chickens I was taking to the cinema, planning to have them for dinner later. Now I shall go hungry, for you and for them, telling my adventures to anyone who will listen, outside on the slippery alabaster stairs. Or in the roomful of people?
THE OLD HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY
The walls are whitish. Is it cold enough in here? No,
it’s the statuary I came to see. And the gizzards, you wanted the gizzards
too? No, it was buzzards
I’d mentioned in my letter of introduction, which you seem to have lost,
but I was reminded too of ancient blizzards
that used to infest these parts. Ah, but gizzards
breed sapience, there can be no other way.
Allow me to pass in front of you
while I keep you waiting in the draft that is colder
than the room it besmirches.
Now we can see eye to eye, and it is a good thing.
I would not have thought it easy to set off the smoke alarms
had we been closer together.
“ Now is the time for escape, you fool.”
Don’t you see it another way
back in the ridges that bore you, that nature knitted for you?
I don’t know, but something keeps getting in the way
of our orderly patrolling of these rooms.
I suppose it’s that I want to go back, really ...
And so you shall, on the 7:19. Meanwhile examine this bronze.
I’ll get Biddy to set out the tea-things
and that will save us some time.
AUTUMN BASEMENT
I lost my notes, or they were useless. Luckily
I had scribbled down this number on the baggage claim.
The countess remarked, and with reason, that they
only hold you up if you appear to have been dipped
in aspic. Alas, such was my case. Two hedgerows
further and I’d have made it. Now a rag chairperson gives me the runaround,
thinks we met once on a breakwater—
I say, a glass of tea would clash with the silence
of the conundrums, keeping your clatter from me,
safe from me, that is. Would you—er—mind?
So each gets immobilized with a diamond stickpin
under the barrel vault that was invented at just about that time—
notice its groin—and there’ll be capers with rabbit for supper
again. I don’t know how much longer I can stand August,
though September was always his favorite month, and here
it comes with a packet of unscented breeze.
Yet it always seems that salt should be savory,
the embers more at ease. The moving picture lights, and having lit
perfects a new way out of the shimmering maze. Pity we can’t
lingo here forever, but no one lives forever,
or so I’ve been told.
HANG-UP CALL
Preposterous. That was the word she used,
one much admired for its overtones of thrift and conviction.
I let her go where she wanted with it.
After all, I wasn’t there to hear it,
looking somewhat dazed amid the regatta
and its ships—or are they one and the same?
Every restful person pauses here
to ask me a question. I have a few ideas
but they wouldn’t interest you by a country mile,
not by a million of ’em. Some day I’ll have to release my antidote
for disappearing ink (hint: it contains mummy)
and a few other of the brilliant ideas
I’ve managed to put aside in this old life of mine,
but until that day comes I see no reason to get excited—
hey, wait, you were the one who was asking me !
That’s antenna-dust sparkling on the shoulder
of your silk patchwork bolero. I wasn’t even going
to be part of this, remember? I never signed on.
All I remember is press gangs working the bars in Bristol
and waking up on a heap of moldy straw
with a lump the size of a duck’s egg on my cranium
and a taste of iodine in my mouth.
But it wasn’t me we were going to discuss, remember?
As far as I’m concerned there have been no arguments;
ergo, I have never lost or won any.
Now give me my pants and money and let me go
back and join the others. They’re crying, you know.
LOST PROFILE
I had a voice once,
braid falling over the front
of my forehead-house and down the sides.
No need for cream separators here
someone said. My guide took it as a
THE OLD HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY
The walls are whitish. Is it cold enough in here? No,
it’s the statuary I came to see. And the gizzards, you wanted the gizzards
too? No, it was buzzards
I’d mentioned in my letter of introduction, which you seem to have lost,
but I was reminded too of ancient blizzards
that used to infest these parts. Ah, but gizzards
breed sapience, there can be no other way.
Allow me to pass in front of you
while I keep you waiting in the draft that is colder
than the room it besmirches.
Now we can see eye to eye, and it is a good thing.
I would not have thought it easy to set off the smoke alarms
had we been closer together.
“ Now is the time for escape, you fool.”
Don’t you see it another way
back in the ridges that bore you, that nature knitted for you?
I don’t know, but something keeps getting in the way
of our orderly patrolling of these rooms.
I suppose it’s that I want to go back, really ...
And so you shall, on the 7:19. Meanwhile examine this bronze.
I’ll get Biddy to set out the tea-things
and that will save us some time.
AUTUMN BASEMENT
I lost my notes, or they were useless. Luckily
I had scribbled down this number on the baggage claim.
The countess remarked, and with reason, that they
only hold you up if you appear to have been dipped
in aspic. Alas, such was my case. Two hedgerows
further and I’d have made it. Now a rag chairperson gives me the runaround,
thinks we met once on a breakwater—
I say, a glass of tea would clash with the silence
of the conundrums, keeping your clatter from me,
safe from me, that is. Would you—er—mind?
So each gets immobilized with a diamond stickpin
under the barrel vault that was invented at just about that time—
notice its groin—and there’ll be capers with rabbit for supper
again. I don’t know how much longer I can stand August,
though September was always his favorite month, and here
it comes with a packet of unscented breeze.
Yet it always seems that salt should be savory,
the embers more at ease. The moving picture lights, and having lit
perfects a new way out of the shimmering maze. Pity we can’t
lingo here forever, but no one lives forever,
or so I’ve been told.
HANG-UP CALL
Preposterous. That was the word she used,
one much admired for its overtones of thrift and conviction.
I let her go where she wanted with it.
After all, I wasn’t there to hear it,
looking somewhat dazed amid the regatta
and its ships—or are they one and the same?
Every restful person pauses here
to ask me a question. I have a few ideas
but they wouldn’t interest you by a country mile,
not by a million of ’em. Some day I’ll have to release my antidote
for disappearing ink (hint: it contains mummy)
and a few other of the brilliant ideas
I’ve managed to put aside in this old life of mine,
but until that day comes I see no reason to get excited—
hey, wait, you were the one who was asking me !
That’s antenna-dust sparkling on the shoulder
of your silk patchwork bolero. I wasn’t even going
to be part of this, remember? I never signed on.
All I remember is press gangs working the bars in Bristol
and waking up on a heap of moldy straw
with a lump the size of a duck’s egg on my cranium
and a taste of iodine in my mouth.
But it wasn’t me we were going to discuss, remember?
As far as I’m concerned there have been no arguments;
ergo, I have never lost or won any.
Now give me my pants and money and let me go
back and join the others. They’re crying, you know.
LOST PROFILE
I had a voice once,
braid falling over the front
of my forehead-house and down the sides.
No need for cream separators here
someone said. My guide took it as a
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