So your birthday is September 8
and we celebrated it on that day
or perhaps a day earlier
at La Closerie des Lillas where
the second bottle of wine cost
20 francs but tasted better than
the first bottle at 100 francs,
all figures approximate, and I will
not name the avid participants
but simply cite the occasion
as precedent for celebration
of you et les toits de Paris
whether on your birthday or
today or September 5, the date
of this poem from 1999:
September 5
Latrell Sprewell is the Marlon Brando
of the Knicks and the definition
of schadenfreude is my hollow laugh
when I tell you how Frank Kermode
lost two-thirds of his library
to the men he thought were movers
who were actually garbagemen
and the one-third of his library
spared was literary theory
which he used to be tolerant of
in a laissez-faire spirit but
has grown to detest now that
it no longer matters what
he thinks and you say Columbia
paid him not to teach the way
the government pays farmers not
to farm their land and now I know
how I want to spend this lazy day
the Sunday of Labor Day weekend
with a pot of coffee in my pajamas
all morning and you on the phone
from The Evening Sun (2002)
