M.G. Stephens: New Poems | VISITORS
The Piccadilly Line to Leicester Square, I said, and then change for the Northern Line, But make sure it is the Edgware Branch, Get off in Hampstead, I’ll be waiting outside, Old, bald, worn, your classmate from grade school, Our old parochial school on Long Island, Many lives ago, when we still believed In the transubstantiation, and thought ourselves Quite cool souls migrating through the universe.
AUTUMNAL
A detour of ammonia and Shimmer, as if moonstruck On dappled leaves, trees Onward dalliance of light Of the atmospherics, the everness Of machine parts, unafraid, A kind of sympathetic whistle To the clever dampness, Friday’s grace holds us up.
APPLES (2)
Apples of the earth are potatoes by another name. The apple of her eye is love by any other name. Yet if I say your name, I see apples—Matisse apples in a bowl.
SWELTER
Tempers flare Everywhere
ALLIGATOR ALLEY
I stepped out into a street of alligators in London, wondering where I went wrong. The alligators were hungry, and tried to eat me, but I side-stepped them, and still they were angry with me. I ran sideways away from them, zigging and zagging through the dense city traffic, so that even far away, I could hear them. They cried, the alligators, for their old friend.
TOLMERS SQUARE The rain’s aftermath-- junkies sit around talking loudly: 7 AM on Good Friday.
THE GLASS OF MILK
When I contemplate the end, whose sell-by date, stamped on their ass, has come due? Who’s date just expired, like an old bottle of milk in the refrigerator that was left there too long? Who is next? By the grace of god, by dumb luck of my gene-pool, not being hit crossing the street, I am here right now, at this moment, writing this down, drinking a glass of soya milk.
WHAT’S LEFT
Red leaves, yellow, on the ground. Autumn leaves, and winter arrives.
THE DRAWING
This is what you draw, neither inference nor conclusion. The body of work. The body of knowledge. Light over dark. Chiarascuro.
OBIT
The death of poetry was kept from the poets
THE EARTH’S TILT
The pot is filled with spring posy (though it is late December), astromeria, pastel tulips (not my name for them, it says so on the wrapper from Waitrose), and daffodils, and all this love streams from it, like rain from a cloud or sunlight from the sun, like clouds moving towards summer, solstice to equinox, a cold fact, but warmest regards, and welcome back.
SOBER
The person I was Will always be Drunk The person I am Is not One day at A time
A FOGGY DAY
I walk these streets daily, learning bumps and fissures in the pavement, and I know who will say hello or nod or walk past me, the eternal stranger, though more often people smile and they’ll say, “Are you all right?” Home is here, even if I was not born here, and I grew up elsewhere. Besides I have the soul of an old Italian, the temperament of my long-lost French ancestors. But my accent is New York, My passport is Irish, and London is now home.
OBAMA
We the people You the man
IN THE GROOVE
One good poem follows another
IN THE BEGINNING (2)
There was noise, And then there was nothing. There was nothing more. There was only this, Only this, and nothing more: The rest is silence
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