To Anna Jackson, Poet-in-Residence

who left a Poem on the Copying Machine

Anna, you know, some of us have the ambiguous fate, if not the wit,

to live in a tissue culture, cluttered with sneezes, phlegm,

and strange other noises in the nights of intimacy, the bit

old age enforces with its painful, spiky claws; and them,

who put me into sequences of famous poets, neurotic

and full of kvetches, my grandfather’s complaints, oy

gevalt gevalt into infinity, where sonnets erotic

or pompous, and palindromes used to pamper Troy

and its frustrated couples, dawdling at the gates

of victory, unwilling to clash or sin for gods—

them’s gotta understand that what they get in return

ain’t gonna be no classical golden plates

with their names engraved: against all the trivial odds,

it must be paper and plastic but still the Muse’s urn.

May 2001

Chelmington