Angels, Nomads, Wolves

You were digging the night like a grave.
Lights shone like distant camps
Of angels, nomads, wolves,
The day creeped up the dingy curtain of the eastern sky,
The sun pushed up its reluctant head,
The birds circled once, twice, testing the air,
The dawn was gummy in their mouths.
The air took a deep breath.
Constantinople—there was a city for you,
There the Baal Shem Tov’s daughter wept washing clothing at the seashore
(As her father stood in his inn in blissful wonder),
The wealthy couple passed her with their wondrous message,
Sailing ships floated across the horizon.

Serious Obstacles

Amazingly, Middle East talks are facing serious obstacles.
The discussions between Charlie Manson and Roman Polanski are also in danger of breaking down.
Meanwhile, there is little doubt that more will have to be done
To encourage a fruitful exchange of ideas between lions and antelope
(Of course the antelope must agree, once and for all, to take off their horns).

A Man with a Scraggly Beard

A man with a scraggly beard was sitting at his desk writing poetry
When a distracted citizen ran pell-mell into his room.
“Why are you sitting writing poetry?” asked this distracted reader,
“When there are demonstrations in the streets,
Not to mention that the rising sun is sending scarlet scarves of clouds across the sky?”
This was at any rate the substance of a poem that a reader sent to me,
In which he described a poem that his mother had written to arouse him from bed.
She had been looking at a green moth with folded wings, she said,
And imagined that it had been thinking,
“As green as I am against the window screen,
There is an apple more green than I
And a thought more green than that apple,
And a window more clear than the sight of the mountain.”
I was thinking of all this when my sister called.
She had a poem in her hand,
But I said, “Who has time for poetry?”
That was exactly how her poem went:
She had a poem in her hand,
But I said, “Who has time for poetry?
Only the gnarls of leaves, only the knots of bushes,
Only the crumpled roads,
Leading nowhere.”
“Leading nowhere?” I cried.
“That sounds so dismal;
Isn’t there a more cheerful way to end a poem?”
But I said (she said) you should listen to the entire thing.
That (she said, I said, he said) is the gist of it,
And the green moth dreamed its green moth dreams.

He Crawled Along the Avenues

So Norman Mailer is dead.
He crawled along the avenues,
He broke the mirrors that he kept staring into.
Like plaque he has stuck to our brains.
When his face was thrown up against the horizon,
How could we not dream of him,
When his name was scrawled in every prayer book we opened?
Perhaps we need a root canal,
How dazzling our teeth of knowledge will gleam.
We will inhale the violet herbs of the fields,
The moon will burn our eyes white.

How Gentlemen Earn Their Pensions

The earth isn’t very new after all,
The leaders of Israel have been shrinking and shrinking,
Now they no longer care about their place in history,
They bring a shovel to the negotiating table
To bury their neighbors
So that they can take over their villas.

The Jew smiles at Goebbels, at Torquemada,
At Martin Luther, at Nebuchadnezzar,
Come in, did you bring Adolf?
Let’s negotiate the heads, the eyes of my people,
Their teeth, their children, their water,
Their sky,
In a decade we’ll meet again in southern France,
We’ll all be retired and gentlemen,
And this is how gentlemen earn their pensions.

The more clever these Jewish leaders become,
The shorter and stouter do they grow,
They scurry about, being realistic and clever,
And even as they do the ceiling comes down
And the office cubicles grow more and more narrow,
And the President of Syria and the Prince of Saudi Arabia
And the American Secretary of State
And many other curious onlookers
Jostle to gaze down on them,
As they squeak and twitch their whiskers.