MAP ME AGAIN FREDRIK AND PIET

MAP ME AGAIN FREDRIK AND PIET


Out here on the celestial equator,
I am Monoceros, a faint constellation
barely visible among the brightest stars
that shine radiantly from the great circle.


I go practically unnoticed - like blood
seeping through the reddest terracotta,
or like minor chords being played slowly,
woefully over an elegiac reading of some
dejected and plaintive poet…


I want to be mapped again by the Dutch.
Instead of a shy unicorn – I want to be a lion,
an eagle, a bear, or a glittery whale
spouting water, like crushed diamonds,
around an imaginary sphere of infinite extent,
tilting and swimming in all directions at once.


I want to be on a different quadrant of an astrolabe,
a fresh copper engraving, pictured in a star atlas -
or just clearly visible on a plastic plansiphere
that rests deep in the pocket of an old woman,
who has designed her days by studying the stars.

Walt Whitman's Death Mask

WALT WHITMAN'S DEATH MASK

You started out superbly.
No one was more gifted or blessed.
You called yourself
a freakish character,
saying it was “damnable”
to be tailorized after a mode.
So, come on – admit it
you were a little Rabelaisian!


You were one of those big sprawlers –
your masterful words never touching
the lines of the white ruled paper
upon which you so liberally wrote.


You were a winger too -
an open-air man,
whose feet were
never really needed
for traveling.


Wasn’t it just yesterday that you
lolled in your high board bed,

over on Mickle Street -
eating pickled peaches
out of a blue glass jar,
while listening to sounds
from the street below?


And now your face
is all repose, and sweetly so,
with eyes closed and lips tight
and your splendid head
at its noblest and most serene.