Grief, from Florence

                            in memoriam, Joseph Brodsky
                    

Grief is such a sundry thing,
So multiple its deep spring,
It rises fiercely and unbidden,
Floods us.  What we thought was hidden

Rushes over plains, drowns valleys,
Flattening piazzas, nulling alleys
Where the poorest poor lie down.
Grief sinks the whole town

From Bellosguardo’s tourist shelter
Down to Cimabue’s cloister.
You never knew when grief would seize you,
Never bought the myth it frees you.

In Venice, at least, when waters rise,
No one calls it a surprise.
Venice, where water made you feel
Peaceful, part of that chordate wheel

On which ocean and tear commingle.
Everyone’s a peer!  No single
Lover stands above the rest.
Each will have grief for guest.

And guest will ask for salt and pepper,
Will grumble at the vaporetto’s
Wail.  At night, he’ll make a rhyme
To break hearts, in its time.

Grief is such a sundry thing,
So multiple its deep spring,
Why should it not rise up unbidden,
When I had read what you had written?


   

Annuals

               after Horace,  Odes, I, iv



The lilacs have passed here, the wild columbine’s
In full force, and the pale purple phlox
Has begun its bold march on the woods’ verges,
While the crabapple’s blossoms are gone and the nodes of new fruit
Make bakers remember the perfected lattice of pies,
The imagined ease of that braiding.
Now suburban householders ravage the nurseries of annuals,
Plants of the year.  And how many years are we left
To install in pots the color of baked earth
The common white impatience, which the sun and the rain
Will bless through September, and pansies the color of plums
Under whose eaves the earthworm will rest
For one moment only, and the nasturtii, whose shocking
Dark red heads will come to weigh down their tendrils?
How many years are left to worship our flowers, to incline our faces
To theirs and, counting our breaths, to think what is important?

For, every dawn when you step to the door to see
The first morning-glory unfold, someone else is already walking,
And thinking where he will go.  We don’t know, we don’t know
Which door he will choose, but what will it matter, then,
Whether that old love of yours regrets his quick departure?
What will it matter?



                           
Love Poem


How many times can I play solitaire?
How many times consider thirteen,

or five and eight, ascending to none?
Or rows of seven, three down, four up,

as medication hums and the kind,
mild doctor who knows nothing of distress,

or the other one, in stiletto heels,
say what I want  to hear, and raise 

or lower doses as I see fit, 
while in the broken-off, next-to-dead limb

of our crab-apple, chickadees build a nest.
They’re ferocious workers, in-out, in-out,

and I am grateful for their lashings of weeds,
grasses, and plastic to knit family life,

making what is out of what’s there.
Whereas the treehouse took our friend

months and many trips to stores
until its octagon, planked floor,

which circles a maple, could sway in the wind.
It’s free up there and easy, but for bugs,

and that, too, is an education:
in damselfly, dragonfly,

mosquito, mayfly, midge,
all real steppers and biters,

not dream-harpies clothed as persons
buzzing down your own little highway

of life,  ready to do you in,
like Mr. Toad, who wanted only

what he wanted.

2.

And if I wanted to achieve the balance,
wit, and feeling of the treehouse, or

of Sidney in his Astrophil and Stella,
I am deceived about all art, or have been,

for Sidney was quite comfy when he wrote it
and re-collected carefully, and in tranquillity

that which had kept him feverish, unkempt
and staring in the wrong direction (as a youth),

as my neighbor used to do when he attempted
to decipher what the sirens said.

His hearing was off-kilter and he’d
be looking left  (while everybody else

turned to the right) wondering
who was ill or dying or was it

only school that had been cancelled,
as, on snow days in the town,

eight soul-deflating blasts gave the news
which those at the pale could rarely hear

and children stood for what seemed hours,
flapping in their silent white republic.

It takes time to learn a code

and solitaire may be a good maitresse:
you add, subtract, learn red from black,

how order’s rare, but pays, how women
play with men, it’s up and down

or left and right, as Sidney knew, for when
he spoke, as Astrophil, for all he said

that she was his undoing, with her push-me
pull-you yes and no, that  Stella

was his invention and solid, not a teaser, 
but balanced as a karyatid, as was his wife—

with him and pregnant at his death,
in love with all the things he did with words,

and, if ever flighty, only like the damselfly
which knows, well, where it’s going,

or like the crab-apple’s cast-offs
falling  (it’s spring now)

not freezing any body
but turning it to art.

ForPoetry