LETHE

In the spotless hospice I visit my uncle Charlie,
The one who had English, and last of my father’s siblings

To leave their village. A wall-mounted TV plays
Without any sound. My uncle’s so weak he can’t speak.

When he’s asked to sip some juice through a straw, it only
Goes halfway up, then flows back into the cup,

Away from his lips. He closes his eyes in relief.
Now I squeeze his hand; now he bows his head; and kisses

The back of my wrist. Then headlong back to oblivion’s
Blankness sinks, on pillows. A kiss so resigned,

So fervently parched, you’d think he met the Pope.
Or was like old Priam beseeching the great Achilles.

My uncle, although not yet one of Pluto’s shades—
His lips are moving there, in the speechless dark.

He bows his head and kisses my writing hand
Again, in a dream. His bloodless lips won’t let me

Forget how it tastes, down there, to him, bereft.

MOON RIVER

Wider than a mile I’m crossing you in style
So Andy Williams would croon, when I was small

And my heart would lift to the tune that started with moon
Soaring like an open-vowelled balloon

In the rising stress the singer gave to river
Whose gleam still streams in the rippling sheen of wider

And mile and me all ears a wide-eyed child
Of moonlit water’s vast expanse as it flowed

From the living room and flooded our house with a sudden,
Melancholy kind of sheer elation—

As if I already knew the wide dark river
Was Lethe, and nothing would ever cross back over

Its current in style but Music, moon-river music
My parents were listening to when Lawrence Welk

Was on, and the shades were lamps in the living room.
All that came surging blindly back from the gloom

When I heard Ray Charles on NPR discuss
How he shucked the corny husks of the ancient chestnuts.

Except for that Andy Williams. “No how, no way—
Can’t touch Moon River,” said Orphic, full-throated Ray.

THEBES

Keep the voracious chthonic hearths well-fed.
But here in Thebes, please tell us, Porphory, why

All night Apollo’s altar is left unlit,
The charred remains remain unstirred. As if only

The sparkless ashes can speak to the blackest hours
In terms that kindle nothing. O golden Apollo,

How dark the darkest pyre snuffs out the day,
The day piled high with the depositions of night:

Terra cotta griffins, tiny bronze tripods,
Necklaces, rings, crutches, clasps, nails, cups...

Hooded by a towel, I bow my congested head
To a pan of boiling water, inhaling the healing

Fumes still rising up from the days when I
Was acolyte of the eucalyptus leaf,

And no one I knew had yet become a shade.
But here in Thebes, no sacred groves—although

Like votive scrolls the foliage unfurls,
Wherein each tremulous medicinal fern

The light appears to pool, like honey poured in a spoon.