Fifteen Quatrains

Schadenfreude
Face it--there's a dirty secret
That's common to us all:
We go to the circus hoping
The acrobats will fall.

Quod Erat Non Demonstrandum
Reading of man's immateriality
In a book by an Eastern sage
I licked spit upon my finger
Every time I turned a page.

Urban College of Art
How fortunate is the young artist
Who is in the city set:
To have all those subway posters
With no mustaches yet.

Troop Movements
War is less a matter
Of bold Homeric scenes
Than that of thousand and thousands
Of makeshift latrines.

Tuition
My first lesson in deception?
I learned it as a kid--
When a young girl said to me,
"Let's not and say we did."

Vocatio
Even in my small Latin
I know my true temper:
Aliquando vates,
Versificator semper.

The Old Fan
Perfection? Perfection?
What do I know of that?
Bob Gibson on the mound--
Ted Williams at the bat.

On Learning that Annette Funicello Has M.S.
Death, that dirty old guy
With the biggest and blackest of ears
Is all of a sudden doing his dance
Among the Mousketeers.

On Learning that Heaney Cleared a Cool Million
Too many people think poets are ethereal,
Unconcerned with the things of this earth.
When they told Yeats that he'd won the Nobel Prize,
His first words were, "How much is it worth?"

On the Source of Poetry
Tell me, do you ever think
How defensively act the squid?
Troubled, they throw up screens of ink
In the way that I just did.

On the Quatrain
Even in the confining space
Of a four-wheeled circus cage
The pacing impatient tiger
Can perfectly express his rage.

On the Indifference of Nature
Pine trees fall in Southern woods
To make paper of all kinds:
Some sheets will bear immortal poems
And others will wipe behinds.

On a Highbrow Poetry Reading
I didn't like his reading.
I didn't like it at all.
He read as though his jockey shorts
Were a size and a half too small.

A Thought for the 17th of March
It was for the Irish Church a thing of great luck
That Patrick, trying to put the Trinity over,
Did not bend down and happen to pluck
A piece of four-leaf clover.

Annual Occurrence
Now it is autumn and all over the civilized world
They are being trucked in, bound and smelling of
Clean and slickly coated paper, the calendars

Of the coming years, to all the stores where we buy time--
Book and office supply and drug, even some
Once known as stationery with an e and not an a.

The year-to-come comes with all its ordered squares
Properly numerated, month after month, day after day,
With or without sentimental four-color covering prints.

Their salmon-like arrival at the banks of time's river
Manifests once more the human hope of a future,
As filled with faith as paintings on the walls of caves,

Even though for some there lies within those leaves
One unmarked day when they will never again
Feel anymore the need to confirm any dates at all.


Denial
You urge me to look upon the table
At the spread-out cards of my losing hand.
I turn my head and murmur Beckett's words:
Who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand?

Yes, I clearly heard the words, "Be realistic."
I caught the tone of your stern command.
I turn my head and murmur Becket's words:
Who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand?

I listened to you listing all the many ways
Things went ill, the bad results of all I planned.
I turn my head and murmur Beckett's word:
Who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand?

You tell me to face the unavoidable music
Like a Civil War soldier behind the band.
I turn my head and murmur Beckett's words:
Who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand?

While you are admonishing me, my imagination
Flees to some far place, let us say, Samarkand.
I turn my head and murmur Beckett's words:
Who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand?

Few are the patient people who can wait
For the clear day when others will understand
What Sam Beckett meant when he wrote the words:
Who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand?