Your Name Here: Poems Read Online Free Page A

thought of developing interests
    someone might take an interest in. No soap.
    I became very weepy for what had seemed
    like the pleasant early years. As I aged
    increasingly, I also grew more charitable
    with regard to my thoughts and ideas,
    thinking them at least as good as the next man’s.
    Then a great devouring cloud
    came and loitered on the horizon, drinking
    it up, for what seemed like months or years.

TOY SYMPHONY
    Palms and fiery plants populate the glorious levels of the unrecognizable mountains.
    —Valéry, Alphabet
    Out on the terrace the projector had begun
    making a shuttling sound like that of land crabs.
    On Thursdays, Miss Marple burped, picking up her knitting
    again, it’s always Boston Blackie or the Saint—
    the one who was a detective
    who came from far across the sea
    to rescue the likes of you and me
    from a horde of ill-favored seducers.
    Well, let’s get on with it
    since we must. Work, it’s true
    suctions off the joy. Autumn’s density moves down
    though no one in his right mind would wish for spring—
    winter’s match is enough. The widening spaces
    between the days.
    I sip the sap of fools.
    Another time I found some pretty rags
    in the downtown district. They’d make nice slipcovers,
    my wife thought, if they could be cleaned up.
    I don’t hold with that.
    Why not leave everything exposed, out in the cold
    till the next great drought of this century?
    I say it mills me down,
    and everything is hand selected here: the cheeses,
    oranges wrapped in pale blue tissue paper
    with the oak-leaf pattern, letting their tint through
    as it was meant to be, not according to the calculations
    of some wounded genius, before he limped off
    to the woods.
    The stair of autumn is to climb
    backward perhaps, into a cab.

MEMORIES OF IMPERIALISM
    Dewey took Manila
    and soon after invented the decimal system
    that keeps libraries from collapsing even unto this day.
    A lot of mothers immediately started naming their male offspring “Dewey,”
    which made him queasy. He was already having second thoughts about imperialism.
    In his dreams he saw library books with milky numbers
    on their spines floating in Manila Bay
    Soon even words like “vanilla” or “mantilla” would cause him to vomit.
    The sight of a manila envelope precipitated him
    into his study, where all day, with the blinds drawn,
    he would press fingers against temples, muttering “What have I done?”
    all the while. Then, gradually, he began feeling a bit better.
    The world hadn’t ended. He’d go for walks in his old neighborhood,
    marveling at the changes there, or at the lack of them. “If one is
    to go down in history, it is better to do so for two things
    rather than one,” he would stammer, none too meaningfully.
    One day his wife took him aside
    in her boudoir, pulling the black lace mantilla from her head
    and across her bare breasts until his head was entangled in it.
    “Honey, what am I supposed to say?” “Say nothing, you big boob.
    Just be glad you got away with it and are famous.” “Speaking of
    boobs ...” “Now you’re getting the idea. Go file those books
    on those shelves over there. Come back only when you’re finished.”
    To this day schoolchildren wonder about his latter career
    as a happy pedant, always nice with children, thoughtful
    toward their parents. He wore a gray ceramic suit
    walking his dog, a “bouledogue,” he would point out.
    People would peer at him from behind shutters, watchfully,
    hoping no new calamities would break out, or indeed
    that nothing more would happen, ever, that history had ended.
    Yet it hadn’t, as the admiral himself
    would have been the first to acknowledge.

STRANGE OCCUPATIONS
    Once after school, hobbling from place to place,
    I remember you liked the dry kind of cookies
    with only a little sugar to flavor them.
    I remember that you liked Wheatena.
    You were the only person I knew who did.
    Don’t you remember how we used to fish for kelp?
    Got to the town