Still They Care Enough
For the most mute of Americans
Summon up a sort of pity
Who have to have their words of love
Pre-written in Kansas City.

 On the Seventh of December
I drive my '95 Nissan up a ramp
And enter Interstate-285's lanes.
Traffic weaves around me in a swirl.
Gleaming Hondas and Toyotas hurtle past,
And I wonder how many other drivers
Recall, as I, the Harbor known as Pearl.

Perdurance
Be of that breed of dog
Whose virtue is "Hold on."
You'll be here when other dogs
Are all barked out and gone.

Orthography
When Auden's first poem was published
How thrilled he must have felt--
Until he noticed that his last name
Was incorrectly spelt.

Meditation on a Word
The other day I ran into the word pratfall
(In a book, where else?) and paused
For a change to take myself a dictionary look
And thought, "Well, kiss my prat."

I remembered the T-shirted guy in the bar
Who threatened to whip my prat,
Whose girl stayed his biceptual arm
And said, "Oh, Ernie, don't be a prat."

And all my testosteronic teenaged friends
Whose conversation was filled all day,
Hanging out on a drugastore corner,
With talk of getting a "piece of prat."

And of each politician, from the President
On down the ticket, office by office,
Who, instead of steering the ship of state,
Does nothing but cover his prat.

I will think about this word now
On many a morning as I unwind
Some paper, not for the writing of poems,
But rather for the wiping of my prat.

But some Sundays, of course, I'll recall
That scene (in the Capital B Book, where else?)
In which Jesus went riding into Jerusalem
Amid waving palms on (what else?) a prat.

Pilgrimage
If ever you go to Camden
Where Campbell's Soup was made,
Be sure to visit the little house
Where Walter Whitman stayed.

On Mickle Street some blocks away
From where Delaware waters pass
The poet lived for years and years
Expanding Leaves of Grass.

There you'll see how ordinary
Was the life that Whitman led,
Only occasionally capturing
A new line in his head.

Most poets are like the rest of us,
Struggling to pay the bills.
Few are the ones who can afford
To tramp Wordsworthian hills.

They teach in colleges and give
Workshops and seminars.
They'd rather be Bukowski-ing
In seedy dim-lit bars.

Yes, go to Camden and observe
The Muse amid kitchen ware,
And learn of the simple quiet life
Walt lived till death right there.

Then drive to Harleigh graveyard
(It will not take you long)
To see the mausoleum he designed,
Of the Self his final Song.

And when you return from Camden
One fact for sure you'll know:
At the only house Walt Whitman owned
There was no lawn to mow.

portrait of the artists

Portrait of the Artists
Sexual tension must have been high
In the room that marvelous day
When Thomas Eakins, probably bi,
Met Walt Whitman, certainly gay.


Sonntag Morgen
It was a pleasant morning in Austria.
Wystan Auden headed for church.
The nearest one was Roman. He thought,
"Well, a beech is a green as a birch."

He found a place in the rearmost pews
And sank down on his Anglican knees.
There flowed about his educated ears
A Latin of soft c's and softer g's.

Hymn time came. He raised his voice,
Loud and offkey, in praise of God.
In Heaven there was a pause. God said,
"I'm hearing something very odd."

"That's Auden's accent," St. Peter said.
"Remember what he wrote about Claudel?"
"Remind Me. What was it that he wrote?"
"That You would pardon him for writing well."

"And I did, didn't I? Pardon him, I mean?"
"Yes, Lord. You did. You alwas do,
Disappointing all those fundamentalists
Who thought Hell's eternity was true."

God smiled. "Is it My fault that human minds
Can sometimes be led so far astray?"
Peter thought it was, but held his tongue
For what passed in Heaven for another day.

God seemed to think a while. Then said,
"Make a note, Peter, in that ledger you keep
To save room in the Mansion of Poetry
For Auden when he takes his Final Sleep."

Peter thought of the mansion God mentioned,
That place he considered a loony bin.
"No problem, Boss. You make so few poets,
I can always cram another in."

But the Almighty was no longer listening.
Tapping His toes, a grin shaping His mouth,
He'd tuned in to a black Baptist service
From a town in the American South.


The Old Formalist
Reads a Book of Criticism
A not very good poet has published
A very good book on the art.
Accidents are best described by those
Who have not taken part.


The Old Formalist Responds
To a Line in a Mary Oliver Poem
"...oh, have you
                looked wistfully into
                                the flushed bodies of the flowers"
                                                                        --"Whispers"
No. Can't say as I ever have, I answered
In a voice both wistful and hushed.
I have a policy of never looking into
Anything that might be flushed.
  

I Lisp'd in Numbers
The novelist, certain of immortality,
Undergirds his work with versions of myth.
The epigrammatist, knowing that he writes in snow,
Depends on the power only of his own pith.

Boredom: Porno
Though not to watch I am admonished
Nevertheless when I do I am astonished
At how really few are the ways that flesh
Can be made to mingle, merge, and mesh.

Claims Adjustment
That a slightly overweight insurance
Executive with thinning white hair
Who did most of his living in a quiet room
In a comfortably upper middle class house
In a small inland Connecticut city
Contemplating the age-old philosophical
Question of "The One and the Various"

Should come to become considered his century's
Most important American poet is exactly the kind
Of ironic truth that a slightly overweight
Insurance executive with thinning white hair
Would, in his quiet room in a comfortably upper
Middle class house in a small inland
Connecticut city, find precisely hilarious.

Road Work
They tell me that I must set myself some goals
And then make sure that I achieve them---
This, they say, is essential to my soul's saving,

Not knowing that I am a fully licensed
Heavy Equipment Operator
For a company called Good Intentions Paving.

On the Painters of Russian Icons
They've made blond my dark Christ.
They have drawn His Face thin.
Gold is the wisp-wire beard
They painted on His Chin.

But Child and Mother Mary?
Deep-eyed, somber and sad.
Ah, as we say in America,
Two out of three ain't bad.

On Envy
I know a man who is upright,
Virtuous, totally without fault.
Ah, I see he is wounded---
Let me get some salt.

Reading Writer's Market
I think often of Emily Dickinson
Saying to herself with a sigh
As she made a fair copy of a poem,
"Another no journal will buy."

On the Only Certain
Veritas that is in Vino
I drink through all the night
Cheap red Gallo wine,
And think how it sharpens
My conversational wit,

Yet the knowledge that I take
From all my drinking is
How runny tomorrow
Will be the shit I shit.

Point of View
Fish in aquaria appraise us
With slow and sidewise looks,
Glad that we're behind the glass
That bars our nets and hooks.

Prosody
The Old Formalist loves to answer
Positively with an "Okey Dokey,"
Smiling in his knowledge that he's employed
A dimeter using the age-old trochee.

Lament: English 101
Teaching undergraduates
Is really, really hard.
One asked the other day
If the Light Brigade's Charge
Was on Visa or on Mastercard.