I got your letter with your modest, muted
Words: the details of your wife’s demise.
I’m glad at the last she’d been rooted
In clarity. Harry, you speak well of her wise
Laconic character. You two were suited
For domestic pleasure. Good. I surmise
You shared this large felicity for two
Decades. Like quiet nesting cranes you
Were both aware she’d adorned the hill
You lived on with a hearth of simple comfort.
One climbed a few grey painted stairs till
One reached the door. One rang. A short
Boy, your son, would answer. There, still
You must remember many voices. Our sport
In the cellar was ping-pong. Your immense
Dog watched us we talked. I had the sense
Your wife was pleased to bring a silent grace
That eased the social life within your home.
She said little. She moved in lower case.
Your son had gravity like hers. A poem
To celebrate your world you made from space
And shards of consciousness could comb
Truth from that mortality forever. A rite
Is often what we do- then what we write.
The miracle of marriage, what one shares
For a time, must haunt this Brooklyn cove
From the wind. Once we passed the stairs
Sniffing pleasant odors from the stove
And entered the living room. In soft chairs.
You showed me your verse. The dog dove
Under the couch, began to snore. I read
These sonnets to your wife. You two, wed
In your handsome and handwritten lines
Inked there forever. Like other pages
Drawn mysteriously from etheric wines
They were like nothing else. The mages
Of Dys, Harry, made you singular. One dines
On wild fare at your table. The sages
Of our provincial country don’t admire
What not banal. Tant pis. Near a fire
On that February night I read these fine
Translations of your life together, writ
Not in print but in your hand. Intimate.
Paying wages I will never know, some redefine
The uses of the language. These did. It fit
The assymetrics wrought into crannied line
And shape that is the wonder and the pity
Of every marriage. In this granite city
Few have had such strange felicity. I thought
This man, my friend, years beyond the rite
Of courting like the Brownings, has wrought
In dusky rhymes a colloquy which might
Seem less sparkling than rubies caught
In the cages of jejune passion. Your insight
Is for those who’ve been together
Unlike clouds who fly by- like the weather.
2
I’ve heard domestic pleasure lacks perfection.
Nothing’s quite like failure when you’re intimate.
One’s honor’s fodder for dissection
Vengeful injury or knifelike wit.
Nothing carnal gives us much protection.
What history some loved is stone and fit
They say for Art in dark museums. Your wife
Enjoyed the very turns and points of married life.
Most poets lie about their lovers, not you
Of course nor I, most honest when a rhyme
Suggests a fine if sugared phrase. We do
What modern chemists must. Is it a crime
To dabble in hyperbole? What is true
Is found in every mote of air. If time
Permits not to know but merely dabble
You and I must write the purest babble.
Shakespeare in his sonnets speaks
Of verse that fires flesh to ghostly gold.
If poetry is alchemy the cheeks
Of youthful summer, rhymed, do not turn old
And passion with its mysteries one seeks
In iambs, never glimmers to ashes. Mold
Can’t color lust in a quatrain. This claim
Is moot. Most poetry’s a beauty game.
Keats claims no less for bacchantes on an urn.
Any youth who talks of beauty being truth
Is suspect. Hungers are trash. We burn
Foolishly in life. For crones the tooth
Of comeliness is hidden in a cloak. Some turn
To other goddesses; here is no end to youth
To all these farewell magick shows. The fair
Are often less so later. Even beauties wear.
Can Daniel Boone’s of love can forage
In the forests where quickness fluttered
Merging with mushrooms. Many a marriage
Is better than any local harper muttered
Or the verse of Shakespeare. Did Keats disparage
The ore of domesticity? Few have uttered
Praises of the epilogues to romance;
I am one of them. I’ve had a few by chance.
I’ve forgot nuch of what I loved. A fool
Takes up the wizardry of any gossamer
And often I am grateful for this tool
From oblivion. For harpers to inter
All memory in darkness seems too cruel.
I sniff such verse. The ancient myrrh
May have a whiff of summer. The dry rose
May have a clue to passion no one knows.
There are many forms of grief. My own
Is that I’ve had no wife at all I’d mourn.
Not much is gone that I regret. The bone
I thought I’d loved was treachery and porn.
I’ve been for love and less a drone.
I think an iron law demands some born
Are shallow. When they die I drop no tear.
For some the Chesire cat does not appear.
One walks into a room and often there
Are purple lovers one has never guessed
Were wandering on this planet, Somewhere
The forest is dark blue where the West
Has buried its old light. The most rare
Improbable black jaguars hide, dressed
In fire beneath vermillion sunsets. Still
They wait, all jaws and teeth and will.
Hunger is cosmic. In monsters such
Lust on mossy floors turn worms obese.
In the dark blue forest, the trees touch
The odor of midnight with white roots. Peace
In a women of charity is all grace. Much
Of this beauty of family is maligned. Fleece
Us of our loveliness and we are no more
Than bottom fish. And flounders are a bore.
3
Today I walk out with my son to play
Handball at the Brooklyn college courts
There the nests of parakeets who on a day
Flew from the comfort and domestic sports
Of homes to live like Americans. You may
Have heard tropical birds are sorts
Who do not live through winter. Once sought
In malls, joyous, they mock the thought.
From towers of light these bright birds
Vie with sparrows, chickadees and terns
For the trash of the world. Songs without words
That parody forgotten masters in ferns
Cleave air as they lunch. Dropping ivory turds
They hawk their throaty cry. Flight returns
To the mother of life spirit and excrement.
Two soul-mates married in their strange ascent.
My son and I walk past turf where young men
In helmets run in games. Over the ground
We trot watching the crunching spasms. Then
We and see a bright green feather. The sound
Of parakeets is loud and raucous. When
We make a circle of their spasmed world. Around
The handball courts, to throaty cries
We put away the yellow feather as a prize.
Astroturf dyed green yet slick and sterile
The field of powdered emerald has wedges
Of stubble eating deadness with virile
Hunger for the capacious sun. Ledges
Of concrete tilt from the push of feral
Roots below their grey expanse. Edges
Of the field grow moss alive in stone.
Feasters chewing ashes, air and bone.
Upon the artifice a brace of seven crows
Stately and grave. stand on a cavity
In the red clay track left by the snows
And drink from a pool of water. Gravity
Of winter gives them a cup. What flows
Into their beaks has no memory. Depravity
is often reptilian recall. Where seven
Innocents have little to forget is heaven.
Indians who lived here once could read
Molting like poets’ rhymes. A long
Feather from a crow spelled death. Freed
These rider of the air do not belong
To any fortune teller. They peck grassy seed
And survey low games from a nest. Strong
And young, they snatch bread from sparrows
Then glide to towers where the air narrows.
Bright green, they wink through snow
Dropping feathers on the shaven ground.
The banks of lights are steely trees. I go
Volleying with my son, the others drowned
In poisoned magic. These darlings show
To scholars the healed heart of profound
Spirit. Our scars are stones of prior death.
The stink of yesterday befouls our breath.
They filch their nests from winter trees
Twigs perished in ice. Bright, they never
Howl about chill winter. They mount a breeze.
The ghostly winds are chariots. Clever
Babblers vying with starlings, chickadees
And crows for seeds which grasses drop forever,
They skim, float. There is nothing to say
But raucous flight revolving on a day.
