The wedding guests having roared
Out of the reception and into the courtyard
To wave goodbye
With their champagne flutes to the joy.
BAUDELAIRE
I walk on water in my poems, using the lily pads
Of the sidewalk homeless as stepping-stones.
I’d stop to talk, but they don’t have cell phones.
Their alcoholic faces come in various plaids.
A terrorist in his underwear,
Shaving in the steam, wipes the bathroom mirror clearer.
I see, while death is near, life is nearer.
My shaven skin is softer than the air.
The tugboat thrusts itself into the fluid to begin,
Backs out, chug, chug, tug, tug, digs in,
Que c’est bon, this is how, fowl and fang and fin.
The gulls, looking down at the meal down there, scream and grin.
His hands are in the basin washing, crashing.
His brain is on a boardwalk walking.
Her bigs don’t stop stalking.
The mirror is asking for a thrashing.
I’m standing at a sideboard carving a wild duck I shot a lot.
My bullfrog croaks.
My unit smokes.
My Mumbai is hot. My Bali spits snot. I’ve shot what I’ve got.
Now it’s time for the plane I’m on to come down
In pieces of women and men.
The anxiety increases in Yemen when
They pat me down in case I have something under my Muslim gown,
And I do.
I have a device.
In Paris, it had lice.
I went to Dr. Dax, who was distinguished. He knew.
Dax regarded my twenty-four-year-old thing
With barely disguised disgust.
I could see him thinking: I’m a doctor. It’s his thing. I must.
O thing, where is thy sting? Dr. Dax made the prisoner sing.
It took a shirt of Nessus wrapped around my penis
To get rid of the crabs.
The burning ointment got lovingly applied by Babs—
Penis burned at the stake by Venus!
Babs of the beautiful fesses
Was Babette, comtesse d’Eeks.
Our Lady of the Heavenly Cheeks
Would turn over onto her stomach to receive a special caress.
In those days before airport security,
A terrorist could spread his wings and fly.
One poet lived his life in the sky,
While the maid did his laundry and a countess oiled his impurity.
The maid was Charles Baudelaire.
I live my life in the air.
Life is inherently unfair.
I don’t care.
iPHOTO
The second woman shines my shoes.
The other takes my order, curtseys. Thank you, sir.
Others stand there in the rain so I can mount them when I choose.
It’s how protective I
Can be that keeps them going. Look at her:
She clicks her heels together, bowing slightly. Try
To put yourself in her shoes: boots, garter belt, and veil.
She’s amused
To be a piece of tail.
She’s smiling. Is she really so amused? I’ve recused
Myself from judging whether that means she’s abused.
So far I’ve refused
To let myself be called confused.
I hope these photos of St. Louis will be used.
A FRIEND OF MINE
“I walked in the door and into so much light
My eyesight did a kind of tremolo.
The living room began to snow
Cartwheels and pixels. You know what,
People’s lives together are complicated.
They are quiet,
Complicatedly. My heart
And me get lost in the forest, afraid.
Yet I would choose you to lead me
To the clearing. I see
Your instincts are correct.
You ask the right questions.
You don’t mind the answers!
When I move East for good next month
Maybe I will spread my wings
With happiness and soar.
Or I will shout wheee as I plummet downward.
Ah, but in my new New York apartment,
I am only on the fourth floor.
So I will hit the ground quickly!”
DO NOT RESUSCITATE
The mummy in the case is coming back to life.
It sits up slowly. I can’t bear it.
The guard pays no attention. He knows it is my wife.
Her heart sits blinking on her shoulder like a parrot.
I get up from my bed, woozily embalmed, and it’s
Another gorgeous New York day to try to live.
I loved my wife to bits in fits. I loved her tits.
Her bandaged mummy mouth had nothing else to give.
The man can’t stay awake. He wakes and sleeps.
It’s either age or it’s his medications.
He’s giving me the creeps—
All the poems he wrote, and so few dedications.
CIMETIÈRE DU MONTPARNASSE, 12ÈME DIVISION
I have a friend who has a friend
Who asked her to place her hand
And place a flower on Samuel Beckett’s grave
On his behalf.
This man, who is in the theater, had corresponded with Sam.
My friend asked me to join her to do this.
It seemed reason enough to come to Paris.
And it was.
And there, quite a surprise, was Susan Sontag’s grave.
And now it’s time to get the fuck out
Of this beautiful pointlessness.
ROME
I impersonate myself and here I am,
Prick pointing at the moon, teeth sunk into your calf.
I ought to warn the concrete that my passion dooms the dam.
The poem I’m writing looks up at me and starts to laugh.
Summer! Of course you are! You are my miracle!
Just now we were in Rome.
I have to be in Rome with you to be so lyrical—
Or else it’s noon Alaska time, the Auschwitz hour in Nome.
At Rockefeller Center, winter in New York, I pause.
Let’s watch the skaters lark around the rink.
The worn-out dance floor of ice looks like a blind eye of gauze.
It’s time to have a rinkside drink and have a little think.
I thought I’d never reach hydroplaning speeds again.
It’s Sagaponack and the freezing April Atlantic.
Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten …
It’s about to happen. It’s a feeling not dissimilar to being frantic.
Oh what a feeling. It’s like America—
It’s like Italy—with nothing else to compare it to.
Excitement mounts till la repubblica italiana is isterica!
Orgasm is an Italian opera aria of bombast and dew.
As in-your-face as a red Turkish fez
With a tassel—as hidden as an Israeli agent’s gun—
“I’ll call you back in five minutes,” my vivid Italian girlfriend says
In English. Does she mean cinque minuti italiani or American?
In Via Michelangelo Caetani, near the Ghetto, where
The Red Brigades left Aldo Moro’s body in the trunk of a parked car,
There’s a plaque. There are flowers. I bow my head. I stare.
We’ve covered him with a blanket and I’ve shot him ten times so far.
A HISTORY OF MODERN ITALY
I see Silvio in a yellow slicker
Jumping up and down in a downpour,
Sing-songing Rain rain go away,
Come again another day.
His fists are clench
ed.
His nanny in a nurse outfit is smilingly drenched.
Silvio Berlusconi is not happy.
He feels crappy.
I’m talking to myself again.
I scroll down Broadway in the rain.
I’m hidden under an umbrella, but I hope it’s obvious
I rejoice for Italy, more or less.
Not exactly talking to myself, more like quiet shouting.
I’m under a black umbrella spouting
A fancy accent (but I hate being taken for English). Yo!
Ooga-Booga says to Bunga Bunga: So long, Silvio!
We’ve circled to use up fuel
And now we’re short final.
There’s the rainy runway.
President Napolitano of Italy holds out his hand as if to say
Immortal blue from which no rain can fall
Fell. How to recover from a stall? Fall!
Brace for death. For landing.
Don’t call it death. It’s a matter of rebranding.
Cassius Clay turning into Muhammad Ali
Is the model of modernity.
Silvio Berlusconi is the beau idéal of hilarious iniquity.
The eurozone trees have rebranded into autumn. Italy is free!
Or rather Italy is sort of free.
The catastrophic lyrical elation of Leopardi
Described his country pityingly.
Then came Mussolini.
Duce! Duce! Duce! Adriano Visconti flew into the blue
In his heroic Macchi C.202
Like a pearl diver free-diving for pearls,
Or Berlusconi diving to the bottom for girls.
Fascist Visconti with his RAF mustache—
Such dash, such panache!
It was good to be an ace in World War II,
And rather better than being a Jew.
Visconti surrendered to communist partisans at Malpensa airfield—
Once they’d assured him no air or ground personnel of his would be killed.
His personal safety was guaranteed by the mayor of Milan.
The Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana was done. Absolutely futile to fight on.
Visconti was respected.
The partisan commander saluted.
Visconti turned to walk across the courtyard to the espresso
The commander had offered, and was shot dead. Caro mio, addio.
MOUNT STREET GARDENS
I’m talking about Mount Street.
Jackhammers give it the staggers.
They’re tearing up dear Mount Street.
It’s got a torn-up face like Mick Jagger’s.
I mean, this is Mount Street!
Scott’s restaurant, the choicest oysters, brilliant fish;
Purdey, the great shotgun maker—the street is complete
Posh plush and (except for Marc Jacobs) so English.
Remember the old Mount Street,
The quiet that perfumed the air
Like a flowering tree and smelled sweet
As only money can smell, because after all this was Mayfair?
One used to stay at the Connaught
Till they closed it for a makeover.
One was distraught
To see the dark wood brightened and sleekness take over.
Designer grease
Will help guests slide right into the zone.
Prince Charles and his design police
Are tickled pink because it doesn’t threaten the throne.
I exaggerate for effect—
But isn’t it grand, the stink of the stank,
That no sooner had the redone hotel just about got itself perfect
Than the local council decided: new street, new sidewalk, relocate the taxi rank!
Turn away from your life—away from the noise!—
Leaving the Connaught and Carlos Place behind.
Hidden away behind those redbrick buildings across the street are serious joys:
Green grandeur on a small enough scale to soothe your mind,
And birdsong as liquid as life was before you were born.
Whenever I’m in London I stop by this delightful garden to hear
The breeze in the palatial trees blow its shepherd’s horn.
I sit on a bench in Mount Street Gardens and London is nowhere near.
MOTO POETA
IN MEMORY OF STEPHEN A. AARON (1936–2012)
You were the loudest of us all by far,
And the sweetest behind your fear,
Brilliant expositor of Arthur Miller and Shakespeare.
There you are at the beginning of your career
Bellowing like a carny barker
In the Freshman Commons, selling tickets to some
HDC production with your tuba voice and bigger nose.
The stylish fellows like myself were appalled.
Steve Aaron was a lot brasher than was posh,
And a lot shyer, and smart.
Suddenly he was mounting a staging of Eliot’s
Murder in the Cathedral to stop your head and start your heart,
The most gifted man in Harvard theater
In thirty years.
I remember him in Manhattan in analysis
Right across from the American
Museum of Natural History and its tattered old stuffed whale.
Aaron had an ungovernable phobic fear of the whale.
He asked me to go with him, literally holding hands,
So he could stare it down with an analytic harpoon—
And then backed out.
Years later, Goldie—his mother—pulled out of a closet
A brush and mirror set meant for a baby,
For baby Steve, and scrimshawed into the ivory back
Of each item was a tiny spouting whale!
The psychoanalyst’s name was Tannenbaum.
One day Aaron came in and, after lying down, said: “I don’t know why—
There’s this tune I can’t get out of my head! Tum tum tee tum. Tum tum tee tum.
O Christmas tree! O Christmas tree!” Steve,
You’re a blue forest of oceans, seagulls flying their cries.
I come from an unimaginably different plan.
I’ve traveled to you because my technology can.
I ride the cosmos on my poetry Ducati, Big Bang engine, einsteinium forks.
Let me tell you about the extraterrestrial Beijings and New Yorks.
You are dear planet Earth, where my light-beam spaceship will land.
I’ll land, after light-years of hovering, and take your hand.
SCHOOL DAYS
I
John Updike
Updike is dead.
I remember his big nose at Harvard
When he was a kid.
Someone pointed him out on the street
As a pooh-bah at the Lampoon
As he disappeared into the Lampoon building
On Mt. Auburn.
The building should have seemed
Odd and amusing instead of intimidating,
But everything was intimidating,
Though one never let on.
Here was this strangely
Glamorous geek from New England,
With a spinnaker of a nose billowing out
From a skinny mast,
Only he was actually
Not from New England.
Those were the days when
One often didn’t say hello even to a friend.
One just walked past.
I was a freshman in Wigglesworth
When I visited Ezra Pound
At St. Elizabeths,
And Updike was about to be summa cum laude
And go off to Oxford.
These were the days of Archibald MacLeish
And his writers’ class in his office
In Widener for the elite.
I remember I put taps on my shoes
To walk out loud the long Widener reading room.<
br />
II
House Master
Mr. Finley sat cross-legged
On top of a desk
Reciting from memory Sappho in Greek
In his galoshes, administering an IV drip of nectar
While hovering like a hummingbird.
That was Finley, magical, a bit fruity,
Warbling like a bird while the snow outside
Silenced the Yard.
We were in a Romanesque redbrick
H. H. Richardson building, Sever Hall.
I was an auditor
In a Greek lyric poetry seminar
That was somewhere over the rainbow.
Certainly it was the only time
I heard a hummingbird sing.
I remember everything.
I remember nothing.
I remember ancient Greek sparkles like a diamond ring.
Professors were called mister.
To address someone as professor was deemed vulgar.
It was good sport to refer
To one’s inferiors as N.O.C.D. (Not our class, dear.)
Biddies still cleaned the student rooms.
I had a living room with a fireplace that worked.
Finley was the master of Eliot House, my house.
Somewhere else, Senator Joseph McCarthy
Of Wisconsin was chasing American communists,
But despite that, he was evil.
The snow kept falling on the world,
Big white flakes like white gloves.
III
Pretending to Translate Sappho
The mother of the woman I currently
Like to spank, I’m not kidding,
Was my girlfriend at Harvard.
The mother looked like a goddess
And as a matter of fact majored at Radcliffe in Greek,
Or as we would say then,
That was her field of concentration.
Please don’t tell me
Anyone reading this
Believes what I’m saying or doesn’t, it’s irrelevant.
But anyway it’s all true.
I don’t believe in biographies.
I don’t believe in autobiography.
It’s a sort of pornography
To display oneself swollen
Into bigger-than-life
Meat-eating flies.
I remember the mother on her bicycle
Flying across Harvard Yard
All legs.
Goddesses still wore skirts.
I’m still up to the same old tricks,
But now I’m always on time.
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