And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.
LUNAR ECLIPSE
First white, then gray eclipse, with remnant light
Drifting down to a Cheshire grin…
The remnant’s gone, and the full moon
Reddens in dead branches.
The moon’s dark and ruddy, dark enough to let the stars out, sharp,
In a cold city.
***********************
The dead leaf garden, once blanched
By the moon to look like snow,
Starts back in wonder now at the blackness of the night,
Then tries to wait for dawn.
*********************
White, gray, red, back to white, and then
From white to vanished in the next day’s light —
These lunar moods bring in, with ebbing tide,
Remembrance of you. Of your suicide.
“The former president’s current legal team includes a Florida insurance lawyer, a past general counsel for a parking-garage company and a former host at far-right One America News.”
Here’s a thought: Why not bring back Alan Dershowitz?
***********************
The problem with Tribe’s otherwise excellent idea is that Dershowitz is far too taken up lately with his bombshell lawsuit against the Martha’s Vineyard public library for not inviting him to give talks there. He plans to take down Chilmark Library and its elderly volunteers, and the prep work alone is exhausting.
Dershowitz has tried to explain the priority he’s placing on his library litigation in a poem addressed to Trump, who he knows he has disappointed.
*****************************
To Doncasta, On Going to War
Tell me not, Don, I am unkind, That from the scumm'ry Of thy black breast and insane mind To Chilmark Lib. I fly. True, a new lawsuit now I chase, 'Gainst a modest house where simple books they lend; For while it once did me embrace It turned against its one-time friend. Forgive my harsh inconstancy, belov'd client, Don! Once I've destroyed the library, and made it shut its door, I will return to thee, my One, To defend my Love once more.
ÅNGERMANLAND I will arise and go now, and go to Ångermanland, And a vast fortress build there, of rage and madness made; None else will I have there -- my world will I command And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have my rage there, for rage's wind doth blow, Blowing from the hearings, from where the RINOs sing; There Bennie’s all aglimmer, and Jamie's all aglow, And the transcripts full of Liz’s zings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I see old allies dumping me and smirking more and more; I know that court awaits me some not too distant day, I know it in the deep heart’s core.
STAR FINDER
The evening birds quieten, and now it’s the owl,
And fireflies. And stars. And fireflies that somehow,
With their buglight, compete on an even playing
Field with the stars. These stars are, somehow,
Constellated, and I hear my mother’s ghost saying
I left you my old field guide. The quiet dark allows
All of her to come inside. She’s clearly conveying
The ease and importance of learning the constellations.
A WORLD THAT CONSTANTLY BURNS
Is it a foghorn or the wind's Drone-monotone through a barely open Sliding door? What is this kindly view for? The waves slide out from nowhere in the dew: No horizon. No slow ships from Hamburg Süd. This powerful narcotic compounded for you -- Flat, pastel, gently pulsing day and night The tidal foam a self-abasing white And nothing there to break a terrace nap And nothing there to take your thoughts, and tap Their shoulders toward the useless and the old. Dead passions; thoughts of the dead; all gone cold While you lie temperate and unconcerned About the super-earth light years away: "A world that constantly burns."
ALL OR NOTHING: Waiting for One AM, May 31, 2022, at Henlopen State Park, Delaware
Either the sky’s a meteoric storm
Or the coming thousand-fireball swarm
Is all in our heads, not even a shower.
Why not loose imagination’s power
And make the dust trail hit us hard
Spill ruddy-jeweled stars
We can make it light the sky, light our way
Change intolerable black to day
Give intolerable formlessness form.
We can make the meteors storm.
EILEEN AROON The greening of the evening The cold flat light of night And the mesmerizing Tritone thrush in the honeysuckle Thrill me, and hush me. Later, sitting in a black chair Under the thrush I start to sing Eileen Aroon
Aesthetic Garden piano starlight and stone: The pursuits of my parents Present as my own. Also dogs, and birds. The play of words. *************************** Is there nothing that is mine alone? **************************** Instead of her spaniels a runty pit. Purcell in place of his Hindemith. And perseids more than constellations.
THE BIRD THAT WANTS TO NEST IN MY RAFTER
The bird that wants to nest in my rafter
Has birdlike clarity what it’s after:
The comforts of home. Of course I agree
That water source, sight-line, privacy
All make for quite the nest. The question though
(As I sweep off twigs and it returns
Tirelessly, with energy to burn)
Remains: Which one of us will have to go?
A witty, erudite writer in the mode of James Merrill, he was 92.
********************************
May 26 1969: The Grievance
No one dies. That is all we can say for certain.
Something dies us,
As it lived us. We are lived. And died.
A personal pronoun is superfluous here.
It is simple;
Our grammar of death must be revised.
And we are not reduced to tears, not reduced. The thing
Our tears are for
Extends us: we are widened to the term
Which lies beyond our tears. We are not reduced.
***************************************
***************************************
Fellow Philip Larkin fans might be reminded, on reading this poem, of these lines:
Life is first boredom, then fear.
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and then the only end of age.
***************************************
More tersely, fellow Adam Phillips fans might simply quote this remark:
When people say, “I’m the kind of person who,” my heart always sinks.
Sunrise Rehoboth
Psychedelic ocean and the gulls slate gray
A man prepares his tripod for blastoff
**********************************
Backstage the moon shot through with blue
Bows to the sun and gives way
**********************************
Where’s the pilgrim fellowship chanting in the sand?
The mournful Scottish bagpipe band?
***********************************
This morning all worship comes down to me
Godless, with sacred symphony
***********************************
A Supermarket in California!
*************************
What thoughts I have of you tonight
Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg
As I scan the parking lot
Of the Walmart in Waukegan
**************************
Two strangers in SUVs met
On that fruited plain
They blew each other away
With their Glocks
***************************
As one they shot; as one staggered
Into their SUVs
As one staggered
Into the local emergency room
As one were arrested
**********************
O Whitman, O Ginsberg! O Walmart Waukegan parking lot!
I stagger beside you, dreaming of the lost America of love
Past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage
David, December, Rehoboth Beach How all occasions do evoke thee My own Lord Hamlet. Here, beside the sea, With only Philly Airport contrails for clouds, I slip on icy boards and say your name aloud, Because everything evokes thee. Those contrails: Your father, who mapped the moon, regaled Me with their chemistry and their meaning. Your Swiss cousin, who never left off keening, Sends text messages about your mysterious life. After all these years I've heard from your wife Who finally wants the books you left with me. And there's my yearly visit to the tomb Of your mad Ophelia. That keeps the ghost in the room. Beyond all these, your famous sister is another thread That keeps delaying your entry into truly dead For every end of year my ritual is to read Her widower's account of how he freed Himself, a little, from the long pain of her dying. When he said the Heart Sutra her soul went flying. "I had a distinct feeling of a kind of expansion Emanating from the furnace into the room And beyond. Something was being released From Eve's body and expanding into space." For me, for your memory, no such amazing grace, No closing mantra, no sense of you unrestless, Over on the other shore, life and deathless. ********************* Clear winter sunset now. Ho! The horizon takes a roseate glow. Pink's the sand where the whitelets flow. Between the two, a table setting silver blue Darkens to gray. Evoking you.
WASH
People are drawn to nothingness Here on the coast at the end of the year The horizon makes itself disappear The banner planes are gone the gulls are gone It's nothingness to which people are drawn The sand is smooth the blue umbrellas went away The noisy white boats that nose up and say Ladies Night at the Bar and Grill are not missed People are drawn to nothingness The lifeguard stands are standing down Calm waves make the only sound Portugal Africa None wonder anymore What lies along the other shore Really all that's left is us Drawn so hard to nothingness Packs of winter scarves and coats Black against the gray of the coast Praising the sacred empty space The misty mystic vacant place People are drawn to nothingness