Page One

Decline and Fall 

We will gather like the lords that were 

Smoke dark tobacco in candelabra light 

And after sad discussion, pass the night 

On our hosts divans, wrapped up in fur. 

Morning will enter the dusty house 

Find Dalmatians whining and the fire dead. 

Dead are we, and a far carouse 

Takes up the hope that we have shed. 

Chanty 

Travel to the village tavern 

Talk with old mates there. 

Drink the thick memories  

Of storm and despair. 

But when you tire of the talk 

And see a maid standing there 

Sail for the pretty face 

Sail for the fair. 

The Golden Few 

I saw the golden few 

They started out supreme  

And happy 

And they grew to be my dream 

I did my best to imitate 

And to appreciate 

Their story and their style 

For it might be true 

It might be worth my while 

To be like them too 

Too bad it was my fate 

I never could substantiate 

Their story and style 

Of their glorious emotion 

I had the simple notion 

They were only passing through 

On their way to heaven 

While I degenerated  

In sorrow and hate 

I couldn’t go too 

I would not see the gate 

Close after me 

While through me light  

Shifted. It was then I knew 

That when the golden few have left 

They leave nothing but sadness 

It’s the only thing that grew 

The Blessed 

Where did they find their strong charm? 

In the channels where the river bled 

Its white gifts, they were bathed clearly 

In the same direction as the water’s run. 

Imagination like a silk shawl sealed 

Their undulating fish-like minds that swam 

In ringed practice horizons to the world. 

Persistent gifts and parties of well-dressed ideas 

Graced around them in a dance 

Of lapping, dipping, paddling, as 

The swarm of eggs and wings of 

Compact splendor demonstrated 

How it would be for them in the coming world: 

A sparkling, cordial bearing, a splashed 

Talk in the evening that designed 

A world apart for their charmed breath. 

Promised Land 

California has its thoughts on light. 

Bleeding along the coast, ghost waters 

Wander for their whales, spread 

Catching quilts for gulls. Is it 

All blue and gray? Will the boats 

Brush only an oiled, angular life 

Into the canvas? It is enlarged, 

It is a West, but is the frame still 

Europe and the East?  

Interpretation’s fish lines reach but 

Can’t dislodge the rocks, volcanoes, sand 

From this last Eden’s deep. Wouldn’t instead  

A house along the Hudson do 

For majesty? Some short climbs 

In the mountains of Champlain and Irving 

Would be all one’s amiable trots 

To wildness. Then back to the blotch 

Urban miscarriage makes on the Atlantic 

Line. And in the night still soft 

With city light, Europe could be heard 

Breathing. It locks its lonely castles 

Back together, whispering an exaltation 

Like an old man claiming prior dreams 

For human thought. But out in California 

The grizzly and the cormorant plod 

Their design. When will the castles come 

To California? And royal eyes 

Sweep the landscape into power’s charm? 

How to Find Me 

I want something of myself: A token, 

A shell from a dim beach, a coin 

With my portrait on it, lucky charm, to redeem 

When they ask, where have I been? Where 

In the dark, paneled rooms that  

Sparse their art in accordance with discretion, 

Will I be found sitting, in a soft chair, 

Telling of myself, as if the mental part of me 

Were a chain of frightened, religious beads, 

Alone with all my thoughts as though 

Taking a ride in a sleigh with writhing 

Dogs, out to a dacha of very distant repute. There 

Find me by the fire, or greet me if you see me 

Outside by a high pine’s furrow of firm bark 

With bristling crown of needles to recommend it. 

Find me in such places, and when you tug 

My arm, my coat away from that fond heaven, 

Let my thoughts spill out like coins or grains of wheat 

From a buried urn or basket, secret coil, 

And count them, one by one, to my forgotten credit. 

Therapy 

You’ve been to yourself. A journey. 

You aren’t certain you are back yet, 

Though the itching turmoil in your limbs 

Aches for its old armor. It is pretty 

To resume the autumn, seeing how it 

Rollercoasters down its own wind 

Into winter. There you are, at the deepest 

Puddle. You are saturated with both 

Ice and sweat. A little boat, unable to float, 

Springs sideways, wasting on its side as though 

Wounded. It is like that with you, in 

The valley of the puddled. Yea though you 

Toddle through the shadow of winter, it 

Is really a suburban farm under your boots, 

A mere skirt of snow keeping the green from rising 

While you are back in dread winter—you  

Could die. But the trip out is waiting again. 

Will it be real this time—or just the Venice, 

The grapeyards of a dream? Your soul isn’t saying. 

It likes the winter of perpetual enigma. 

Red Wine, Gray Prospect 

They will with endless talent pursue 

Coins made smaller by the sun. 

Families can sit at table next, 

In the same wine find eager but remote 

Traveling. I can say nothing, I am 

Silenced by the clouds. Windows are 

Failing their purpose to grow their view of 

Harbors, hills, skies. They have only silence 

To bring. If the wine goes out it will come back. 

A few girls laugh, the generation that is to be 

Runs to the bathroom, or else out the door onto 

The dock. Look at the sails! The future brisk 

Waits in the water to move off. What is there 

To catch us if we fall? They see 

Sky gray like the water. The wind is a face 

Like a giant bird pecking their eyes. 

Already I see their remorse. I will have more of  

That wine. My tongue likes the red of the past. 

Old Roman Family 

You wouldn’t allow a man’s decoration 

Unless you yourself could decorate him. If 

I came to you wearing the pinks or mauves of summer, 

You would tell me I needed to grow a beard 

Just to have your say. Even naked 

I feel dressed in your admonishments. 

My mirror, which once was packed with smiles, 

Seems dark to me now, like old glass. 

If I did stoop to prettify this flesh, 

You know how ridiculous others would think me. 

Who would have us, then? Who would welcome 

Our plain or wrought figures at their door? 

There’s no sense to this, this opening a common gate, 

Driveling in each other’s paradise. I’d rather 

Be alone, read undraped thoughts of an untaught poet 

Who knew when a storm was coming, who could smell the sea. 

The Rocket Scientist (The Fifties) 

Dreaming behind the oscilloscope 

And fountain pen among friends in white shirts, 

I offer attention to the first rocket. At home the wife 

Is a biological experiment, my children want to know 

Where I go in white shirts and black ties and why 

Those thick glasses, and the poignant napkin formulas? 

I tell them there is a country in the sky 

Where the enemy practices—I know him by his 

Hinting articles in rocketry reviews. We are 

Somehow humble destroyers of one another. 

Sally wants me in church more often, she 

Dresses the boys to shame me, they are good 

Boys in black slacks, bow ties, know their prayers. 

The steeple makes my heart freeze. It is 

A holy war, we will launch the whole church 

Of ourselves into the clouds like victory. Sally my 

Wife will go away, the thick glasses finally crack.