At the South Portal
two house painters across
the narrow and rutted dirt road
sit on an outcropping of rocks,
each one eating a sandwich.
Standing near the stern, elongated
Martyrs in stone I give the painters
a Bonjour and they do the same,
lifting their long sandwiches like
a sword in greeting.
The temptation to ask the Martyrs
to come to life and join us is as strong
as it is silly, but if the miraculous
is not here, where is it, and why not
invite them out of simple kindness.
Same for the Apostles at attention,
even for Christ who doesn’t seem
to be enjoying his stone perch, ready
to appear again as a man to bless us
and the sandwiches that look so good.
FIRST DAY AT MARIENBAD
The serrated light of the sun
cuts each one of us—
affairs of the Heart, affairs of the State,
no place to hide.
Boats navigate the nearby canal,
a woman carrying a parasol
gets lost in the labyrinth of the garden.
Flashback to the world as it was,
as it never was—you knew, you knew—
what sadness, what happiness.
WALKING FROM M.I.T. TO HARVARD
Often in the hope
that the intellectual heft in the air
will make me smarter. It hasn’t,
in just the same way a boy failed
to solve the easiest of equations.
No genius tramping in his shoes,
no matter how certain my parents
were that I was one, readying to spring
my abilities on a stunned world.
Yet maybe it’s best to be content
with the knowledge of the geniuses
around me, especially of those
who ascend and travel over the Arts
and Science Buildings like a gang
of campus surrealists, those geniuses
I can’t see but know are there,
a sort of genius only I possess, after all.