November glare on Healey
Pond
blinds us to monsters and grotesques
trailing us through brittle forest.
I dreamt that friends collected forty
dollars to clothe you in style
for the coming Sanskrit conference,
your reworking of declensions
in the Rig Veda impossible
to understand or to refute.
At Saks we demanded a fashion
consultant to apply to you
the principles of human décor:
flow, tone, form, courtesy, wit.
The manager refused our request
and shoveled us out the door.
Traffic on Fifth Avenue coughed
and stalled. Taxis grinned shark-grins
as they digested their fares.
Forty stories up a man fell
and with your stock compassion
you caught him in your open arms
and placed him gently on the sidewalk.
His unshaven face resembled
a sea urchin. His cashmere coat
predated the Second World War.
When he tried to reward you
with a barrel of cash you refused
to admit you’d worked a wonder,
the fluted Art Deco daylight
puddling at your feet. The pond
emits light of a different color.
The monstrosities behind us
refuse to expose their grimace
so we plod ahead and pretend
nothing’s wrong. Maybe if you’d taken
the money we could bribe away
those demons; but our failure
to embody the principles
of human décor has conjured
certain ugly forces, and blinding
ourselves with afternoon pond-light
may be the sanest defense.
