The Carpentered Hen Read online

and the water, sluicing sideways, teases our direction.

  Indeed, we are lively, smug, and brave

  as adventurers safe after some great hazard,

  while beside our shoulders the landscape streams

  as across the eye of a bathysphere surfacing.

  TIME’S FOOL

  Frederick Alexander Pott

  Arrives at parties on the dot.

  The drinks have not been mixed, the wife

  Is still applying, with a knife,

  Extract of shrimp and chicken spread

  To parallelograms of bread

  When Pott appears, remarking, “I’m

  Afraid I’m barging in on time.”

  Frederick Pott is never late

  For any rendezvous or date.

  Arrange to meet at some hotel;

  You’ll find he’s been there since the bell

  Tolled the appointed hour. Not

  Intending to embarrass, Pott

  Says shyly, “Punctuality

  Is psychological with me.”

  Pott takes the most preposterous pains

  To suit the scheduled times of trains.

  He goes to concerts, races, plays,

  Allowing nicely for delays, And at the age three score and ten

  Pott plans to perish; doubtless then

  He’ll ask, as he has often done,

  “This was the time agreed upon?”

  PHILOLOGICAL

  The British puss demurely mews;

  His transatlantic kin meow.

  The kine in Minnesota moo;

  Not so the gentle Devon cows:

  They low,

  As every school child ought to know.

  CLOUD SHADOWS

  (New Hampshire)

  I

  That white coconut, the sun,

  is hidden by his blue leaves,

  piratical great galleons.

  Our sky their spanking sea,

  they thrust us to an ocean floor,

  withal with certain courtesy.

  II

  These courtly cotton-bellies rub

  around the jewel we live within

  and down to the muddled hub

  drop complements.

  Down shafts of violet fall

  counterweights of shadow, hence

  brown, blue, and gray occur

  upon the chipmunk-colored

  earth’s fur.

  III

  Pine islands in a broken lake.

  Beyond Laconia the hills,

  islanded by shadows, take

  in cooling middle distance

  a motion from above, and lo!

  grave mountains belly dance.

  A MODEST MOUND OF BONES

  (Pennsylvania)

  That short-sleeved man, our

  uncle, owns

  the farm next our farm, south

  and west of us, and

  he butchers for a living, hand-to-mouth.

  Once walking on his land

  we found a hill, topped by a flower,

  a hill of bones.

  They were rain-scrubbed clean—

  lovely things.

  Depending how the white

  sun struck, chips of col-

  or (green, yellow, dove-blue, a light

  bay) flew off the sul-

  len stilled turning there. To have seen

  those clickless rings,

  those prisonerless

  ribs, complex

  beyond the lathe’s loose jaws,

  convolute compounds

  of knobs, rods, hooks, moons, absurd paws,

  subtle flats and rounds:

  no man could conceive such finesse,

  concave or -vex.

  Some curve like umbrella

  handles, keys

  to mammoth locks. Some bend

  like equations hunting

  infinity, toward which to tend.

  How it sags!—what bunting

  is flesh to be hung from such ele-

  gant balconies?

  TO AN USHERETTE

  Ah, come with me,

  Petite chérie,

  And we shall rather happy be.

  I know a modest luncheonette

  Where, for a little, one can get

  A choplet, baby Lima beans,

  And, segmented, two tangerines.

  Le coup de grâce,

  My petty lass,

  Will be a demi-demitasse

  Within a serviette conveyed

  By weazened waiters, underpaid,

  Who mincingly might grant us spoons

  While a combo tinkles trivial tunes.

  Ah, with me come,

  Ma faible femme,

  And I shall say I love you some.

  SUNGLASSES

  On an olive beach, beneath a turquoise sky

  And a limeade sun, by a lurid sea,

  While the beryl clouds went blithely by,

  We ensconced ourselves, my love and me.

  O her verdant hair! and her aqua smile!

  O my soul, afloat in an emerald bliss

  That retained its tint all the watery while—

  And her copper skin, all verdigris!

  YOUTH’S PROGRESS

  Dick Schneider of Wisconsin … was elected “Greek God” for an interfraternity ball.

  —Life

  When I was born, my mother taped my ears

  So they lay flat. When I had aged ten years,

  My teeth were firmly braced and much improved.

  Two years went by; my tonsils were removed.

  At fourteen, I began to comb my hair

  A fancy way. Though nothing much was there,

  I shaved my upper lip—next year, my chin.

  At seventeen, the freckles left my skin.

  Just turned nineteen, a nicely molded lad,

  I said goodbye to Sis and Mother; Dad

  Drove me to Wisconsin and set me loose.

  At twenty-one, I was elected Zeus.

  DILEMMA IN THE DELTA

  An extra quarter-inch on Cleopatra’s nose would have changed the entire course of history.

  —Pascal, misquoted in a newspaper

  Osiris pales; the palace walls

  Blush east; through slatted arches falls

  The sun, who stripes the cushions where

  Empires have been tucked away.

  Light fills her jewels and rims her hair

  And Cleopatra ripens into day.

  Awake, she flings her parakeets

  Some chips of cinnamon, and beats

  Her scented slave, a charming thing

  Who chokes back almond tears. The queen,

  Her wrist fatigued, then bids them bring

  Her mirror, a mammoth aquamarine.

  She rests the gem upon her thighs

  And checks her features. First, the eyes:

  Weight them with ink. The lips need rose

  Tint: crush a rose. And something’s wrong

  Between her mouth and brow—her nose,

  Her nose seems odd, too long. It is too long!

  These stupid jokes of Ra! She sees,

  Through veils of fury, centuries

  Shifting like stirred-up camels. Men

  Who wrought great deeds remain unborn,

  Unthought-of heroes fight like ten,

  And her own name is lost to praise or scorn.

  As she lies limp, seduced by grief,

  There enters, tall beyond belief,

  Marc Antony, bronze-braceleted,

  Conceived where Rome on Tiber sits.

  Six sprigs of laurel gird his head.

  His mouth expels two avocado pits.

  “Now dies,” she cries, “your love, my fame!

  My face shall never seem the same!”

  But Marc responds, “Deorum artis

  Laudemus! Bonum hoc est omen.

  Egyptian though your wicked heart is,

  I can’t resist a nose so nobly Roman.”

 
; A WOODEN DARNING EGG

  The carpentered hen

  unhinges her wings,

  abandons her nest

  of splinters, and sings.

  The egg she has laid

  is maple and hard

  as a tenpenny nail

  and smooth as a board.

  The grain of the wood

  embraces the shape

  as brown feathers do

  the rooster’s round nape.

  Under pressure of pride,

  her sandpapered throat

  unwarps when she cries

  Cross-cut! ka-ross-cut!

  Beginning to brood,

  she tests with a level

  the angle, sits down,

  and coos Bevel bevel.

  MR. HIGH-MIND

  Then went the Jury out, whose names were Mr. Blind-man, Mr. No-good, Mr. Malice, Mr. Love-lust, Mr. Live-loose, Mr. Heady, Mr. High-mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Lyar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr. Hate-light, and Mr. Implacable.

  —The Pilgrim’s Progress

  Eleven rogues and he to judge a fool—

  He files out with the jury, but distaste

  Constricts his fluting nostrils, and his cool

  Mind turns tepid with contempt. There is brought

  A basin for him, in which to wash his hands.

  Laving his palms and fingertips, he finds

  An image of his white, proportioned thought

  Plunged in the squalid suds of other minds.

  Unmoved by Lust’s requests or Hate’s commands

  Or Superstition’s half-embarrassed bribe,

  His brain takes wing and flutters up the course

  First plotted by the Greeks, up toward the sphere

  Where issues and alternatives are placed

  In that remorseless light that knows no source.

  Here, in this saddle-shaped, vanilla void,

  The wise alone have cause for breathing; here

  Lines parallel on Earth, extended, meet.

  Here priests in tweeds gyrate around the feet

  Of Fact, their bride, and hymn their gratitude

  That each toe of her ten is understood.

  From this great height, the notion of the Good

  Is seen to be a vulgar one, and crude.

  High-mind as Judge descends to Earth, annoyed,

  Despairing Justice. Man, a massy tribe,

  Cannot possess one wide and neutral eye.

  He casts his well-weighed verdict with a sigh

  And for a passing moment is distressed

  To see it coinciding with the rest.

  THE ONE-YEAR-OLD

  (After Reading the Appropriate Chapter in Infant and Child in the Culture of Today, by Arnold Gesell and Frances Ilg)

  Wakes wet; is promptly toileted;

  Jargons to himself; is fed;

  Executively grips a cup;

  Quadrupedal, will sit up

  Unaided; laughs; applauds; enjoys

  Baths and manipulative toys;

  Socializes (parents: shun

  Excess acculturation);

  Demonstrates prehension; will

  Masticate yet seldom spill;

  Creeps (gross motor drives are strong);

  And jargons, jargons all day long.

  SUPERMAN

  I drive my car to supermarket,

  The way I take is superhigh,

  A superlot is where I park it,

  And Super Suds are what I buy.

  Supersalesmen sell me tonic—

  Super-Tone-O, for Relief.

  The planes I ride are supersonic.

  In trains, I like the Super Chief.

  Supercilious men and women

  Call me superficial—me,

  Who so superbly learned to swim in

  Supercolossality.

  Superphosphate-fed foods feed me;

  Superservice keeps me new.

  Who would dare to supersede me,

  Super-super-superwho?

  PUBLIUS VERGILIUS MARO, THE MADISON AVENUE HICK

  This was in Italy. The year was the thirty-seventh before the birth of Christ. The people were mighty hungry, for there was a famine in the land.

  —the beginning of a Heritage Club advertisement, in The New Yorker, for The Georgics

  It takes a heap o’ pluggin’ t’ make a classic sell,

  Fer folks are mighty up-to-date, an’ jittery as hell;

  They got no yen to set aroun’ with Vergil in their laps

  When they kin read the latest news in twenty-four-point caps.

  Ye’ve got t’ hit ’em clean an’ hard, with simple predicates,

  An’ keep the clauses short becuz these days nobody waits

  T’ foller out a sentence thet all-likely lacks a punch

  When in the time o’ readin’ they could grab a bite o’ lunch.

  Ye’ve got t’ hand ’em place an’ time, an’ then a pinch o’ slang

  T’ make ’em feel right comfy in a Latinate shebang,

  An’ ef your taste buds curdle an’ your tum turns queasy—well,

  It takes a heap o’ pluggin’ t’ make a classic sell.

  IN MEMORIAM

  In the novel he marries Victoria but in the movie he dies.

  —caption in Life

  Fate lifts us up so she can hurl

  Us down from heights of pride,

  Viz.: in the book he got the girl

  But in the movie, died.

  The author, seeing he was brave

  And good, rewarded him,

  Then, greedy, sold him as a slave

  To mean old M-G-M.

  He perished on the screen, but thrives

  In print, where serifs keep

  Watch o’er the happier of his lives:

  Say, Does he wake, or sleep?

  LITTLE POEMS

  OVERCOME, Kim flees in bitter frustration to her TV studio dressing room where she angrily flings a vase of flowers to the floor and sobs in abandon to a rose she destroys: “I’m tearing this flower apart like I’m destroying my life.” As she often does, she later turned the episode into a little poem.

  —photograph caption in Life

  I woke up tousled, one strap falling

  Off the shoulder, casually.

  In came ten Time-Life lensmen, calling,

  “Novak, hold that déshabillé!”

  I went to breakfast, asked for java,

  Prunes, and toast. “Too dark,” they said.

  “The film we use is fast, so have a

  Spread of peaches, tea, and bread.”

  I wrote a memo, “To my agent—”

  “Write instead,” they said, “ ‘Dear Mum.’ ”

  In conference, when I made a cogent

  Point, they cried, “No, no! Act dumb.”

  I told a rose, “I tear you as I

  Tear my life,” and heard them say,

  “Afraid that ‘as’ of yours is quasi-

  Classy. We like ‘like.’ O.K.?”

  I dined with friends. The Time-Life crewmen

  Interrupted: “Bare your knees,

  Project your bosom, and, for human

  Interest, look ill at ease.”

  I, weary, fled to bed. They hounded

  Me with meters, tripods, eyes

  That winked and winked—I was surrounded!

  The caption read, “ALONE, Kim cries.”

  TSOKADZE O ALTITUDO

  “Tsokadze has invented a new style—apparently without knowing it. He does not bend from the waist at all. His body is straight and relaxed and leaning far out over his skis until his face is only two feet above them, his arms at his side, his head up. His bindings and shoes are so loose that only his toes touch his skies. He gets enormous distances and his flight is so beautiful.”

  —Thorlief Schjelderup, quoted in The New York Times, of a young Russian ski-jumper

  Tsokadze leans unknowingly

  Above his skis, relaxed and tall.

  He bends not from the waist
at all.

  This is the way a man should ski.

  He sinks; he rises, up and up,

  His face two feet above the wood.

  This way of jumping, it is good,

  Says expert Thorlief Schjelderup.

  Beneath his nose, the ski-tips shake;

  He plummets down the deepening wide

  Bright pit of air, arms at his side,

  His heart aloft for Russia’s sake.

  Loose are the bindings, taut the knees,

  Relaxed the man—see, still he flies

  And only his toes touch his skies!

  Ah, c’est beau, when Tsokadze skis.

  PLANTING A MAILBOX

  Prepare the ground when maple buds have burst

  And when the daytime moon is sliced so thin

  His fibers drink blue sky with litmus thirst.

  This moment come, begin.

  The site should be within an easy walk,

  Beside a road, in stony earth. Your strength

  Dictates how deep you delve. The seedling’s stalk

  Should show three feet of length.

  Don’t harrow, weed, or water; just apply

  A little gravel. Sun and motor fumes

  Perform the miracle: in late July,

  A young post office blooms.

  TAO IN THE YANKEE STADIUM BLEACHERS

  (Having Taken Along to the Ball Game Arthur Waley’s Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China)

  Distance brings proportion. From here