The Tomb of Stuart Merrill

from Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975)

        It is the first soir of March
	They have taken the plants away.
	 
        Martha Hoople wanted a big “gnossienne” hydrangea
	Smelling all over of Jicky for her
	Card party: the basement couldn’t
	Hold up all that wildness.
	 
        The petits fours have left.
	 
        Then up and spake the Major:
	The new conservatism is
	Sitting down beside you.
	Once when the bus slid past Place Pereire
	I caught the lens-cover reflection: lilacs
	Won’t make much difference it said.
	 
        Otherwise in Paris why
	You never approved much of my pet remedies.
	I spoke once of a palliative for piles
	You wouldn’t try or admit to trying any other.
	Now we live without or rather we get along without
	Each other.  Each of us does
	Live within that conundrum
	We don’t call living
	Both shut up and open.
	Can knowledge ever be harmful?
	How about a mandate?  I think
	Of throwing myself on the mercy of the court.
	 
        They are bringing the plants back
	One by one
	In the interstices of heaven, earth and today.
	 
        “I have become attracted to your style.  You seem to possess
	within your work an air of total freedom of expression and imagery,
	somewhat interesting and puzzling.  After I read one of your poems,
	I’m always tempted to read and reread it.  It seems that my inexperience
	holds me back from understanding your meanings.
	 
        “I really would like to know what it is you do to ‘magnetize’
	your poetry, where the curious reader, always a bit puzzled,
	comes back for clearer insight.”
	 
        The canons are falling
	One by one
	Including “le célèbre” of Pachelbel
	The final movement of Franck’s sonata for piano and violin.
	How about a new kind of hermetic conservatism
	And suffering withdrawal symptoms of same?
	 
        Let’s get on with it
	But what about the past
	 
        Because it only builds up out of fragments.
	Each evening we walk out to see
	How they are coming along with the temple.
	There is an interest in watching how
	One piece is added to another.
	At least it isn’t horrible like
	Being inside a hospital and really finding out
	What it’s like in there.
	So one is tempted not to include this page
	In the fragment of our lives
	Just as its meaning is about to coagulate
	In the air around us:
	 
        “Father!” “Son!”  “Father I thought we’d lost you
	In the blue and buff planes of the Aegean:
	Now it seems you’re really back.”
	“Only for a while, son, only for a while.”
	We can go inside now.