The Car in a Maze
with Daniel
I believe the world is like a maze
When you make a wrong turn
It's like making a mistake in a maze
Cars make a lot of mistakes
Angels ride along with their little xylophones
God stays where he is
Cars can get bumped into leaves
Angels sleep for the whole day
God stays where he is
The moon hates to go in front of the sun
The sun hates to go in front of the moon
I don't like to get lost in the maze you have to walk in
Angels like to get lost in God - God is never lost
I like to get lost in my house
Copyright ©: David Shapiro
(in: New and Selected Poems - Burning Interiors, p. 237)
***
Henry Hudson Looks at the Hudson
Henry Hudson turned to me and said:
Be expressionless and strong as me,
Be grim and green, stout as Cortez,
Double lock yourself within
Like a warning wife, and be divorced
From nothing, at last be a statue
Of a self, and threaten at night like a landing,
Turn to your river, like a monist on a raft,
And always found your river on a fault,
Be blind and copper, a mania on a column,
Obscured, finally, by a single cloud of brick.
I love you, that is why I do not talk
About your humorous desire to appease.
Rather complain, like a man, that there is no river.
Copyright ©: David Shapiro
***
After Asturiana*
On the road to a door
On the way to a window
I saw nothing like a soul
Only the dust in competition
Lifted by the air
That was like a sailor joking
Nothing carried to nothing
A sailor was bouncing
In the world's salt: Now dance!
Now you are dancing like the world
Nothing equals nothing like a word
I get lost and make mistakes in your grace.
Copyright ©: David Shapiro
*The title may refer to a song by Manuel de Falla
***
On a Tennis Court
Playing without a net’s
Not such a bad idea*.
And what if the
Emperor’s clothes
Were a good idea,
As the painter said to me.
Playing tennis in the dark:
A lot like poetry.
Playing tennis in autumn leaves, is that
Too much like poetry.
Tennis is a game,
Therefore not poetry.
Nor is it a dream,
The opposite of stupidity.
But it is “the
Articulatory dance of the speech-
organs.“ You play it
In a field, the visual
Field without an eye.
You play it against a wall.
It rebounds endlessly.
By day, you are a tennis player.
By night, the famous other awakes
To brass and violins
That white-out you and me.
The friends disperse.
You engrave the tennis
Court, enmeshed like bottles.
The net flaps, like
A melancholy faith.
Only the businessman
Is confident, like an
Old metre, lilting.
Playing tennis without
A net’s not such a poor idea.
Playing tennis in the
Dark is a lot like poetry.
Copyright ©: David Shapiro
(in: Selected Poems, 2007, p. 234)
*This poem is probably a comment on Ashbery's "Tennins Court Oath" and/or a reference to the French Revolution.
***
The Similes
Kisses on the breast
like water from a pitcher
- Pasternak
Kisses on the breast
Like a gift rising
Like a comedian
Attacked by the military
Like a brain bursting
With wild gifts
Like a book of
Unusual expressions
Like kisses on the back
Of your back
Like the end of specious similes
Like a test of much theory
Like the Book of Windows
Like receiving fresh
Paint in the mail
Like being fresh to herons
Like snowflakes on your eyes
Like old friends coming
Home alive
Like outlandish confidence
In a game
Like the poem each line
Better than the next
Like two surprises in each line
Endless that still
Must end
Changing your name and
Your religion, too
Like including everything
And yet being clear at once
Kisses on the breast
Like writing in a dream
And waking up in an envelope
Copyright ©: David Shapiro
(in: In Memory of an Angel, 2017, p. 27-28)
***
After A Lost Original
When the translation and original meet
The doubtful original and the strong translation
The original feels lost like a triple pun
And the translation cries, Without me you are lost
Then be my dream, thin as the definition
Of a trance in a garden
The ambiguous friend responds, Perhaps I do astonish you
Like a boy confused with a butterfly’s dream
But you are my dream now, after all
If I don’t think of you, you disappear
After which they both comically disappear
Like a slice through two trees for a thousand years
Return knowing coldly a need for guerdons, guardians
Letters written on clouds, snakes on curtains and naked devices
Frighten them no longer since they live only together
Father and son refracted through blue green black moss
They travel together to the margins of a cloud.
Copyright ©: David Shapiro
(in: After a Lost Original, 1994)
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