Early in Morning in Front of the Café de Paris

During the night we are visited
by other entities—Morpheus,
les rêves, reveries, revels—
or cauchemars, those bizarre

bêtes, racing and beating from the dark;
demi-mondes and demigods of old
brim across the rims of dreams
and, coming in, abound and unbind.

But in the morning another time-between
slides in like a vowel to the tongue,
and the city lies ready, expectant,
certain of returning light—

lentement et doucement,
du pays des jours oubliés,
into which creatures of the night
retire fatigued—with a promise

made or met, and vowed again,
leaving their sweat and chill.
Then morning’s aureate light
begins to pour reborn transparence

even through the thickest hanging shades,
and romance, remembered again,
like music that recalls
its own forlorn melodies,

sets minds and hearts,
lost in the void and blank.
to a saving premier note—
a dove of white dropped

between low black keys.
As in Versailles on that day.
And in a finely balanced poise,
la lumière and le mortel point

toward their common, timeless anagram.

Should and Could Poetry Exalt This— The Transient and Mortal?

Les verres et même les versets,
quand les sourires incertains
qui nous forment ou nous changent
si insidieusement—pour le bien!

These let us return—altered—
from rings of knowing,
ripped and scrambled,
to letters we can read.

Are they not like nimble dancing
that unnerves the rigid
and the ghostly blank—

so that, out of disbalance,
the exalted and immortal
finds in you its lost entrée?

O How Deep Humanity Is Bogged and Buried in the Underworld

 

In and out of episodes
of loves and lives and deaths
slip migrant, scrappy souls—
to do and say, in turn,

to others and themselves
what they desire,
thus testing one another—

how far they have gone
off the deep end,
how much further
they can fall to pieces,

and yet always hoping
the very next episode
will be their all-time favorite.

One can see how much
mortals have learned
to disbelieve the soul
and what is real—

for so many struggle to live,
to love, and to die
as if to measure
how far they can get away

with shearing and skirting,
rigging—or undoing—
what is true and real;
and so we keep running

into one another’s desires,
replaying endless reruns
of Divine Comedy—
most of it set in Hell,

and, frankly, not something
so beautiful or fine
as to merit
the beatific gaze of the gods,

but rather the aberrant delight
of devils at play—

which means something grave
remains out of joint,

since so many vie—and would kill,
do their worst—
just to knock
at an eisodos, an entrance

to some Underworld,
ever more deviant than before,
to become yet another epeisodion,
another add-on

to the pageant
of human tragedies and follies.

Carnations, Incarnating Fascination’s Profusion

 

Their ruffled reds and pinks
in continuous bloom,
their fringed petals
thriving in full sun—

are crinolines,
petticoats, and hoopskirts
from long-vanished balls
of whirling orbs,

spun of skin-tight embrace—
oh, how many undergarments,
how much of such excess,

turned so firmly upward
on the stalks’ tightened legs—
and we, breathless:
could we stand?

Gestures of Hallowed Remembrance

 

October is the month
when the living
honor their dead,
each trying to recall
another’s presence—
or long-buried past.

And it was then, in 2017,
that I myself passed
through two
very different
Bohemian towns,
set on opposite sides
of the land.

In Telč, the autumn
found me in a park
at sunrise,
lost in morning mist.

Then, in Chýše,
I walked through a park
much like the one
by the château
where Karel Čapek
once wrote and lived—

the sun already grazing
the evening-softened hills.

Yet in both places—
at two far reaches
of space and time—
I met a flock of children,

and I was struck:

they greeted me
as if they had known me
for a long while—
or longer still.

O how devoutly I cherish
such gestures of remembrance.