For Geoffrey G. O’Brien And Hannah Zeavin
A little off key, I want to sing about the marriage
of pied beauty and truth. I sing a love song.
I’m between a baritone and a bass,
I’m more gramophone than cell phone.
May you swim and sail in an ocean of love
that crashes against the coastline of poetry
and psychotherapy where cliffs show
the traces of glaciers and prehistoric monsters.
You lovers know the arithmetic has changed:
one plus one do not make two, make one flesh;
one plus one may make a darling three.
The arithmetic of making love
has nothing to do with long division.
Arithmetic is not mathematics.
Mathematics is taking a shower or bath together,
splashing with humanity in a tub.
You join and divide group pleasures in a tub,
at the theater, or opera—now you’re all dressed up
it’s time for moving on, being-in-a-crowd,
dances, weddings, and birthday pleasures.
Three cheers! Three cheers!
(Harpo brings three chairs.)
Still Hannah may save a life at a distance
with a telephone call, Skype, email,
her work leads to group pleasures.
All these matters, private and public,
are reason the word love was invented.
I don’t know, is learning different from wisdom
as a cat from lion, a dog from wolf?
So get a dog, plant a garden because flowers, trees,
birds are also teachers. An old boy,
I could tell you something about
the Catskills, the Pyrenees, the Apennines—
something useful about cities:
Rome, Barcelona, Athens, Venice, Paris—
I hold cities in my fist like a bunch of flowers,
lyrics in my score: Rimbaud, Baudelaire,
rosemary for forgetfulness.
* * *
May you vote together in many elections,
champion each other’s freedom.
May you share your rights and wrongs.
I have resisted the urge to rhyme.
I want to make something like a wedding cake,
but what I’ve done is bread, or a bagel.
Everything I said is white bread, not whole wheat.
(Bond Bread is out of fashion, always white.)
I hope you separate the leavened from the unleavened.
Jews can perform their own marriage,
the bridegroom simply puts a ring on a lady’s finger.
Geoffrey, I just popped the cork—
I hope you choose to break a glass,
a second glass for the destruction
of the Library of Alexandria.
I sing in a band, can’t quite put this in rap:
I clap for Goethe, after sailing from Naples to Palermo
in 4 days, the main sail and Goethe flapped the news,
“No one who has never seen himself surrounded
by nothing but the sea can have a true perception
of the world and his own relation to it. . .”
* * *
Since all writing is part make-believe,
gentles, I can write a love poem from any lover
to any lover, pretend I was Steve
or Stephanie, pretend I could cover
or uncover genitalia familiar now as eyes,
get so close to a vagina or penis
I’m blind. To keep a certain distance is wise.
I told Geoffrey years ago, “Take an El Greco
out of its frame as if you were holding a baby’s eyes.”
I wish you good turns, north, west, east, south
in a King or Queen size democratic bed, with Venus
and Mars drinking from mouth to mouth.
Signs and wonders one night or day will cease.
The Gods know nothing about ego, super ego, or id—
riding the back of a centaur, outside their window is Cupid.
May the little God always keep you under
his wing, may you live in peace
that no man or woman shall put asunder.
* * *
We must live in the past, present and future tense.
I hear the sound of a cello string
plucked at the bottom of a well.
Cupid sings,
may he always keep you company—
without an orchestra, he can be a symphony.
Laughing, he says he is his own accountant, his senses
are his assets: hearing, touch, smell,
sight, and taste are recompense
for the liabilities of heaven and hell;
each may be empty as an answer with no question.
It’s time for nonsense.
Well, well, Rebecca at the well gave water to a camel.
Once I was a lion, I swam in the Grand Canal.
On the Bridge of Sighs, I give advice: talk things over.
There’s old news on the Rialto,
the past on clean white sheets is a bloody stain.
No secret, every god one time or other
wet the bed: Poseidon,
wanting to piss a river down a mountain,
pissed an ocean.
Who am I to give advice?
In a deal, I exchanged bed bugs for lice.
Don’t do that.
Leave a Welcome mat
in front of your door, answer the doorbell,
love the stranger as yourself.
I wish self rhymed with Jew.
Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
Take care of yourselves. Be singular and plural.
There’s proof on my bookshelf
I write with a pen, mostly rural.
* * *
There is grandeur in the everyday,
the sun and moon are ordinary.
We are all actors:
day plays night, night plays day.
Great inventions: the plow and metaphor.
I can’t help but write this verse.
I sing joy to the world and you,
but we are alone in the universe.
I remember one and one make one, not two.
I sing Hallelujah! in the chorus.
I lift a glass and say, “To life!”
although the firmament was not made for us.
The Great Actor
in the sky pronounces you man and wife.