Misery
Undramatic demonstration
the cops the clergy the professors having consulted together beforehand
so when we’d held up traffic long enough
the police politely handcuffed
the designated front-row dissidents
who politely stepped into the van. Motorcycles slowly blinking blue
pushed the rest of us up curbs; newsworthy it wasn’t.
I had been late for everything all day.
Right before the demo I took my amazing
step-mother-of-the-bride dress
to the Hong Kong tailor.
“These are way tight,” she remarked with perfect neutrality
when I got it on.
She was referring to the armholes. I’ve known her for years.
Between her place and Harvard Square
I half-sprinted past a filthy, matted man
bent and gesturing
like a grotesque on a cathedral, high up.
“There they are,” he screamed, waving towards the Square.
“The ding-bats. What do the ding-bats want now?”
I had just passed the fine Old Burial Ground
with its plain slate scallop-shouldered headstones.
“Aqui. Estamos. Y No. Nos. Vamos,” we chanted
in the late September light. We took wide-format photos of each other
standing firm; but I’ve never looked at mine again
and never will. Somewhere between the tiny graveyard from the past
and the gleaming CVS, I was stunned
by someone’s screaming misery.
His hatred was the headline of the day.
* * * * *
Cat’s Paws
1.
Patterns on the water; little lines
the wind might get some purchase on
or not
slight sensations
in the flesh
that might or might not build
into coming or sneezing.
Ceci n’est pas une pipe
wrote Magritte
beneath a pipe
and, one does feel, writing,
sometimes,
this is not a poem
just some fleeing little thing
you might or might not some day wish
you could remember where
you put.
2.
Then sometimes the wind persists
enough to raise the cat’s paws into waves;
nothing you’d see on TV
but still
real waves, with measurable peaks and troughs.
No one sucks
on the pipe’s brown stem
but the cut leaves in its bowl glow
red; and smoke spirals up.
It doesn’t matter if the poem pleases
others. Take a bow
as after three or four successful sneezes.