I
Of course, we must die.
How else will the world be rid of
the old telephone numbers
we cannot forget?
The numbers
it would be foolish—
utterly useless—
to call.
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II
I remember very well when I asked you—
as if you were a friend—whether or not
I should go somewhere or other,
you answered: “It does not matter:
you are not at all important.”
That was true. But I wonder
whom you thought important.
He who has been in his grave
these ten years and more?
He is not important now.
Or he who is wearing out a path
in the carpet of his room
as he paces it
like a shabby coyote in a cage,
an old man, hopelessly mad?
Yourself, no doubt:
looking like one
who has been a great beauty.
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III
These days when I dare not spend freely
and the friends I meet are uneasy
that I might ask for a loan, I dreamt of you:
my friend at school.
I was going to ask you a question
and afraid you might find it foolish
(you were somewhat older and sensible).
The faces about you were shadowed
but yours was smiling, fresh and pink.
And I must be in my dotage
for I find myself weeping that you are dead—
who have been dead for a long time.
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IV
Sightseeing Tour: New York
1
The sky is a peculiar blue with small
clouds,
numerous and white: not the luminous blue
seen in paintings but a cheap opaque blue,
once painted in the vestibules of tenements
with the same small clouds;
yet here it is—
real sky, real clouds.
A young woman dressed in white
is seated on a bench in the park, eating an
apple
and reading a magazine: the apple is a sum-
mer pippin,
green outside;
but the inside is brown and decayed,
and she eats it with small, dainty bites.
2
The barber shop has curtains
but it must have been a long time since they
were washed
for they are a dark gray
and falling apart;
the window itself is dirty
and whatever signs it has are gray with dust.
The barber stands in the doorway
wearing a coat of uncertain white
over dirty trousers—
and he needs a shave badly.
The shop is called in bold letters
“Sanitary Barber Shop,”
and there are those, I suppose, who believe it.
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V
Fraser, I think, tells of a Roman
who loved a tree in his garden so much
he would kiss and embrace it.
This is going pretty far
even for a lover of nature
and I do not think it would be allowed
in Central Park.
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VI
Notes on the Jewish Holidays
Purim
The Jewess, Hadassah, takes the name of
the moon-goddess, Esther;
her kinsman, Mordecai, whatever his He-
brew name,
has the name of the Babylonian god.
If you have intelligence and beauty, Esther,
“tell no one of your people or your kindred,”
and you will live in the king’s palace and be
a queen.
“We are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed,
to be slain, and to perish!”
The hands, heavy with rings, are Esther’s
but the voice is the voice of Hadassah.
Passover
“Begin with the disgrace and end with
the glory,” the rabbis say.
The disgrace was not in being a slave—that
may happen to anyone—
but to remain such.
What was the glory?
To choose the Lord:
that is, the bread of affliction and freedom.
Chanukah
In a world where each man must be of use
and each thing useful, the rebellious Jews
light not one light but eight—
not to see by but to look at.
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VII
“O Lord, be with us!”
At my pious ejaculation
all the pigeons flew away
in terror.
Truly, our God is not like Aphrodite
“with her doves about her”
but the God of battles.
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