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expands around us.
Reprehensible customs. Backward laws.
Ineffectual gods, my dear Titus Vilius.
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Heaps of Hernicians. Swarms of Murricinians.
Antlike multitudes of Vestians and Samnites.
The farther you go, the more there are, dear Servius Follius.
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These little nations are pitiful indeed.
Their foolish ways require supervision
with every new river we ford, dear Aulus Iunius.
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Every new horizon threatens me.
That’s how I’d put it, my dear Hostius Melius.
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To which I, Hostius Melius, would reply, my dear
Appius Papius: March on! The world has got to end somewhere.

The Letters of the Dead
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We read the letters of the dead like helpless gods,
but gods nonetheless, since we know the dates that follow.
We know which debts will never be repaid.
Which widows will remarry with the corpse still warm.
Poor dead, blindfolded dead,
gullible, fallible, pathetically prudent.
We see the faces people make behind their backs.
We catch the sound of wills being ripped to shreds.
The dead sit before us comically, as if on buttered bread,
or frantically pursue the hats blown from their heads.
Their bad taste, Napoleon, steam, electricity,
their fatal remedies for curable diseases,
their foolish apocalypse according to Saint John,
their counterfeit heaven on earth according to Jean-Jacques . . .
We watch the pawns on their chessboards in silence,
even though we see them three squares later.
Everything the dead predicted has turned out completely different.
Or a little bit different—which is to say, completely different.
The most fervent of them gaze confidingly into our eyes:
their calculations tell them that they’ll find perfection there.

Old Folks’ Home
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Here comes Her Highness—well, you know who I mean,
our Helen the snooty—now who made her queen!
With her lipstick and wig on, as if we could care,
like her three sons in heaven can see her from there!
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“I wouldn’t be here if they’d lived through the war.
I’d spend winter with one son, summer with another.”
What makes her so sure?
I’d be dead too now, with her for a mother.
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And she keeps on asking (“I don’t mean to pry”)
why from your sons and daughters there’s never a word
even though they weren’t killed. “If my boys were alive,
I’d spend all my holidays home with the third.”
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Right, and in his gold carriage he’d come and get her,
drawn by a swan or a lily-white dove,
to show all of us that he’ll never forget her
and how much he owes to her motherly love.
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Even Jane herself, the nurse, can’t help but grin
when our Helen starts singing this old song again—
even though Jane’s job is commiseration
Monday through Friday, with two weeks’ vacation.

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I’m a tranquilizer.
I’m effective at home.
I work in the office.
I can take exams
or the witness stand.
I mend broken cups with care.
All you have to do is take me,
let me melt beneath your tongue,
just gulp me
with a glass of water.
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I know how to handle misfortune,
how to take bad news.
I can minimize injustice,
lighten up God’s absence,
or pick the widow’s veil that suits your face.
What are you waiting for—
have faith in my chemical compassion.
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You’re still a young man/woman.
It’s not too late to learn how to unwind.
Who said
you have to take it on the chin?

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Let me have your abyss.
I’ll cushion it with sleep.
You’ll thank me for giving you
four paws to fall on.
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Sell me your soul.
There are no other takers.
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There is no other devil anymore.

Lazarus Takes a Walk
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The professor has died three times now.
After the first death, he was taught to move his head.
After the second, he learned how to sit up.
After the third, they even got him on his feet,
propped up by a sturdy, chubby nanny:
Let’s take a little walk, shall we,