Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

Friday Poem: "What Are You Doing"

What Are You Doing

Having done what I have done
Having done good or ill well or poorly
Having done until exhausted by time and circumstance
Now then what am I doing here after all

What am I doing
And what are you doing
Have you added up the days and hours
When the doing did nothing
When your absence would have made no difference

When what you seemed to be doing affected no one
Was turned inward or was trivial or irrelevant
Or a duplicate of a thousand days
Equally ineffective inconsequential
And only nightfall stopped the emptiness for sleep

So what are we doing here now and soon
Can it be explained to a sensible child
Imagine that child asking, "What are you doing here?"
Not "What do you do?" which permits
The great evasion a recital of occupation
That mask wrapped around a putative doing which
When removed reveals nothing nothing at all

Don't tell what your job is
Tell what you're doing with this precious life
And if you can not explain this to a child
Change your life

3/17-3/18/09
Copyright 2009 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission

Friday Poem: "Without the Children"

Without the Children

The night is a wonder
The children are fair
The trees loom splendid
The stars so near

The leaves are dancing
The children are there
The moonlight's whiskers
Prickle their hair

The night is appalling
The sky is bare
The woods stand glaring
At the children there

The moon is hiding
Oh where oh where
The children ride
A scarlet bier

The earth is turning
The fields flare
The children drop
From out the air

The ground is heaving
The rocks just stare
There is no sign
Of children there

The grass is burning
The clouds are stark
The day is turning
From light to dark

The dawn lies buried
The end is near
Without the children
Who will care

The world failing
Nothing fair
The dead's keening
Too much to bear


12/12/94-3/1/95, 8/11-8/12/07, 6/27/08, 3/7/09

Copyright 1995, 2009 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Among the Philistines"

  Among the Philistines

When the bombs fell I pulled down the shades
Settled comfortably in my warm home
Lowered the lights to rest my eyes
Watched a movie listened to music
Made early dinner of a generous salad
Orange pepper three kinds of lettuce
Cucumber tomato all freshly chilled
Country dressing upon my feast
Cool water from a brimming pitcher
An apple and a cookie to complete the meal
Filed some papers wrote a letter
Read a poem or two at random
Thought of Milton's  Samson Agonistes
"Eyeless…at the mill with slaves…"
Of dramatic ironies that blind us all
Brushed my teeth when I was done
My lids drooping as night grew deep
I bedded down beneath my quilt
Wind howling rain tapping my windows
Tomorrow I said to myself tomorrow
I will write a poem about Gaza
Tomorrow will be soon enough

12/29-12/30/08

Copyright 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "M's Place"

M's Place

This is the farm stand
And that is the farm beyond
Where the good vegetables grow
I know you will want to see
The Catholic church down the road
My dentist is further-on the right

There are other things too
Which I may show you
They help to give some definition
To what I am where I live
They help to give some emphasis
To what I am not essentially

Across the overpass and up the hill
You'll see my home and yes
The station nestles left below
This town will grow and disappear
But there is more of me not here
Than all that is left or right

Tonight there is not anything you understand
The cartoon colors have dried on the page
They say for making do the rage is two
And there's little else except I think
We the wicked choosing books to dream by
Getting to know the grocer ere he dies

Eyes are on us they do not see us
There are bills to pay no credit's given
Seven times round these hills I'll wander
And Tuckahoe may be my home again
But on this night to stray is right
Until nothing's left except to go

When you make the final turn
You'll be halfway between
The highway you came up on
And the one to follow down
Lest you lose your direction
I'll hold your hand long after you're gone

Copyright 1980, 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday 'Poem': "We do indeed need saving"

We do indeed need saving

Seeing the publicity bus of the Lubavitcher Yeshiva with the words Welcome Mossiach (savior) emblazoned on its well-decorated side:

Welcome Mossiach we do indeed need saving but are you the one who's got what it takes  Looking for a seer I tried Pearle Vision Centers but all they could offer were the usual suspects rimless 20 20 if you dare but no way to see beyond the moment of perception  I saw your truck on 57th neat immodest down the Avenue from St Pat's where Salvation is more regular and the Masses are always welcome  I've got to give you credit your Rebbe not long ago buried whom you had claimed the true Mossiach was only a bit of herring before the last supper 

Oh expectation oh anticipation oh 2nd 4th l00th coming pluck us once again from our mortal slumming stumbling spinning sinning sighing   Save us from each other and from the Church around the corner and from Liz and John Warner from Brooks Brothers and from property owners and from whatever ails us 

Now tell me can you do it

1997, 2008

Copyright 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Unpacking"

Unpacking

I have been unpacking
Unpacking my life
Some of you have done this
You move
The boxes arrive
Usually labeled
But when you open them
They are not quite
What the label promises
In each box you find
Something you did not know you had
Something special although unfamiliar
You suspect you should remember it

You realize you have forgotten your life
And somehow in the packing and unpacking
(Especially when others have done the packing)
It comes back to you
At first strange then gradually pleasurable
As if you'd dreamed a poem
And gone on living in it
A life better than the one you thought you knew

You begin to wish
The boxes would never end

8/28-8/30/08

Copyright 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "The Objects in My Room"

The objects in my room

My eyes fall sometimes on the objects in my room
A stolid desk the cabinet that holds my music's breath
The bookshelves colorful and slim an Afghan rug still
Clinging to its rhythmic red the busy reproductions
On the walls the table buried under scribbles much
  like these
All familiar housemates co-conspirators of dreams
Who in their kind restraint ask nothing that I do not
  ask of them
These gentle things enablers of my living
Neither unforgiving nor forgiving but in a state
Of readiness when in my need
I turn to lean on them

9/30/97, 7/1/08

Copyright 1997, 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Olympiad"

Olympiad

Here in America
damp as a sump
I'm pleading my case
to a jury of walls
searching for someone
friendly to gloom
who will swear
I am guilty
whatever the charge

Under the official
Olympic sun
Mammon is stroking
his money bone
the Goodyear blimp
sees no one alone
but there's lead
in the popcorn
glue in the coke
down in the Bottoms
we're dizzy with smoke

My Lord Ozymandias
Consultant for Soul
has surveyed the venues
laid hands on the land
with delicate fingers
of hourglass sand
the country is ready
burning but grand

Despite the Olympiad
I go limping on
taking my pleasure
wherever its spun
a little too lazy
to stay in the run
ear to the ground
eye on the gun

6/22-7/24/96

Copyright 1996 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "900#"

     900 #

I am on hold
Waiting for word
How long has it been
Long enough

God's telephone
Is always busy
No one ever
Picks up

Every few seconds
Chimes then voices
God loves you they say
For your patience

God forbid
He'd answer in person
Are the angels
On vacation

Bet you Satan
Has voice mail waitin'
     
1/28-3/l6/97. 7/1/08       

Copyright 1997, 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Alone"

Alone

I am alone
I confess it
A secret closely held
And all but little Celia
(Who tells me I am lonely)
Give it not a thought

Yet today in the market
Among the vegetables
Two beautiful little girls
The first in a shopping basket
Whom I invite to smile
Who almost does
A second tiny in a carrier
Pressed close to her mother
Who worries over to tell me
That she's shy
I beg to differ
Cooing at them both

Two more on line a bit older
Gaily dressed
Each with a Mylar balloon
For their parents' anniversary
I ask if they will be good to Daddy
And Mommy too one adds
Have I met the perfect children

Finally in the parking lot
A young mother
Struggling to unload
A brimming basket
Of groceries and a pair of girls
Wait till you have three I joke
To which she says
It's not going to happen
(Pausing) ask me another day
But they are so lovely I observe
And she in agreeing says
Perhaps I should perhaps I should

I depart smiling
From this garden of possibility
Nor lonely either now

No children not beautiful

8/28, 9/1/07, 6/27. 7/1/08

Copyright 2007, 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Out of some dodge of fate"

Out of some dodge of fate

What was to be my family
reached the American shore
a quarter century before
my mother bore me
and the Nazis stole the law

So I am alive some sixty years later
having avoided war and other maladies
but not avoiding guilt
my children adults now
spared the uniform of combat
or the Star of certain death

Two strands cabled across the sea
entangled on the mainland
and woven into me
who takes some ease
in knowing what he missed
but with remorse's twist
for the million children
who missed the boat

Out of some dodge of fate
I speak today
the missing voices
roaring in my wake

9/25/95, 2/10/98. 7/1/08

Copyright 1995, 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "My Age While I Read Rimbaud"

My Age While I Read Rimbaud

I notice I am seventy-five
Today this evening I am reminded of this
Even while thinking I am twenty
Twenty and in love verging on passion
Why now do I remember
Why now remember which
Who I am now
Who I was then
I am twenty
And I remember
When I was seventy-five

6/16/08

Copyright 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "A Vow Forsaken"

A Vow Forsaken

Struggling home at dawn
I briefly view an unexpected birth
Seeing the night I squandered turn to light

I vow to change my life
Rise early and write till noon
Feast only on salad and yogurt no wine

Never again be cross or self-absorbed
But self-absorption was all it was
Aflame in the fever of dissipation

As the sun rose up I tumbled into sleep
Awash in dreams of relevance
Of promises and starry nights to come

5/30-6/1/08

Copyright 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Memphis to Austin Talking"

Memphis to Austin Talking
      (for Courtney)

Now here is the wonder of it
A rightness to the talk
Something planted sensing springtime
And the warming of the earth
Discovery unfurrowed as if newly made
The past recaptured at the future's birth

And vaguely in the background
A passage through the dark
Rising out of Memphis dizzy in its pride
Westerly to Shreveport aglow with self-delight
And a guilty glance toward Waco
As it burns into the night

Then to Austin and dispersion
To our almost separate lives

3/11-3/16, 4/9-4/17/96

Copyright 1996 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "What game is this"

What game is this

Oh we are clever
alive
with escapade and risk
inventing and becoming
rich

The game is gelt
or gold or gilt
whatever gilds our trade

And trade it is
that makes us tick
move quick
move quicker
move quickest
to the goal

what is the goal

what game is this

8/5-10/11/95, 4/7/96

Copyright 1996 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Reading Sartre's 'Baudelaire' (and other Haiku excuses)"

Reading Sartre's "Baudelaire"
   (and other Haiku excuses)

                   I
Hidden sun today
August expectations fade
I too invisible

                   II
Windowsill of day
Slowly onward a beetle
I watch it glide

                  III
Falling the ant rises
And falling rises climbs again
Say we two are free

                   IV
Where there was nothing
Dams tall cities voyages
Where there is nothing

                    V
Charity of spring
A democracy of flowers
Paint for all I know

                    VI
In every weather
Love worn like a shoe
How thin the soul

                    VII
Smell of cut grass
Through tightly drawn blinds
Rescues me from sleep

8/18-9/6/96, 1/31/98

Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "To Have Lived This Long"

            To Have Lived This Long

To have lived this long in admiration of children authors of the book of
     laughter cartographers of the map of solutions whose commentary can
     always be trusted
To have lived this long in fealty to women without understanding them yet
      knowing their value as they melt or harden with the changing seasons
To have lived this long scowling at the genuflectors the cringers the
     clingers the gossips especially the barren patriots
To have lived this long among these barbarians even perhaps to have
      supported them by inaction to have tutted and tsked but not to have
      risked my body
To have lived this long clinging to this fractured bone yard into which I
     mumble even to think it worthy to lave it stuff it wrap it in cloth guard
     it from its just deserts
To have lived this long disguised as human as man as poet as comrade as
     lover as culture-carrier all these but masks of my strident my querulous
     mortality
To have lived this long tried by the body's ailments the mind's enigmas
     squirreled beneath shame's bravado the vulnerability of this sack of
     sorrow that bears my name
To have lived this long vain as any carrion humbled yet arrogant stumbling
     yet upright doomed yet in denial sitting here near noon forgetful of
     food of water of tasks of trials dumbly tapping out a poem:
     madness  ecstasy affluence

12/21/04, 12/30/04, 1/6/05, 10/7/07, 1/20/08, 1/24/08

Copyright 2004, 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "The Candidate"

The Candidate
(for the victims in Texas)

With his bouillabaisse of pieties
The Governor savors eternal life
Or a helping of reelection
He spreads his godliness
Like jam on stale bread
Starchy as his shirt
Hard as his cosmetic head

We do not deserve this
We who laugh lest we cry
Who cuddle our children
And dare not die

We do not deserve this arch betrayal
At the hands of a theological lie
We want our State kept separate
From panderers of the faith

We'd rather the poor be nourished
The ailing nursed to health
The schools proffer truth not fiction
And just uses for wealth

As for these "suits" trailing hosannas
Dante's lowest Circle for their derelictions

And if some among you find this frightful
I view the prospect as quite delightful

12/1-2/07,12/30/07, 1/2/08
Copyright 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Girl at the Electronic Catalogue"

Girl at the Electronic Catalogue

The bright screen as I pass
Alive alas with "Suicide"

The catalogue in dialogue
With a young girl's queries
And jocular I close the gap
To where she's fixed
With my crude question

"I hope it's not a choice"

"It was my brother's
I want to understand"

Such weighty mystery
The urge to leave
With or without goodbye
The leap across the space
From live to die

And though it seems volitional
We sense it is not so
These few less choosers than chosen
Go without a will
But not against it

Yet they think they will
Reaching for self-mastery
Or dreary and forlorn
Against particulars of bond
Against all other selves
To silence what offends
Not comprehending ends

I wish the girl well
Embarrassed to have stumbled
On the face of hell

8/14, 11/4/94, 4/7/96, 3/18/08

Copyright 1994, 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Thoughts After Snyder's Poem"

Thoughts After Snyder's Poem

What you should know
The poet said
To be a poet
To which I add a word:


Know who you are are not
Where your darkness starts
Words' weight in drams and scruples
What other poets do
The way the world works
How money hurts
Children's dizzy ways
Love's anagrams
The universe asleep
The space you cannot keep
The sound that needing makes
What you must not forsake

8/13-10/12/95, 10/31-11/17/95, 3/13/08

Copyright 1995, 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Trio"

Trio

  1.  Lake

A day in the country
Herb and I in a rowboat
Except I can't swim
Despite the lake enticing

Herb says jump right in
You can grab the boat
Or its mooring rope
You'll soon swim

So I jumped but stayed near
Cool water icy fear
And the fear held sway
I did not swim that day

  2. Matchmaker

For Herb a painful favor
Some words with Jean
To bring the two together

Did I not suppress desire
For myself just silence
But verbal for the other

And the service rendered
Love children marriage
Modest happiness quiet

But darkness not long later
His body lost to Hodgkin's
Sweet Herb gone forever

3. Jean's Cousin

A rage of rubies
Summer coral ebony gleam
Body like a flame

How could a straw man
With tongue of sand
Presume to love her

Now only time's pity
The memory of pain
And blandness without her

4/2-4/19/97, 4/16/98

Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Elevator Ride"

   Elevator Ride

My sluggard lift's
unhurried levitation
or descent
seems time ill-spent
departing from
returning to the firmament

Still better though
than bygone days
toiling the leaden stairs
and grateful for
a moment's breath
aspiring to the final floor

Thus on reflection
I learn time used
proportions to
the time we're in
and history
leavening impatience
brings perspectivist duration
to the time that's now or then
although tomorrow's time
continues dim

Unlike the present din
the past seems sensible
like the ride that's been
declines to jar repose
lets measure in

Oh but today does hurry so
as if fulfillment
is the only map we know
as if the little in our squint
if rendered with dispatch
would enable us to show
how it is we come
why it is we go

7/94-10/30/94, 11/3-11/17/07, 2/10-2/13/08

Copyright 1994, 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Flyer"

Flyer

                    I
I see by the A&P flyer
That Passover foods are a feature
Am I the only Westchester creature
Who doesn't post a calendar
Alongside his refrigerator
What a shock to my delicate nature
For holidays to burst upon the nation
In the midst of my disorientation

I'm a boat torn from its moorings
A pigeon whose cage has been hidden
A Muslim with no sense of direction
If indeed Passover is cooking
Why then Ramadan has gone wanting
And Easter verges on rising

                      II
When the gods have left the field
And calendars have their pages sealed
When celebration like menstruation
Bows to change of life
And a bored world surrenders
Theology to euthanasia

Then oh A&P oh Winn-Dixie
Oh Ralph's oh H.E.B.
Oh Stop and Shop oh Giant Food
Oh Safeway oh Grand Union
What ungodly but delicious specials
Will in your luscious flyers brood
Absent occasion to inspire your milky pleadings
Such as Season's Greetings and similar poop

3/17-3/23, 7/16-7/25/96,  6/13/07, 2/10/08

Copyright 1996, 2008 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Unafraid'

Unafraid

I'm not afraid
I have my tasks to pass the time
I keep a monthly calendar
Hang up my clothes at night
And like a pilgrim to a shrine
Appear every ten days
At the washing machine

Month after month
I welcome the cleaning woman
And I freely admit
I delight at the gleaming
Washstand that she leaves

Deep in the dead of winter
I count the days to spring
While ambivalently
Savoring the coming snow
And what is more precious
Than a steaming soup to take
The chill from one's bones

I would drink
But my doctor forbids it
Leap but my leg is lame
And were it not for my breathing
I'd be without complaint

At night I keep my clock in view
And from time to time
I check its progress toward the dawn
I feel a small uncertainty
Not really fear
Just a vague suspicion

I'd rather be awake

1/6-2/11/96, 6/22/98, 10/7/07

Copyright 1996, 2007 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "What We Do"

What We Do

Though blind we be we act as if we see
Pursuing sun or shadow whatever fits the game
And with each play a loss astride a gain
And something banished pleading to remain

What's done is never gone nor we the same
Be it rich in ribaldry or poor with shame
It spreads a gloom upon our history
Enshrouding innocence with mystery

Our choices grown of nature's very grain
Are footprints by our own dimension bound
We trample over loss to reach the found
And every sacrifice survives in us as pain

It is the reason for all song our screed
Of sorrow the hunger moving us along
An anamnesis in the bone that seeks the dead
Love's liquefaction down a waterfall of dread

And what begins in passion ends as moan
Our century exhausted the past a brackish crone
And that which we've diminished in our brazen grasp
We weave into a dream upon a loom of loss

We are wrapped in a round expectancy
Like a bracelet formed of snow
Faithfully intoning the poem of what we know
To give us ease my dears as we wait to go

12/10/94-4/5/95, 6/7-10/4/97, 6/28/98, 7/12/98

Copyright 1995, 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Metropolitan Museum (7/22/98)"

Metropolitan Museum (7/22/98)

Under the full-breasted dome of
Heaven corridors of giant vases
Announce the empty opulence
Of Egypt's vanguished throne

Van Gogh crouches under a moon
Of strangers spreading the starry                                              
Pigments of a hundred soaring
Colors across his canvas nights

Rodin broods in the hallways among
Alabaster women entwined in a glaze
Of passion who sip an endless kiss
Most of us have missed

The walls are draped in innocence
And lore with only naked Unicorns
To protect us from a swarm of
Peeping Toms who cry for more

From my balmy balustrade I gaze
Above bouquets of trees past Central Park
To the silent stands of stone and steel
That shield each day from art

On the terraced steps the tourists quaff
Their bottled fizz  The poor assemble for
Admission but the doors have zippered lips
I slip them through the walls

Around the Met's escarpments pennants
Celebrate the shawl of sun and breeze
The city overflows with honey
Green as the ooze of money

7/24-7/29/98, 8/17-8/19/98, 9/4-9/19/98, 12/24/07

Copyright 1998, 2007 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "A Talk with A. Zagajewski"

A Talk with A. Zagajewski

(After reading "A Talk with Friedrich Nietzsche")
--No one tells me anything new so I tell myself
my own story-TSZ: 56, Friedrich Nietzsche

I imagine you writing on a balcony in Paris
You float in freedom which at last you savor
Your words are tall as if on stilts
Moving above the history they try to capture
As the long reach of words moves over you

A fine hand cups your neatly bearded chin
As you try to understand how words catch fire
Your lyric ambiguities fan them as they burn
You know that Celan drowned them in the Seine
For in the end we are betrayed by words

I see you've built this dialogue in stone
And scrawled N's name upon it
Some shallow dream has beguiled you
Into mistaking the witness for the deed
As if guilt were nimble and like a cloak
Might be removed and transferred to another

Better seek the Nazis who rule death's lovers
Whose visions are blades burnished in ovens
Who call themselves Only Ones and have no mothers
They live today as if we had not suffered
In a world eager to be blinded by words
Where friendly absolution dances to their summons
They leave few traces they even wear our faces

But you will not find their seed in N's remains
The piety of cowards put him in their place
Giving him as ransom to obtain forgiveness
Sometimes the borders of the kingdoms blend
Sometimes the great dreams twist and bend

2/28-3/3, 6/5-6/6 96, 5/14/98

Copyright 1996, 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "On the Way"

On the Way

On the way to growing up
I kneeled in a farmyard
near an old Connecticut town
pellet gun in hand
sighting a sleeping feline
curled around a fence

Henry the farmer's city son
beside me as I peered
softly purred instructions
to keep my purpose clear

Here the task before me
was to incapacitate a cat
unknowingly recumbent
and incidentally fat
with shot of great potential
to wound or swipe a life

A life but just a cat's
immobile in my sight
not I nor it or daylight
stirring as I set

The universe breathless
sensitive to a sneeze
poised to shift its purpose
should I in a breeze
lend a hand to chaos
needing but to squeeze
this trigger near my heart
and break the puss apart

Which I did not
but put the weapon up
put aside that sight
seeing another setting
where cats belong all right

I could not hit the kitty
glad glad of that
returned the gun to Henry
saved two lives one the cat's

7/30-7/31/95, 1/26/98

Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Reading Sabines in the Parking Lot"

Reading Sabines in the Parking Lot

And looking up as you go by
I take you in
To see if there abides within
A dirty woman
One who laughs
Spirit with a glint
Wit pointed as a pin

I do this out of reverie
Boredom's affectation

And vanishing
You have no hint
Of who you'll come to be
Now that you belong to me

6/22-7/24/96
Copyright 1996 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission

Friday Poem: "When the Poem Was Done"

When the Poem Was Done

When the poem was done
Again old sorrows spun
The painful course rerun
As antidote to dying

And drained silence won
The welcome apathy
Of greying light
And day retired sighing

A warm particularity
Mulled over him
As if the dim objects
Dozing in his room

Were pooled in light
Shimmered where they stood
And tempted him to yield
And love the world

But then he heard
The beat of wings
An airy timber
From some graceful thing

And glancing out
Saw not some bird
But waves of memories
Upon a sea of words

And at his back
The room was black
And in this night
He turned to write

1/7-3/1/97, 1/31/98, 5/12/98, 3/20/02

Copyright 1997, 2002 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Something I Forgot"

Something I Forgot

We're sitting side by side
a woman half my age
and I both waiting
but for different doctors

We chat softly as if
we have been friends for years
beginning when an addled patient
marches across her foot
and I respond sympathetically

But then she's called
and then I'm called
and focus shifts to pain

Later as I emerge
she appears again  I hear
her doctor tell her to relax
I see the band aid spot
where blood was likely drawn

As we settle up we talk some more
I diagnose amnesia when
she tells the clerk she's forgotten
something the doctor said
she repeats the word as if
in recognition but then
I'm done and so we say
goodbye goodbye

Outside in the parking lot
I remember something I forgot
and head back just as she
comes out a woman wearing
shorts sandy-haired no name

As I rush by she asks if
I'm all right   just something
I forgot I say and dart inside

This is when a great sadness
settles over me

And does not leave

6/15-6/29/96, 6/15/07

Copyright 1996, 2007 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Squandered"

Squandered

We squander our hope
On those who possess us
Each of us tugged
This way and that
By desire's calculus
Its glib technology
Both sexy and fat

And the hoary ballet
Of the ritual ballot
The candidates preening
In the shadow of death
Makeup lights money
Their vanity glowing
The people unknowing

For what they are given
Is that which they'd given
To those who have taken
All that they had

10/29/99, 1/11/00, 1/20/00, 1/24-1/26/00, 9/22/07

Copyright 2000, 2007 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "In Time of War, 1942"

In Time of War, 1942

Weekly assembly
Bible reading
Principal intoning
Everyone white-shirted-bloused

Except for me
Whose sole white shirt
Unworn because unwashed
Which did not go unnoticed

An Assistant Principal
Castigator of trivial transgressions
Breathed fire upon me
Before my stony class

Melting me to a puddle of disgrace
In which I lay bleeding tears
And I never forgave
Even to this very day

What festered within her
To prompt such eager disdain
Heaping helpings of ineluctable shame
Upon a child in time of war

I see me weeping yet
Raise your hand who share my pain
Applaud she is by now forever dead
Whom lightning must have struck at last

10/3-10/6/07

Copyright 2007 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Used Book Sale"

Used Book Sale
   (sponsored by "Friends of the Library,"
   Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.)

Sarton, Blackmur,
Deutsch, Wilbur, Drew,
A Controversy of Poets,
Ariel, too,
Unlucky seventh at the top,
My modest cache of books
Culled from a skimpy crop.

To pay, I stop
Where the library's "Friends"
Stand about.
A young girl
Counts them out.

"She was my classmate,"
Says a "Friend"
Seeing Ariel
Above the pack.
"So much, of late,
About her."
It takes her back
To days at Smith
(With her, without her).

"You wouldn't know
What was in her, though,
Quite ordinary….
She tried to be…"
She hesitates.
"Like you and me?"
"Yes, but later
She was suicidal."
(But she was not idle.)

Pure white her hair,
Quite elegant and fair,
This "Friend" who stops to share
Her being there.
Her friend
Who steps across the floor
Makes quickly clear
She's heard these words before.

The girl hands my change to me,
Modeling impassivity,
"Enjoy,"  I think she said
(Although Ms. Plath is dead).

I bag my books,
The "Friends" have turned away,
I've bought the only copy
On display.

What more to say?

n.d. (ca.'95), 5/28/98, 9/29/07

Copyright 1998, 2007 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Julian Sorel"

Julian Sorel

In college I gave a talk in Comp Lit
On Le Rouge et Le Noir
The hour before class
I sat in the john
Trying to figure out what to say

Then stone-cold without notes
I walked in and talked about Sorel
For almost an hour

I may have told the story
Like a kid doing his first book report
But the students were held
As if mesmerized by my recitation
I recall being amazed at this

Afterward the professor said
You tell it very well
Which I thought a back-hand compliment
He was a continental but not German

It's a good story and if I told it
Then I'm glad I told it
Let someone more detached
Provide a fitting commentary

I felt too close to Julian
To judge him
Certainly not in public

7/10-7/11/95, 6/10/95, 6/10/07

Copyright 1995, 2007 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Poems--II"

Poems-II

Poems in the roadway found in tire tracks
Poems on soiled napkins rescued from trash
Poems inside matchbooks like something to buy
Poems on toilet paper unrolling without end
Poems in cereal boxes like prizes to be tried
Poems shaped in seaweed delivered by the tide
Poems on pink confetti dropping from the sky
Poems swallowed with my soup the letters warm inside
Poems etched in snow banks carved by careful birds
Poems slipping down my driveway out of melting ice
Poems in dictionaries that have rearranged their words
Poems under my pillow whispering in my ear
Poems in my fireplace born of ash and spark
Heat poems quivering as the noon ignites
Dream poems vanishing the moment I arise
Dust poems sun borne dancing down the light
Cloud poems leaf poems flying geese poems
Turd poems wind poems surf poems blood poems
Sand poems drift poems poems of blowing dirt
Death poems ringing coffins wrought by wriggling worms
Love poems found at morning drying on the sheet
Poems    poems    poems     poems     poems

1/9, 2/3-2/10/96, 6/10-6/11/97, 9/3-9/5/07

Copyright 1996, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Poems-I"

Poems-I

Poems stuffed in margins left and right
Poems alongside poems snug and tight
Poems intertwined like snakes
Like supple dancers
Like woven threads
Poems astride poems
Poems embracing
Poems spawning poems
Shadows of poems bleeding into space
Waves of poems flowing down the page

Only the poor may know this
For whom all things are precious
All scraps all spaces
For the rest to each her space
To each his lonely separate thing

Blessed be the poor
And the love of words
Of space for fullness
Of meaning for place
And of the whole for every part

May they be fed

9/28/94-3/31/95, 1/9/96  2/3/96, 1/30/97,  2/20/97,
6/10-6/11/,  9/3-5/07
Copyright 1995, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "The End of Mythology"

The End of Mythology

A sudden glow; the crowd struck dumb recoils.
Another sun more proximate alights
Upon the curled and breathless mass.  Frail hands
That cannot fend the fluoroscope are pressed
Upon the eyes, heads bow as if in prayer.

And then the blow that ravishes our myth
Impales the earth and ricochets full force
Upon the throng, a sound of many million wings,
The graveled shriek of vulture flocks upon
The corpse, and rising like a blossom from
The pit, a diadem of smoke and mist.

Transubstantial in its subtlety
The flower flows upon the wind until
The lurid form dissolves while essence lurks.
With time, the consummation of the innocent
Is done, extinguishing all scent of life:
Desire and the mother laid to rest
Amid the tranquil objects of decay.

ca 1955, rev. 1995, 7/9/07
Copyright 1995, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "No Hope"

No Hope

I am a long way
From making good poems
As I draw a bit closer
I feel further away
As I become more certain
I experience great doubt
As I grasp what I must do
My hands lose their strength
As I learn I grow foolish
As I succeed I wallow in defeat

There is no question
That I am making progress
For I am convinced
That there is no hope

9/29/94,  7/5/96,  6/25/07
(adapted from an aphorism)
Copyright 1996, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Love's Dying"

Love's Dying

I miss love's blindness
reckless with impiety

I miss love's unity
selflessness variety

I miss love's courtesy
grace beyond mortality

I do not miss love's dying
Still lingering…not quietly

3/17-7/12/97, 6/25/07
Copyright 1997, 2007 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "UT Library"

UT Library

Striding through
the reading room
his eyes a dog
a blind man is
pulled around the corner
padding out of sight

As if plain seeing
were all of life
I go on reading
glad of light

3/11-3/16/96, 5/5/96, 6/25/07
Copyright 1997 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission

Friday Poem: "Comforted Not Free (Valery)"

Comforted Not Free
      (Valery)

Vague amnesty of fact or fate
The knowledge of some deep mistake
When blood danced at soul's accession
Though moon-eyed whining murky woe
Still wheedles for propitiation
I kneel to memory's truncheon
Rehearse my clammy exculpation

Thoughts recover me of one
Whose passion craved to lie with sense
To marry act and consciousness
His history a slow agility
So luculent with avid reason
Entwining love's frail glitter

This cache uncovered in the mull
Drenches my cairn of pain in light
I burn for youth's high giddy flight
And fevered blazoning upon the sun

It leaves me comforted not free

5/16-8/25/94, 4/19/07, 7/22/07

Copyright 1994, 2007 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: 'Very Well, I Will Be Forgotten"

Very Well, I Will Be Forgotten

Very well, I will be forgotten, have already been by most.
Why, I'll probably forget myself as I've forgotten earlier selves, moments,
  emotions.
And the words I write-and too quickly forget-will last perhaps a
  generation
Before the clutter of books records papers will bury them out of sight.
For a time, some there are who will remember, even with feeling, well-
  meaning.  I will be briefly missed.
But, then, these others, dear people, in order to bear their present, will
  move beyond me as I moved beyond so many, earlier,
With only an occasional glance at the complexity that was theirs.

How, now, shall I excuse them in advance, who struggle against chance
  and time, parcels of joy and sorrow arrayed before them?
How shall I caress their innocence in my silence, my necessary silence,
  fearful of startling them?
I pay my homage to past and future, to the dead, to the young, my own
  memory a paltry offering, my few words, trinkets of my journey.
I am embarrassed to raise too many questions, to speak of love, to describe
  the pleasure I have been given.
Perhaps it is proper to please briefly, to be savored now and for a time in
  memory, then to fade softly leaving the future to find its place.

12/24/01, 6/15/02

Copyright 2002 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Perfect Dead"

Perfect Dead

You are improving
as you die
you will be
perfect dead
Rimbaud's life
by contrast
flowered early on
wilted and went wanting
while live enough
to rue it
each man his
own invention
each season
has her fugue

Descendants
eye us passing
as we push on
up the hill
look to us
for meaning
and we to them
for meaning
as buffaloed
as they
on our way
to dying
on their way
to rue

12/27/94-1/18/95, 1/20/96

Copyright 1995, 1996 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Theater Death"

Theater Death

I am in the Theater Death
Alone but not feeling alone
If dead not feeling dead
I go about my business playing out my role
It is not a time for taking chances
Everything is very serious
Scenes started cannot be stopped
Actions must be taken to conclusion
I know that if I begin to speak
My sentence will proceed inexorably

But what is my role
It appears to conform to the character
I remember to have been mine in life
My part consists mainly of inaction
A simple exercise in expectation
I am not Everyman I am Readyman

Although I play in isolation
I do not think I am the only player
I am confident of this
I expect others to step
Onto the stage at any moment
And perform some action in line
With what I do or do not do
I reassure myself about this
Saying I am not the only one
Someone has always come along
Death will not be different

I begin to imagine characters
To complement my performance
An old man sweeping the stage
Silently absorbed in his work
He passes close to me shuffling
Along uneasily the broom whisking
The boards but disturbing nothing
He does not greet me
He does not seem to see me
Yet I could make him notice me
For I have imagined him
But I will not do so deliberately
So as not to step out of character
And jeopardize my authenticity

Alone ignored but expectant
I feel almost like an exile
Whose task is to await a summons
To return perhaps in triumph
But to where seems not to matter

The old man continues sweeping
Except for him the stage is empty
How cleverly I have imagined myself

No doubt others would play this differently
In a bucolic setting or as a celebration
Say a gathering of loved ones
Full of warmth and good feelings
Such scenes are not in my nature
But were they to pass upon the stage
Absorbing other players I would understand
Might even applaud were it permitted

I think of those whose lives were unhappy
Tortured foreshortened exploited afflicted
What roles would suit them
In this Theater Death
Would they repeat their troubled days
Or alter them to suit some need
Replacing the grim with the halcyon
For me that is not an option
The Theater Death is the Theater Life as well
I lack the device to make it otherwise
I need to be what I can understand
Death must be the familiar thing

Were I to put all cant aside
All of this would be impossible
One cannot have a Theater Death
The roles fixed the script written
And nothing left to chance
If doubt waits in the wings
For even as we make our preparations
Moving about as if we are alive
We must know the drama's certain in the end

Thus confident we live on in rehearsal
Of Death as life's reversal
Mirroring the little that we comprehend

Think of God as Pirandello

8/15-10/21/95, 6/27/98

Copyright 1995, 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "This Special Time"

This Special Time

This special time
Immortal yet
Loud we trumpet
Inconvenience

The clothes are old
The neighbors loud
The grass is brown
The roses bowed

The night too loud
The sun so pale
The food turned cold
The rain now hail

The paint job flaked
The traffic dense
The mail tardy
The news nonsense

The belly flabby
The book too thick
The door still jammed
The salesman slick

And on we rant
And on we gabble
Alive but slack of purpose
And every day
We sputter and flay
Until we dribble life away

9/24-12/30/94, 6/10-6/11/07

Copyright 1994, 2007 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Lesson Two"

Lesson Two

               I
A false word makes
A doomed poem
Throws no shadow
Won't show on film

              II
Easy virtue
May cozen you
Seeking comfort
You lie with it

             III
But writing
A voice will say
Wrong wrong
The poem will die

             IV
And choiceless
In the hard dark
Heart stumbles
At soul's flaw

             V
Which it must rout
Like alien spawn
And for art's sake
Forsake the poem


8/15/96-4/23/97, 1/27/98, 2/9/98, 4/6/98                                                   

Copyright 1997, 1998 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Lesson One"

Lesson One

The lesson of objects
Is they do not mean
There is no wisdom in a thorn
Even if you bleed
No absolution in a stone
Though it be smooth
Stars neither dream nor grieve
The owl does not frown
No paragon of patience is the oak
Things do not teach or sign

Put mooing approbation by  Be strong
Your seeming mysteries are hollow
Nature although wonderful is shallow
Even the grandest poet may be wrong

7/21-8/3/96, 6/30/02

Copyright 1996, 2002 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "Lauded Poet at Home"

Lauded Poet at Home

The gardener does not know me
I drop the coins my fingers will not hold
My food I take from a tin
Soon letters will be coming
To tell me I am loved

My days were always numbered
Now they are numberless
Although I make myself ready
It is better just to live
Nor am I done forgetting

See you my slippers of gold
My medals prizes worthless amulets
Come we will exchange forgiveness
Come we will share a joke

7/30-8/24/96

Copyright 1996 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission.

Friday Poem: "It Is Well To Be"

It Is Well To Be

A poem is always in me
I rhythm with it daily
It ticks in me
It is my true time
The world otherwise being
Nothing really winning

No lapse in living
Loses it
And all grief
Which shadows me
It grows
To tops of joy in being

Nor is it less
A well for loving
Which music
Poems my body
As my lover
Is my meter
My hands and lips
A diction of desire

Thus while not
Immortal made
I sense the how and why
This breathing business
Is well to be
Glowing me with dark elation
Lighting my soul's parade

n.d. (prob. 60's or thereafter), rev. 5/18/94
Copyright 1994 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission.