THE BANK

The doors open at nine. The rich descend

To safety deposit vaults to clip and cash in

Coupons and hoard jewels. I go to a teller

Who tells me about a teller, Retig, who

Fled with a bundle, now serving double

Time in Attica, New York. I submit my paycheck,

Just enough to pay off payments, not a cent

For savings. O, I want to rob the bank,

All the money they make on money. I want

To visit, on visiting day, Carl Retig,

Find out how to do it, stuff small bills

In a bag, fly to Rio, to Peru, not be able

To spend so much in a day as I make

With money. And, if I'm nabbed by the FBI,

Caught napping, think of all the poems

I could read and re-read and write

In a federal prison, the rest of my life:

My Ballad of Ossining Jail, Surreal Penitentiary

Poems, Poems from the Clink, Pen Poems

For Pen Pals, and, at last, my Apocalypse!

A SOUTH SEA ISLAND

Especially when after the white snow

Piles up and a snow of city soot

Grays it and it turns to slush

And the gray slush mirrors the gray sky

And the avenue trees are black and naked,

I want to go where it is always Spring,

A South Sea Island, or any island paradise,

Like Gauguin, go native, maybe even paint

A little, an easel set up on the salt-sea beach,

Polynesian beauties, stripped to the waist

Surround me, hibiscus and breadfruit,

Manao tupapau, Spirit of the Dead

Watching. Of course, I will never go, son

Of a cold climate, will never abandon

Wife, dogs, house, children, life

Here at The University, love. But

The idea plays on in my mind like a movie,

And impels, like the swell of the sea,

Grand romantic gestures, that freeze

In my poems, raw ice dangling at the eaves.

THE FLORIST

I wish I could say it with flowers,

A poem about flowers: carnations

Or violets, nouns; snapdragons, verbs;

Whole sentences of heather. Or I wish

My muse, that old bitch, were a flower,

A green chrysanthemum or a blue-black rose.

I remember, first time in the madhouse,

I finger-fucked a whole bouquet

Of flame-red dahlias. The attendants were amazed.

Even sane, I love flowers and can

Gaze at poinsettias for hours. For me,

The hyacinth still says alas,

And a pale narcissus reminds me of death.

THE SYMPHONY

Lukas Foss conducting from the keyboard

I usually sleep like a Philistine

Dragged there by his wife, drugged

With the business of poems in my head,

Waiting for intermission, to get down

To the bar for a beer or whiskey.

During Brahms, my soul-master,

I doze, dreaming of Dvořák, his New World

Symphony, or, during Schubert, my god,

I drift to a plateau of gauchos

Riding the pampas to a water-hole.

Once, I awakened: Bach's Fifth

Piano Concerto, the second movement cantiline,

That afternoon you played it, in memoriam,

For Kennedy. I wept and went home:

Wept, because no poem could say it;

Went home, because that was the place

To go, the place--how shall I say it--

Where I could put it, again and again, on the stereo

A FUNERAL

The family sits aside, in a booth-box

Reserved for them, the widow sobbing,

The son holding back tears, the daughter

Peaceful in her sure belief in God --

All hidden, by a veil, from the friends

And colleagues of the dead man. The pall-

Bearers bear the casket in, to the chapel

Of a Hickman Avenue branch of the Dunn

Funeral Parlor, while the Hammond

Shrills out a voluntary. The pastor

Says a few words about life everlasting;

The congregation sings Nearer, My God

And, then, files past the coffin for a last

Look. Alone, the family goes, a group, to say

Goodbye, and the prodigal stoops over

To kiss the corpse, finding his father's lips

As hard and cold as ever, as hard and

Cold as the marble sets in the sockets

Of the eyes, sent, after death, to the

Capital City Eye Bank where they live

On, staring and mindless. Outside,

The fat black limousines cue up for

The long ride, out to the cemetery,

Headlights dimmed by the daylight.

At the family plot, ashes and roses,

Regrets and all the dreams of yesterday

Are lowered, on pulleys, into a 3 by 6 foot grave.