To where the joists and tendons bleed.

Monks are men as incomplete
As soldiers, chaste of blood or soul.
How long must half a world compete
With half a world? How long the toll
Of promise must deception meet?
We are dying to be whole.

Questions? (But they were all asleep,
Each head upon a floppy stem.)
Someone? You in the back, perhaps.
(But I was not disturbing them.)
I was that public man who’d keep
Impinging on their private naps,

Dreams of the Dairy Queen, the Slut
Of Winter Park or Hollywood.
Dreams of the Motorcycle Man,
With 6-pack abs, and far too good
For others. Every eye had shut.
I say, The heart’s an empty can,

Drained of a dram and pissed upon.
(Somebody heard one word I said
And tittered.) I’ll be going soon.
When all of you are good and dead,
Be grateful for a Denver dawn,
And praise the stars which ring the moon.

Later the secretary sent
A thank-you note they each had signed
(Though printed with the class PC).
Ensconced in my establishment,
I was embarked on sonnetry,
And books brought other books to mind,

And other books. I had not told
The class about the unblent yolk
Or dancing trees. I had not said
That art was not like growing old,
And no one ever got the joke,
And I too late, and likely dead.

Fair play it was, and just as well.
Brave lads who never shed a tear
And girls repining for a glance,
They speak in tongues I cannot hear
The lessons they were made to tell.
I write when I have half a chance.

Two Door Bye-Byes

 

Not one hey-nonny-nonny no,

No episode of Dynasty,

Nor timbery wood substitute

Will make you shine or make you see.

Down the plug-'ole straight you go,

Too late for sharp, too late for 'cute.

Too late to make a mystery

Of why the boy-&-rustic show

Is still in syndication, while

Your up-to-datest magic style

Won't even make the groundlings smile.

It isn't fair. Hey-nonny-no.

Our wisdom does not make us grow,

Bang the tambour, thump the lute.

The G. & G. R. R.

The local railway ran on time, but who

Saw what they chucked into the boiler? Palm

and coconut and feral cow—the balm

that Gilead & Goshen found to choo

us on. Mahogany the shining track,

mysterious the effervescent rail:

they served. At least I never saw them fail,

though Clementine and son did not come back.

Some long-pig entrée, maybe. Maybe not.

Maybe she is the Queen of Some Grass Lodge.

Perhaps she was the pudding, giant stodge

the product of a caramelized pot.

Anyway, when the whistle sounds, the birds

rise like a raucous rainbow, and the rain

stampedes the unseen multitude. The train

cuts through them all, invisible in herds,

and we arrive to stinger and relief.

Much is made of our fortitude and skill.

The audience about us, never still,

closer yet, professing disbelief.

Fable

 

    This appeared in The Deronda Review.

Don't be an ass, the donkey said.

What with Balaam dead, and all,

No one will hear you if you call.

How will you know if you are dead?

I'm used to being, said the stone.

It's all I know, and, yes, it's hard.

I only have this self regard

To let me know I am alone.

So each one spoke, which may seem odd,

Had any been there but the tree,

Which said, O I move beautifully,

Regarded as I am, by God.

Love. With Textual Apparatus.

 

When I was young, as yet the apple of
Nobody’s eye but Grandma’s, I awaited
The fabled coming of My Own True Love.
I am no apple now; and I am mated
With me and with the man I have created
[Cf. ll. 1-1.5, above].
Unlikely to be wed and wend together
[Var.: to be wed in such wet weather],
I lead the life which fits—one hand, one glove.
[N.B., as source, The World Well Lost for Love.]

Homer Was Not

 

    Long, long ago, while humankind was still emerging from the Dark Ages, this appeared in the Denver Quarterly.

Homer was not Homer,

but a Homer whom

we, by mis-misnomer,

call a name the other's.

Histories assume

economy of mothers.

Fungible poets sink

into LaBrean bogs.

Editors may think

editees alive;

cockroaches and frogs

generically survive.

City of Dreams

 

        This, before some revisions, appeared in Staple.

More crystal chandeliers in New York City

than in the whole of Ecuador. I'm sure

that everything you ever saw for sale

they have here, and delivered too. The night

terrifies the inhabitants, all from elsewhere.

Thus it is told by Ahmed, who was once

a jazz man, but moved on from that. I saw

him giving Plastiklips to little kids,

asking them if they thought he should keep kosher.

Everything is different in the city,

he says: if you can think it, it has happened

and will again, though not when you are watching.

Thus there are Mayan gods in his apartment,

a defrocked priest named Twee from 502

with a baptismal font on layaway,

and Ahmed. He has been a breathetarian;

he snorts at all the riff-raff in the street.

Caste and kind are important in the city.

Love is on sale, returned if satisfactory.

Ahmed says not to stick to your own kind:

love across lines is all about distinctions.

There's more cash here than in all of Peru,

he learned, having once rented for a week

a girl newly arrived from Lima. She

did anything, without much wanting to,

and asked his help in managing to stay.

No help, but there are plenty others left,

all of whom can buy something, so can dream

of waking beautiful beyond their wounds,

thinking about, but never going, home.

Up & Down the Backbone of Our Land

 

    This appeared in Chimaera.  

A little town believes it is immune

From simony and tsores; lesser folks,

The big’uns from the City, pay to fret—

They’re born to fret, conformed to fret; the shapes

Of worry make the fortune of their faces.

A little town does not believe that woe

Is overnighted by the sun: the bill

Of lading comes due elsewhere. Yes, they know

About the sparks and how they fly, but still—

A little town? Our lucky life, they say.

Their daughters, up to Megaplex, keep pails

Bedside to catch the tears, while sparking boys

Think murder is an artform, and their spite

Colors the closet red. The roads escape,

Then disappear into an empty plain.

And yet the cornflakes keep on selling out,

The hotdog buns replenished. Say, the Post-

Gazoo is covering the Aphid Fest.

You’d think, the kind of life a small town leads,

Pies in each pocket, cakes in every bed,

You’d think the roads ran both ways, but they don’t.

No, Really, I'm Not

 

This woman in her vinyl raincoat runs
Up to me—it’s not raining—and she asks,
Are you The One? (I hear the capitals,
The edge of majuscules, the sharpened height
Of serifs as they play about her eyes,
Wide to let all the light in that there is.)
I’m not. I thought I was once, but I’m not.
She coughs. No one should make mistakes like that,
She tells me, and she takes two backwards steps:
You might have missed your chance to save. The truck
Repaving Colorado beeps reverse,
And I shall never know what I have lost.
Her raincoat’s black, of course. I know she keeps
Asafoetida bags about her flat,
Merde du Diable; I know she cannot sleep
Because she has misplaced The One, the leaf
Marked with a grosgrain ribbon and a spoon.

Intro Hydraulics

 This appeared in the Deronda Review.

The pattern of the rain on glass

Is law bound, but I've never known

That law, and when the drops surpass

All reason in the shape and speed,

Only a textbook could have shown

An explanation or a need.

This is a horsie, that me mum.

There is Aunt Sophie, warped with pain.

I see three rodents, deaf and dumb

And blind. If God would play this game,

There would be floods on plains in Spain.

There would be dead without a name;

But God knows what God knows. He may

Have planned the shape of little drips,

Which drops abscond and which seek stay

Of execution. I don't know.

Stream after stream, the water slips

Where wracks of able seamen go.

I've heard it said that when the horn

Is played in court, the waters will

Reveal lost bones, and men reborn

Will dance upon their former veins.

Deep waters run till then and still,

The windows clean, those shining panes.