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The miraculous return of all those lost without a trace.

 

The thought that they've been waiting patiently offstage

without taking off their makeup

or their costumes

moves me more than all the tragedy's tirades.

 

But the curtain's fall is the most uplifting part,

the things you see before it hits the floor:

here one hand quickly reaches for a flower,

there another hand picks up a fallen sword.

Only then, one last, unseen, hand

does its duty

and grabs me by the throat.

 

 

You can't move an inch, my dear Marcus Emilius,

without Aborigines sprouting up as if from the earth itself.

 

Your heel sticks fast amidst Rutulians.

You founder knee-deep in Sabines and Latins.

You're up to your waist, your neck, your nostrils

in Aequians and Volscians, dear Lucius Fabius.

 

These irksome little nations, thick as flies.

It's enough to make you sick, dear Quintus Decius.

 

One town, then the next, then the hundred and seventieth.

The Fidenates' stubbornness. The Feliscans' ill will.

The shortsighted Ecetrans. The capricious Antemnates.

The Labicanians and Pelignians, offensively aloof.

They drive us mild-mannered sorts to sterner measures

with every new mountain we cross, dear Gaius Cloelius.

 

If only they weren't always in the way, the Auruncians, the Marsians,

but they always do get in the way, dear Spurius Manlius.

 

Tarquinians where you'd least expect them, Etruscans on all sides.

If that weren't enough, Volsinians and Veientians.

The Aulertians, beyond all reason. And, of course,

the endlessly vexatious Sapinians, my dear Sextus Oppius.

 

Little nations do have little minds.

The circle of thick skulls expands around us.

Reprehensible customs. Backward laws.

Ineffectual gods, my dear Titus Vilius.

 

Heaps of Hernicians. Swarms of Murricinians.

Antlike multitudes of Vestians and Samnites.

The farther you go, the more there are, dear Servius Follius.

 

These little nations are pitiful indeed.

Their foolish ways require supervision

with every new river we ford, dear Aulus Iunius.

 

Every new horizon threatens me.

That's how I'd put it, my dear Hostius Melius.

 

To which I, Hostius Melius, would reply, my dear

Appius Papius: March on! The world has got to end somewhere.

 

 

We read the letters of the dead like helpless gods,

but gods nonetheless, since we know the dates that follow.

We know which debts will never be repaid.

Which widows will remarry with the corpse still warm.

Poor dead, blindfolded dead,

gullible, fallible, pathetically prudent.

We see the faces people make behind their backs.

We catch the sound of wills being ripped to shreds.

The dead sit before us comically, as if on buttered bread,

or frantically pursue the hats blown from their heads.

Their bad taste, Napoleon, steam, electricity,

their fatal remedies for curable diseases,

their foolish apocalypse according to Saint John,

their counterfeit heaven on earth according to Jean-Jacques . . .

We watch the pawns on their chessboards in silence,

even though we see them three squares later.

Everything the dead predicted has turned out completely different.

Or a little bit different—which is to say, completely different.

The most fervent of them gaze confidingly into our eyes:

their calculations tell them that they'll find perfection there.

 

 

Here comes Her Highness—well, you know who I mean,

our Helen the snooty—now who made her queen!

With her lipstick and wig on, as if we could care,

like her three sons in heaven can see her from there!

 

“I wouldn't be here if they'd lived through the war.

I'd spend winter with one son, summer with another.”

What makes her so sure?

I'd be dead too now, with her for a mother.

 

And she keeps on asking (“I don't mean to pry”)

why from your sons and daughters there's never a word

even though they weren't killed. “If my boys were alive,

I'd spend all my holidays home with the third.”

 

Right, and in his gold carriage he'd come and get her,

drawn by a swan or a lily-white dove,

to show all of us that he'll never forget her

and how much he owes to her motherly love.

 

Even Jane herself, the nurse, can't help but grin

when our Helen starts singing this old song again—

even though Jane's job is commiseration

Monday through Friday, with two weeks' vacation.

 

 

I'm a tranquilizer.

I'm effective at home.

I work in the office.

I can take exams

or the witness stand.

I mend broken cups with care.

All you have to do is take me,

let me melt beneath your tongue,

just gulp me

with a glass of water.

 

I know how to handle misfortune,

how to take bad news.

I can minimize injustice,

lighten up God's absence,

or pick the widow's veil that suits your face.

What are you waiting for—

have faith in my chemical compassion.

 

You're still a young man/woman.

It's not too late to learn how to unwind.

Who said

you have to take it on the chin?

 

 

 

 

Let me have your abyss.

I'll cushion it with sleep.

You'll thank me for giving you

four paws to fall on.

 

Sell me your soul.

There are no other takers.

 

There is no other devil anymore.

 

 

The professor has died three times now.

After the first death, he was taught to move his head.

After the second, he learned how to sit up.

After the third, they even got him on his feet,

propped up by a sturdy, chubby nanny:

Let's take a little walk, shall we, professor?

 

Severe brain damage following the accident

and yet—will wonders never cease—he's come so far:

left right, light dark, tree grass, hurt eat.

 

Two plus two, professor?

Two, says the professor.

At least he's getting warm.

 

Hurt, grass, sit, bench.

But at the garden's edge, that old bird,

neither pink nor cheery,

chased away three times now,

his real nanny. Or so she says—who knows?

 

He wants to go to her. Another tantrum.

What a shame. This time he came so close.

 

 

In the snapshot of a crowd,

my head's seventh from the edge,

or maybe fourth from the left,

or twenty-eighth from the bottom;

 

my head is I don't know which,

no longer on its own shoulders,

just like the rest (and vice versa),

neither clearly male nor female;

 

whatever it signifies

is of no significance,

 

and the Spirit of the Age

may just glance its way, at best;

 

my head is statistical,

it consumes its steel per capita

globally and with composure;

 

shamelessly predictable,

complacently replaceable;

 

as if I didn't even own it

in my own and separate way;

 

as if it were one skull of many

found unnamed in strip-mined graveyards

and preserved so well that one

forgets that its owner's gone;

 

as if it were already there,

my head, any-, everyone's—

 

where its memories, if any,

must reach deep into the future.

 

 

He came home. Said nothing.

It was clear, though, that something had gone wrong.

He lay down fully dressed.

Pulled the blanket over his head.

Tucked up his knees.

He's nearly forty, but not at the moment.

He exists just as he did inside his mother's womb,

clad in seven walls of skin, in sheltered darkness.

Tomorrow he'll give a lecture

on homeostasis in megagalactic cosmonautics.