As They Turn from Praise

I don’t need your permission. Here — I’ll count
The ways the light appears: one, when your eyes
See something valuable, the right amount
To preen, process some golden thing, the prize,
With prejudice; and two, the rising moon,
Reflecting real light, in just the same way
Your eyes do when pretending that you’ll swoon,
Looking too much like stars that shift, and play,
And brightly promise everything; and three,
Your burning smile as you brand your initial
On someone’s easy heart (then we all see
That, like your smile, your love is artificial).
And more: unlike my sweet Elizabeth,
I shall not love you better after death.

We Are Here Now

We are here now. We have travelled elsewhere,
But we are here now, ready for what’s next.
I tell her I believe that I’ve been hexed,
But she suggests to me I shouldn’t care
What anybody claims. “It isn’t fair,
Is it, for you to feel you’re undersexed
When I’m holding you tightly? Are you vexed?
Get over it.” She smiles, and strokes my hair.

Alternatives, she tells me, there are none,
And she has always offered me incentive
To be original, graceful, inventive,
Dismissing all who came before as done,
Gone, blameless, and forgotten, every one.
We are here now, unready and attentive.

The Light Flickers

I enter through a doorway, beside which
Bear cubs deploy themselves in solemn rows,
Watching the comings, goings, ebbs and flows,
Catastrophes, and holidays. The pitch
Is much too high. We emulate the rich,
But we are not rich. Where the money goes
Is no one’s business, so nobody knows.
The light flickers. Who’s standing by the switch?

They say the world is rushing to its end,
But all I see is darkness. I abjure
The light, and still the future is unsure:
They’re telling me I’m going to need a friend
To carry all my money, but I spend
So little that I might as well be poor.

In Kindness

It isn’t that remarkable to find
Nine hundred or so sonnets in one place;
Myself, I now believe the human race
May have been preternaturally designed
To crave more sonnets, to enrich the mind
With symbolism, metaphors, and grace.
Some people want to purge love, and erase
All of humanity. They are unkind.

And I believe in kindness, above all,
In acts that tie us in a loving knot,
In dreams we share. Those battles that we fought
For truth? Let them all go, hearing the call
Of kindness. Sonnets might seem very small,
But some days poetry is all we’ve got.

When Contemplating Love

Just go ahead: admit impediments;
I don’t agree that true minds should be married.
While thoughts are lost among the sediments,
Our bodies know that justice has miscarried.
Let me remember how your arms hold me,
And gaily set aside the scheming soul.
Your body is the only thing I see
When contemplating love, my only goal.
There are impediments where spirits meet
(So insubstantial a spirit’s existence)
That never sit between us when the heat
Of our desire burns through all our resistance.
Some — never mind who — should be sent to school:
The truth? Like all of us, love is time’s fool.

Through Three Nights

Her shallow breathing left us all unhinged.
How could she bargain, tell us what to do,
Or lift our hearts again? She made it through
Three nights, and now, our expectations tinged
With crazy glee, our undeclared hope singed
As she got worse, we talked about shampoo,
Champagne, sham promises, and I saw you
Spend useless hours on charts and signs. I cringed.

The imbecile in all of us survives,
But please, let’s try to stand aloof. That troop
Of frauds can’t tell us when or whether croup
Will do for us, or avalanche, or knives.
We will not see the ending of our lives
In omens. Kill the duck. Now make some soup.

The Use of Weapons

I warned them, saying I could not endorse
The use of weapons in the Temple grounds,
But they were adamant, called out the hounds,
Arrested me and, with unseemly force,
They planted me face down upon the gorse
Beyond the wall. My bloodied head still pounds,
And I can hear all those uncanny sounds
The dogs and weapons made — if that’s the source.

There might be ghosts, here in the greenery;
Your weapons and the dogs are never sleeping,
Their stony beds cold, and their masters creeping.
The sharp rocks that surround the deanery
Protect nothing. There is no scenery,
Nothing but secrets, falsehoods, and rough weeping.

Again the End of Summer

Again the end of summer is in sight:
The air grows cooler and the days grow short,
The moon grows dim, the sun is down a quart
And, just before they fall, the leaves grow bright.
We’re waiting for the worst, a winter night
Dark, cold, and miserable. One sad report
Has me asleep, but with a snore and snort
I keep my love awake. She starts a fight.

The warmth is gone now, and it won’t be long
Before she turns her lovely back on me,
Insisting that I share the misery.
I try to wheedle, sing a pretty song,
Tell her she’s beautiful, tell her she’s wrong,
But winter’s coming, and that’s all we see.

Sound Investment

I made a sound investment, late last year,
Now bearing fruit — that’s money, boys, not cherries —
Allowing me to fill the reliquaries
With good bones and a proven Virgin’s Tear.
I almost bought a Roman soldier’s spear,
But this guy claimed he’d said sixteen Hail Marys
In sixteen seconds. I threw down two sherries,
Looked at the goods twice, and threw myself clear.

So now I’m still holding plenty of cash,
Debating if I’m hearing the word, “Hark!”
Or just a hopeful echo in the dark,
Sudden belief, too true or just too rash.
I want to think this bit of silver ash
Was once a Burning Bush; see this odd mark?

The One

The clutch of pills she swallowed after eight
Turned everything as orange as the sun
As it was setting, so she kissed her date
And told him she believed he was The One.
The clutch of pills she swallowed after nine
Just calmed her down, at least for half an hour,
But then she lifted up her hem. “Divine,”
He murmured. “Fragrant as a fresh-picked flower.”
The clutch of pills she swallowed after ten
Was bigger than Tyrannosaurus Rex;
So many drugs were in her system then
That he got high giving her oral sex.
Then midnight came: she slipped on leotards
And waded through the mice and pumpkin shards.

Shovel Them Under

The cemetery caretaker is lost
Among the tombstones and the mausoleums.
That is, he’s hidden by clouds of no-see-ums
And leafy ferns. We watched him as he crossed
Between the carvings and the slabs embossed
Like legends in an open-air museum.
“Look here,” he points. “This guy charged a per diem
Of what I make per month. And what the cost . . . ”

He shrugs his shoulders, grinning. “Let this pass
As all things pass.” I think I see him smirk,
But he’s too busy now for us to lurk
Productively, examining the brass
Or counting names. “I don’t just cut the grass,
I am the grass,” he murmurs. “Let me work.”

Uncle Pumblechook’s Song

Some people say I haver, flop, and bumble,
But I believe what I have always said,
And I’ll believe it when I’m stiff and dead:
A man’s entitled to endeavour, stumble,
Crumble, mumble, tumble, fumble, grumble,
Answer unasked questions, tilt his head,
Insist on larger portions of white bread,
And criticize the world’s unholy jumble.

If I have claimed that small children were vicious,
It must be true. I wouldn’t tell a lie,
No, even though the very angels cry.
This meal was excellent, the food delicious,
The conversation happy and propitious.
Let go my elbow, child. This is good-bye.

Master of Tongues

He muttered something like “ogni speranza”
(Although I couldn’t hear him properly,
It didn’t sound like French, but it could be,
In which case it might be a great bonanza —
What’s French for “who comes in”? Is Sancho Panza
The guy who roamed the countryside with me?
I’m pretty sure he said “entrate qui” —
But maybe that was in another stanza).

You know those Frenchies seek me everywhere,
But I remain elusive, which I must
Because I can’t speak French. They call it crust —
Funny, since their baguettes have crust to spare.
In fact, I think it’s only right to share
The truth: my English also is a bust.

The Dreaming Cure

I wasn’t making sense, so my friends said
I should lie down and try the dreaming cure,
And that worked well, but it could not endure:
When I woke up, the daisies had turned red
And bloody, while the roses that were dead
Were marching now. I had been immature,
And filled my days with lust, hot and impure.
Dreams disarmed us. I should have stayed in bed.

My disappointed friends cried, “Give us back
The old disease!” but though I’ve tried my best
It won’t return. I must have failed the test,
I must have given up. The night was black,
And lust prevailed, sharp as a heart attack,
Thorough and final, underpinned by zest.

Obvious

“I don’t like sex,” you offered in reply
To my importunate longing, and woe.
It was the way you’d chosen to say No,
And made completely clear your reason why.
With an eternal something in my eye,
Maybe a grain of sand, I let it go,
Taking my leave. I’m silent and I’m slow,
Which isn’t how I ought to say good-bye.

At least I wasn’t silent and so fast
You didn’t understand that I’d be gone
Once the door closed. That I was moving on
Should have been obvious. It didn’t last,
But yes, I loved you. That’s all in the past:
You knew that, certainly. Is that a yawn?