“Igor, you never listen.”

  Solitaire

  Black queen on the red king,

  the seven on the black

  eight, eight goes on nine, bring

  the nine on over, place

  jack on queen. There is space

  now for that black king who,

  six or so cards back,

  was buried in the pack.

  Five on six, where’s seven?

  Under the ten. The ace

  must be under the two.

  Four, nine on ten, three, through.

  It’s after eleven.

  Duet, with Muffled Brake Drums

  50 Years Ago Rolls met Royce—a Meeting that made Engineering History

  —advertisement in The New Yorker

  Where gray walks slope through shadows shaped like lace

  Down to dimpleproof ponds, a precious place

  Where birds of porcelain sing as with one voice

  Two gold and velvet notes—there Rolls met Royce.

  “Hallo,” said Rolls. His umber silhouette

  Seemed mounted on a blotter brushed when wet

  To indicate a park. Beyond, a brown

  Line hinted at the profile of The Town.

  And Royce, his teeth and creases straight, his eye

  A perfect match for that well-lacquered sky

  (Has zenith since, or iris, been so pure?),

  Responded, “Pleased to meet you, I am sure.”

  A graceful pause, then Rolls, the taller, spake:

  “Ah—is there anything you’d care to make?

  A day of it? A fourth at bridge? Some tea?”

  Royce murmured, “If your afternoon is free,

  I’d rather—much—make engineering history.”

  Player Piano

  My stick fingers click with a snicker

      As, chuckling, they knuckle the keys;

  Light-footed, my steel feelers flicker

      And pluck from these keys melodies.

  My paper can caper; abandon

      Is broadcast by dint of my din,

  And no man or band has a hand in

      The tones I turn on from within.

  At times I’m a jumble of rumbles,

      At others I’m light like the moon,

  But never my numb plunker fumbles,

      Misstrums me, or tries a new tune.

  Snapshots

  How good of Mrs. Metz! The blur

  Must be your cousin Christopher.

  A scenic shot Jim took near Lyme.

  Those rocks seemed lovely at the time.

  And here’s a product of the days

  When Jim went through his gnarled-tree phase.

  The man behind the man in shorts—

  His name is Shorer, Shaw, or Schwartz.

  The kids at play. This must be Keith.

  Can that be Wilma underneath?

  I’d give my life to know why Josh

  Sat next to Mrs. McIntosh.

  Jim looked so well in formal clothes.

  I was much slimmer than this shows.

  Yes, Jim and I were so in love.

  That hat: what was I thinking of?

  This disappointed Mrs. Weicker.

  I don’t know why, it’s very like her.

  The dog is Skip. He loved to play.

  We had to have him put away.

  I guess these people are the Wrens.

  An insect landed on the lens.

  This place is where I was inspired

  To—stop me, if your eyes are tired.

  An Imaginable Conference

  (Mr. Henry Green, Industrialist, and Mr. Wallace Stevens, Vice-President of the Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co., Meet in the Course of Business)

  Exchanging gentle grips, the men retire,

  prologued by courteous bumbling at the door,

  retreat to where a rare room deep exists

  on an odd floor, subtly carpeted. The walls

  wear charts like checkered vests and blotters ape

  the green of cricket fields. Glass multiplies

  the pausing men to twice infinity.

  An inkstand of blue marble has been carven:

  no young girl’s wrist is more discreetly veined.

  An office boy misplaced and slack intrudes,

  apologizes speaking without commas

  “Oh sorry sirs I thought” which signifies

  what wellmeant wimbly wambly stuff it is

  we seem to be made of. Beyond the room,

  a gander sun’s pure rhetoric ferments

  embarrassments of bloom. The stone is so.

  The pair confers in murmurings, with words

  select and Sunday-soft. No more is known,

  but rumor goes that, as they hatched the deal,

  vistas of lilac weighted their shrewd lids.

  Dilemma in the Delta

  An extra quarter-inch on Cleopatra’s nose would have changed the entire course of history.

  —Pascal, misquoted in a newspaper

  Osiris pales; the palace walls

  Blush east; through slatted arches falls

  The sun, who stripes the cushions where

  Empires have been tucked away.

  Light fills her jewels and rims her hair

  And Cleopatra ripens into day.

  Awake, she flings her parakeets

  Some chips of cinnamon, and beats

  Her scented slave, a charming thing

  Who chokes back almond tears. The queen,

  Her wrist fatigued, then bids them bring

  Her mirror, a mammoth aquamarine.

  She rests the gem upon her thighs

  And checks her features. First, the eyes:

  Weight them with ink. The lips need rose

  Tint: crush a rose. And something’s wrong

  Between her mouth and brow—her nose,

  Her nose seems odd, too long. It is too long!

  These stupid jokes of Ra! She sees,

  Through veils of fury, centuries

  Shifting like stirred-up camels. Men

  Who wrought great deeds remain unborn,

  Unthought-of heroes fight like ten,

  And her own name is lost to praise or scorn.

  While she lies limp, seduced by grief,

  There enters, grand beyond belief,

  Marc Antony, bronze-braceleted,

  Beloved of Venus as of Mars.

  A wreath of laurel girds his head;

  His destiny hangs balanced in the stars.

  “Now dies,” she cries, “your love, my fame!

  My face shall never seem the same!”

  But Marc responds, “Deorum artis

  Laudemus! Bonum hoc est omen.

  Egyptian though your wicked heart is,

  I can’t resist a nose so nobly Roman!”

  Shipbored

  That line is the horizon line.

  The blue above it is divine.

  The blue below it is marine.

  Sometimes the blue below is green.

  Sometimes the blue above is gray,

  Betokening a cloudy day.

  Sometimes the blue below is white,

  Foreshadowing a windy night.

  Sometimes a drifting coconut

  Or albatross adds color, but

  The blue above is mostly blue.

  The blue below and I are, too.

  Song of the Open Fireplace

  When silly Sol in winter roisters

  And roasts us in our closed-up cloisters

  Like hosts of out-of-season oysters,

                 The logs glow red.

  When Sol grows cool and solely caters

  To polar bears and figure skaters

  And homes are turned refrigerators,

                 The flames are dead.

  And when idyllically transpires


  The merger every man desires

  Of air that nips and wood that fires,

                 It’s time for bed.

  The Clan

  Emlyn reads in Dickens’ clothes.

  Tennessee writes fleshy prose;

  William Carlos, bony poems.

  Esther swims in hippodromes.

  Ted likes hits but hates his fans;

  Gluyas draws Americans.

  Vaughan pens music, score on score;

  Soapy sits as governor.

  I trust everybody is

  Thankful for the Williamses.

  Youth’s Progress

  Dick Schneider of Wisconsin … was elected “Greek God” for an interfraternity ball.

  —Life

  When I was born, my mother taped my ears

  So they lay flat. When I had aged ten years,

  My teeth were firmly braced and much improved.

  Two years went by; my tonsils were removed.

  At fourteen, I began to comb my hair

  A fancy way. Though nothing much was there,

  I shaved my upper lip—next year, my chin.

  At seventeen, the freckles left my skin.

  Just turned nineteen, a nicely molded lad,

  I said goodbye to Sis and Mother; Dad

  Drove me to Wisconsin and set me loose.

  At twenty-one, I was elected Zeus.

  Humanities Course

  Professor Varder handles Dante

      With wry respect; while one can see

  It’s all a lie, one must admit

      The “splendor” of the “imagery.”

  Professor Varder slyly smiles,

      Describing Hegel as a “sage”;

  But still, the man has value—he

      Reflects the “temper” of his “age.”

  Montaigne, Tom Paine, St. Augustine:

      Although their notions came to naught,

  They still are “crucial figures” in

      The “pageantry” of “Western thought.”

  V. B. Nimble, V. B. Quick

  Science, Pure and Applied, by V. B. Wigglesworth, F.R.S., Quick Professor of Biology in the University of Cambridge.

  —a talk listed in the B.B.C.’s Radio Times

  V. B. Wigglesworth wakes at noon,

  Washes, shaves, and very soon

  Is at the lab; he reads his mail,

  Tweaks a tadpole by the tail,

  Undoes his coat, removes his hat,

  Dips a spider in a vat

  Of alkaline, phones the press,

  Tells them he is F.R.S.,

  Subdivides six protocells,

  Kills a rat by ringing bells,

  Writes a treatise, edits two

  Symposia on “Will Man Do?,”

  Gives a lecture, audits three,

  Has the Sperm Club in for tea,

  Pensions off an aging spore,

  Cracks a test tube, takes some pure

  Science and applies it, finds

  His hat, adjusts it, pulls the blinds,

  Instructs the jellyfish to spawn,

  And, by one o’clock, is gone.

  Lament, for Cocoa

  The scum has come.

      My cocoa’s cold.

  The cup is numb,

      And I grow old.

  It seems an age

      Since from the pot

  It bubbled, beige

      And burning hot—

  Too hot to be

      Too quickly quaffed.

  Accordingly,

      I felt a draft

  And in it placed

      The boiling brew

  And took a taste

      Of toast or two.

  Alas, time flies

      And minutes chill;

  My cocoa lies

      Dull brown and still.

  How wearisome!

      In likelihood,

  The scum, once come,

      Is come for good.

  Pop Smash, Out of Echo Chamber

  O truly, Lily was a lulu,

      Doll, and dilly of a belle;

  No one’s smile was more enamelled,

  No one’s style was more untrammelled,

      Yet her records failed to sell

                           Well.

  Her agent, Daley, duly worried,

      Fretted, fidgeted, complained,

  Daily grew so somber clever

  Wits at parties said whenever

      Lily waxed, poor Daley waned.

                           Strained

  Beyond endurance, feeling either

      He or Lily must be drowned,

  Daley, dulled to Lily’s lustre,

  Deeply down a well did thrust her.

      Lily yelled; he dug the sound,

                           Found

  A phone, contacted Victor,

      Cut four sides; they sold, and how!

  Daley disclaims credit; still, he

  Likes the lucre. As for Lily,

      She is dry and famous now.

                           Wow.

  Sunglasses

  On an olive beach, beneath a turquoise sky

  And a limeade sun, by a lurid sea,

  While the beryl clouds went blithely by,

  We ensconced ourselves, my love and me.

  O her verdant hair! and her aqua smile!

  O my soul, afloat in an emerald bliss

  That retained its tint all the watery while—

  And her copper skin, all verdigris!

  Pooem

  Writing here last autumn of my hopes of seeing a hoopoe…

  —Sir Stephen Tallents in the London Times

  I, too, once hoped to have a hoopoe

  Wing its way within my scoopoe,

  Crested, quick, and heliotroopoe,

      Proud Upupa epops.

      For what seemed an eternity,

  I sat upon a grassy sloopoe,

  Gazing through a telescoopoe,

  Weaving snares of finest roopoe,

      Fit for Upupa epops.

      At last, one day, there came to me,

  Inside a crusty enveloopoe,

  This note: “Abandon hope, you doopoe;

  The hoopoe is a misanthroopoe.

      (Signed) Your far-off friend, U. e.”

  To an Usherette

  Ah, come with me,

  Petite chérie,

  And we shall rather happy be.

  I know a modest luncheonette

  Where, for a little, one can get

  A choplet, baby lima beans,

  And, segmented, two tangerines.

  Le coup de grâce,

  My petty lass,

  Will be a demi-demitasse

  Within a serviette conveyed

  By weazened waiters, underpaid,

  Who mincingly might grant us spoons

  While a combo tinkles trivial tunes.

  Ah, with me come,

  Ma mini-femme,

  And I shall say I love you some.

  Time’s Fool

  Frederick Alexander Pott

  Arrives at parties on the dot.

  The drinks have not been mixed, the wife

  Is still applying, with a knife,

  Extract of shrimp and chicken spread

  To parallelograms of bread

  When Pott appears, remarking, “I’m

  Afraid I’m barging in on time.”

  For Frederick Pott is never late

  For any rendez
vous or date.

  Arrange to meet at some hotel;

  You’ll find he’s been there since the bell

  Tolled the appointed hour. Not

  Intending to embarrass, Pott

  Says shyly, “Punctuality

  Is psychological with me.”

  Pott takes the most preposterous pains

  To suit the scheduled times of trains.

  He goes to concerts, races, plays,

  Allowing nicely for delays,

  And at the age three score and ten

  Pott plans to perish; doubtless then

  He’ll ask, as he has often done,

  “This was the time agreed upon?”

  Superman

  I drive my car to supermarket,

      The way I take is superhigh,

  A superlot is where I park it,

      And Super Suds are what I buy.

  Supersalesmen sell me tonic—

      Super-Tone-O, for Relief.

  The planes I ride are supersonic.

      In trains, I like the Super Chief.

  Supercilious men and women

      Call me superficial—me,

  Who so superbly learned to swim in

      Supercolossality.

  Superphosphate-fed foods feed me;

      Superservice keeps me new.

  Who would dare to supersede me,

      Super-super-superwho?

  An Ode

  (Fired into Being by Life’s 48-Star Editorial, “Wanted: An American Novel”)