A Visit
It was a small family party
Aunt Olive who tried to save Dallas
pleased after death to have a park
named after her after death
Terrified I got up off my usual position
and didn't know whether to look or think
Afraid of an encapsulated psychosis
They were quiet: Elaine and Bill de Kooning took a look
and Kenneth so happy, surprised to have a Heaven after all
I decided to accept l0,000 years of imprisonment
if that would lighten my father's obvious punishment 'itself
lightened by his good works for workers
Meyer Schapiro looked on steadily
as if he were watching Kings of the Road
in the scene of excretion
Nothing human or divine was strange to him
And I had been crying when the 33 recording
of my grandfather voice played El Mole Rachamim
And I couldn't translate
whom he was calling supplicant
I asked for something faster or fall
Then John Hejduk arrived looking for his wife and son
happy as if he were building worlds again
And Fairfield in painting gear
who had predicted this before
that despite particulars something was the same
and my Uncle Bill born with an open heart
The dead were visiting
in the corridor
I was like a charlatan on TV
finding a smile (long) on the door
or like the philosopher who will always
wake and travel for a table risen
The dead were gathering, I saw them all
my calm father and my mother like two candles
And his grandfather Aaron atheist and good chess player
who taught me to castle early and lift my violin
My father's mother whom I hardly met
walked without me with my murdered aunts
in a nest of keys and locks
They weren't singing
As others concluded I let them go heard and listened to very little
The dead have been buried off the ground
I only saw them smile
the consolation of the need you'll say and where was Paganini,
practicing so loudly in the orchestra of heaven
where was my young dead friend Phyllis and her flute
And where I just had to look more
Before turning away in terror
A family party parting
Amateur chamber music
The delights of the dead
--David Shapiro (2004-8)
from The Hat
