There are two ways
of loving on the earth,
eating swan during the May Ball without compunction
or shame
and those who would like to avoid even looking at the might
and
sometimes irritated god
and what are you? are you one like me
who gave his
willow tree to the gardeners
after two years of keeping it in my
rooms
and when I returned it the old gone gardener replied:
I've been,
we've been awaiting you to bring it to us!
are you for the garden, or are you
for the swan?
two ways of punting: falling in or about to fall in
as the
old (my age now) porter said of returned grads (for a day)
They never 'ad it
so good again, Mr. Shapiro, they
never had it so good again
Oh how I miss
the antisemitic bedder who said, like Eliot's mother,
Hitler just didn't
finish them off sooner, Mr. Shapiro--
There are two ways of praying in
Cambridge at Clare:
not at all or going for coffee and psalms in the
morning
and when you go to the old shul they say: We've been waiting for
you
there is a Cambridge rebbe and he comes middle-aged to your cell
on Mem
court and says: I am finishing a Holocaust anthology
and at the time, it was
as shocking even appalling phrase, but isn't it still
and some horrible
worker laughed that the American students at Kent State
had gotten themselves
shot
I heard a phrase in my brain: Kill me, kill me
as Morgan Forster said
of Eliot renouncing Lawrence
There is a time to be a spider and a time
to be a fly
I choose to be a fly and not the spider
I see him now slowly
circling King's lawn and listening to my idiocies:
They're shooting American
students from the sky I said
He looked the cows in the eyes and murmured:
These things are so hidden
from us...here
as if a little bit to say at life's
end: Yes and why don't you keep it hidden for me
dedicated to Siegfried
Sassoon,
to Forster with two cheers
and to David Lehman who has
ears
-- David Shapiro (April 30, 2010)
