Anatomical Poem

The Man With Three Faces

It’s all ok, he said, when the surgeons showed

him his new face in the mirror, I can live with this,

and then his wife opened her eyes, and gave him a kiss,

the first time on his new lips, their blushes glowed.

Well, it was a wrong medication, no one’s fault,

and the rest of his body rejected his map, after

all it was somebody else’s anyway, it would alter

nothing, except for several months he had no face,

and there could be no osculation—salt

in the wound, they said, but she might embrace

with her eyes closed again. But halt!

A doctor found another source, one to replace

the original and the substitute. I can live

with this, he said, our lips could again give

substance to the grand illusion, but they couldn’t,

except at a distance, through glass—she wouldn’t.

POEM

               Fiddle Faddle

Never one to mince his words, the butcher—

or was it a baker? for when you say mince,

the pie could be either meat or raisins since

anything goes these days. Sew it or suture

depends on where the stitches go, tapestry

or lacerations on the arm. The future,

they say, is for those whose mental tap is dry

not the ones who imagine liquid dreams.

So what he said was this: everything is false,

the speaker, the hearer, the stains on silent reams

of silken paper. Dance me a dance, a waltz,

a mazurka, a stately minuet or reels

around whose axle hysterics cry: Cease!

in whose gimlet eye there is no peace.

Mid April Poem

History of a Lost Primeval Fantasy

Whither or Wither Away

By ordinary reckoning, it was not so long ago,

and I still measure history by experience.

The generations are always getting shorter

the way an old man’s height shrinks. From whence

we may deduce, as those old ages said,

that between my father and his father and so

on back in time it is not so long. The door

when opened lets in a breath of air once breathed

by Napoleon or Charlemagne, like the worms

creeping in and out of Polonius and Caesar,

and just as one young Pharaoh forgot the promises

his father made, the first historian had premises

we can no longer believe in. And what we tell

our children, they will confuse when their own sons

and daughters ask for explanations. “Bizarre,”

they will say, “quite impossible and please don’t lie

to us. No one ever walked on the moon.

There were never times without the internet.

The oceans cannot freeze and people walk

from Siberia to Alaska. Besides, last year

you sang  us other songs mellow-voiced crooners

crooned, and said that men and women danced

together, and you listened to the radio

under the blankets late at night.” My mother

waited impatiently for the war to end. Her brother

disappeared in Hawai’i that December day.

I was bitten by a chicken on the West Coast

and heard the battles fought across the Pacific

though I was not yet four.  Later, on Iwo Jima,

the GIs saw the pictures I drew with crayons and glued

on the window for the passers-by to make
a V-for-Victory sign and smile at me.

On the day of Hiroshima I had my tonsils out.

By ordinary reckoning, this was not so very long ago.

My grandfather’s grandfather saw the Emperor

ride past through his shtetl in Poland bedraggled

while the snow was falling. I date every great event

by what I know or want to believe. The children

whispered that bubble gum would be back soon

and if I had a penny to put in the glass bowl

I could get some to chew.  This was impossible,

I thought, and so too the strange man by the train

two years later my mother said was my dad.

Many things cannot be true, even though they happened.

I cannot be as old as I am and everyone else disappeared.

Three Poems for the Spring Holidays

Hamilton Gardens, Early April

A blossom fell to the ground, still white, its stamens

Shivering in the sunlight, and one bee circled within

Eager so long as the nectar was intact, its smell

A seductive presence, and above on the tree,

The petals hovering in the sunlight, a trio

Of bees danced within, and then another,

All eager for the sticky juices, unaware the day

Was coming when the winds would shake them all away.

We walked alone slowly through the gardens

And alone in the sunlight of the last autumnal hour,

Prodding to each other to see the blossoms and the bees,

More aware than they of what the winter holds in store,

Unwilling to speak of what we know, under the trees

And the shadows and the need we felt to rest our feet.

Two of us for a Seder

Enough unleavened bread for the both of us, and wine

For a visitor who might magically appear, and some

Chopped nuts and raisins, and a hardboiled egg, herb

And shank bone burnt, but at the table, who

Could ask the questions and hide the affikomen?

Who was strong enough to sit, even aslant, so long,

Waiting for the rabbis to finish their debates?

This year we could not open the door for strangers

And cry our imprecations, or sip four cups,

Or repeat endlessly that it would have been

Enough, and so we forgot the little goat

Who cost my father two zizzim. The oven

Remained unopened, the borsht sat in its glass

Unslurped. This, too, we whispered, this too, shall pass.

Incident a little after dawn

Under the plum tree, the black cat worries something.

It takes a moment to realize the threat, the need

to bark. I should have seen in an instant the birds

were absent, not even balancing on the fence

nor hovering on nearby roofs, as is their wont.

Later, after the sparrows, blackbirds and thrush

clear away the morning’s white slices, the older brood

hops to the kitchen window to admonish me.

The looks they give assure me this is no simple lapse.

They could miss their crumbs and morning whistle.

They could even wait an extra day for water to be changed.

Had I counted them, as usual, to be sure all were there?

What they want me to know they cannot say, they

are so aghast and angry. God has failed them yet again.