"Confusion," "Rain," and "Les Gobelins"

Confusion

Once, in his presence, Churchill
got Irving Berlin mixed up 

with Isiah Berlin—the bulldog
perplexed that he had never read

the philosophic treatise “A White
Christmas.” I often mix up Manet

and Monet, but I never had either
over for tea, or good hard liquor.

Confusion can be the first step
to forgetting, not that this should

generate maximum concern if
one remembers there’s much, too

much to remember—throw a chest
or two overboard and wave tenderly.

Rain

The two younger Polish poets
who are reading haven’t ignored history,
but its weight falls on them lighter

than it did on their elders, the decades
of splendid, wrenching gravitas.
One of the poets reads a poem that claims

good literature requires good toilet paper.
Toilet paper needs its historians and poets
too—and I feel much better now. 

I travel down the huge elevator and walk
out into the rainy night in Warsaw, New
York City—here in Cambridge where

a little girl sloshes and dances in puddles
galore, knowing what’s important. 

Les Gobelins

In this Paris neighborhood
I read a book on The Resistance

to strengthen my poor French.
As I close the book the sun starts to set

and two pigeons land on the window-
sill, shaking some rain off their wings,

watching me closely like philosophers.
Buoyed by the valor of the past, I’m ready

to go out and order take out from a number
of establishments, ready to carry my baguette

of language with firmness and pride
down the boulevard, even singing a French

song I never realized I knew, doing a nifty
spin move past a man wearing a LeBron James

jersey who says something in French,
cheering me on, cheering me on, I’m certain.