208.
Forgive that little lude or play between the going on
I lost the knack of not answering
myself
I stand accused of lying down a folly
to the Greeks
of rising up again at cock-crow and
my people know me not
for I was married to a windmill and a
lake
in summer rain every green a
different color
I set it down meaning to revere it
later
but then came Cossack horsemen
through the aching shtetl of my brain
and who knows now where reverence
went
thirteen Jews at a table telling the
joke that is God
who when he was lifted up healed all
the world but not himself
sunrise from the earth he had no self
to heal.
209.
I’m still with Abbot Benedict still
with Malory
cannonshot was supposed to be the end
of us
the middle time we called it when we
were young in it
now it’s only now and Internet is our
Maimonides
everything lasts everything changes
no one remembers
pleasure is the only gift study how
to please
it lasts as long as Christmas does seventeen
years and come again
I want to know the cycle of each
thing
lifespan of the chickadee of Niagara
of me for that matter but nobody
knows
how well we’d live if we knew the
date of our demise
olé! I die today.
