Dear reader, I’m curious: of the versions below, which do you prefer (if either), and why?
I.
They built a grand monument to the dead
And the place where the stone was quarried
Soon filled up with rainwater
And the young couples would meet there.
II.
Built to commemorate the dead
This palace stands, untenanted.
By the still pool in the quarry pit
The lovers sometimes come to sit.
1.
Between the gray sky and gray
earth the darkling crowds
of those who
don’t and won’t look up
swell the concrete streets but
no cement can hold back time
no built thing can support the sky and
the earth holds me, but
I hold nothing:
holding nothing
back, again,
still.
2.
I can’t even
get lost just once, I
got lost then
right away
did it again. Later
that place I was headed for
changed into another, so
I never found it.
3.
Hip hooray for the Brooklyn Bridge!
A comic book for the Bowery Kids!
Nobody’s lost, nobody jumps,
We all stand up & take our lumps.
From here to Brooklyn, never back!
And into the great wide world at last!
4.
Never can remember
the endings of movies
quite right and then
I’m afraid to watch them
a second time
since what if the whole world
could come undone
just like
that?
5.
I used to love rocks and
talk about them. Now I don’t
remember why
I thought I knew so much, why
I thought the world was all
about the rocks.
Kids, huh?
6.
If the bay froze – right now, right away –
I bet those sharp gray
waves would fetch a pretty penny
you could cut up the bay, not have any
thing left but sunken wrecks and fish
skeletons, and everyone would wish
they’d bought a piece while they could
yeah, you best believe it would be a good
deal while it lasted, buddy
7.
I have this friend
let’s call her Chris I
haven’t seen her in
a while and I
forget if I owe her
a call or if
she owes me so
anyhow it’s pretty
late now
maybe in a day or two
I’ll remember
again
8.
She got her world from
Headlines, so was always in
Despair, or shopping.
9.
That creek meandering through
the grass doesn’t want
a thing and moves
always. That bird poised like
death on the bank
wants what it can
get; it doesn’t move
but once.
10.
This morning she was up
before me, who used to be
my slug-a-bed, my slow waker.
This morning she has
opinions, who used to
wait and see what things
would be like.
This morning as
I reached for my
coffee cup I realized
wait
this is no dream
this thing is real.
(a book review in verse)
Much had I travell’d in the realms of gold
And never found a blessed thing to eat;
For laurels, though they may smell very sweet,
As nourishment – try one? – they leave you cold.
By not one teacher was I ever told
There was a land both lowly and obscene
That Bill Zaranka ruled as his demesne!
His book was sent me by a flame of old
Bought from wherever such odd things were selling;
And now, some decades late, to write I’ve hasted:
For though I know that flowers are for smelling
I were a liar if I kept from telling
How many precious hours and days I’ve wasted
Since first I of Zaranka’s garland tasted.
Most get an afterlife that isn’t much
for having had one’s soul pried out and kissed by death.
Oh, yes, it’s heady for a while, everyone suddenly
so sympathetic to one’s finished life,
so seeking lessons from one’s progress, or
so plucking-out-the-moral from one’s last decline.
It’s not bad while it lasts,
and everyone makes nice, but honestly
it’s mostly straight from gravestones and condolence cards:
“Beloved mother, Loving wife,” and how
she loved her kids, her husband, animals,
was pleasant always, liked to dance…
Most dead folk get that taste of it.
But later, after the tepid food and drives back home,
after some hours or months of reminisce,
one’s absences become less notable; one starts to fade.
And then what’s left of one? A nice obit, scrapbooked;
a stray memorial card stuck in a dresser drawer somewhere.
But this!
If there’s a heaven, oh! She’s gloating there for sure,
knowing she’s in it for the long haul now;
the mortification of her outraged privacy
is nothing to such pride! Such an I-knew-it!
Her own death, the source of his triumph!
David and Anne are playing chess.
The game of kings.
David’s thinking tactically,
While Anne’s mind is on other things.
Anne plays White, but loses ground
In the center, and her concentration wanes.
Outside the room, the easy darkness
Presses at the window-panes —
She softly gazes out at it
As David launches his attack.
“Your move,” he says, and jars her back
Into the minding of the game;
She had been wondering at the way
The darkness called her name.
“Here he drank pastis with the mayors of the Basses-Alpes, and even found time to lecture on Edgar Allan Poe, although his new false teeth made it difficult for him to speak French.”
How pleasant to know Mr. Eliot!
With his Nobel Prize and ironical eyes
How pleasant to know Mr. Eliot!
He exhibits a mystical, mischievous dread
And he smokes French tobacco and lies in his bed
As he waits for the world to fall in on his head
(Taking comfort in knowing his poetry’s read);
And everyone says what has always been said
That it’s lovely to know Mr. Eliot!
If he drinks rather much and his teeth are quite new
If he finds it, you know, rather painful to chew
If he speaks somewhat slower than he used to do
It is only because he’s deliberate!
And if he seems chilly, it’s maybe because he’s been celibate —
But they say for all that, it’s still terribly, terribly,
awfully, horribly, pleasant to know Mr. Eliot!
To say
That you could never disappoint me
Is just to say you haven’t yet
And then extrapolate.
Of course you could.
Oh, when I think of all the ways you could
Undo me! It almost makes me weep
From the sheer foolish love of what you are so far,
My true love, my millstone.
Bag of Anything 