October 2015
I live near Boston and teach philosophy at Boston University. Besides academic pieces, I write fiction (when I’m up to it) and poems (when I can’t help it). I use a fountain pen—my link to tradition—and write to music. I’ve published essays, stories, and poems in a wide variety of journals. A new story collection, Heiberg’s Twitch, is forthcoming.
In October
I watch the gorgeous whirling leaves and think
of the futility of eloquence,
each falling leaf a scarlet word that carves
the air then fetches up against the fence.
Millions of sermons likewise expire in
crisp heaps, desiccated by Monday,
that yesterday thudded through apses and ears
doing what words can to alarm or allay.
Yet even in their crumbling, words may leave
behind vivid after-burns of passion,
orange arias, vermilion swan-songs
sad and fragile in the antique fashion.
So the tender intuitions of April,
swollen by October to voluminous
tomes, fall with ruined wisdom as the leaves,
like old blind Oedipus, turn numinous.
The Emperor’s Nose
A man from Osaka
all dressed in alpaca
and wielding an ashplant of grey
once said a strange thing
to the Emperor Ming
on a very cold, very wet day.
As they strolled in the garden
he remarked, “Beg your pardon,
but Your Highness’s nose is all green,
and I think you had better
not get any wetter,
or you may give a sneeze that’s obscene.”
Now the Emperor sighed
and at length replied
that the weather was really to blame:
“It’s true my green nose
looks grotesque when it blows;
when it rains it is always the same.”
“Fear not, great Mikado,
though it’s quite avocado
a remedy’s easily found:
just wrap a blue string
on the end of the thing
and roll seven times on the ground.”
His Highness agreed
but I scarcely need
tell you how well this worked out;
though the Emperor rolled
like a ball that’s been bowled,
the pigment remained in his snout.
Sawbonical bores
were summoned by scores
to consult on his proboscan fate.
None knew what to do;
indeed very few
said anything till it got late.
At last one Asiatic
whose knees were rheumatic
stood up and wheezingly spoke:
“Should Your Majesty please,
I can cure your disease
with nothing but heavy blue smoke”—
whereupon he produced
a pipe and induced
great clouds of colloidal suspension:
“Sire, it cannot fail,
if you’ll lightly inhale—
it’s a cure of my own invention.”
Saying “I’m not afraid,”
the Mikado obeyed
and in minutes his color was normal.
They celebrated all night
with Nipponese might
in ways that were grossly immoral.
And now when it rains
on the hills and the plains
the Emperor knows what to do:
he lights up his briar
and the smoke from that fire
keeps his nose a quite charming hue.
I watch the gorgeous whirling leaves and think
of the futility of eloquence,
each falling leaf a scarlet word that carves
the air then fetches up against the fence.
Millions of sermons likewise expire in
crisp heaps, desiccated by Monday,
that yesterday thudded through apses and ears
doing what words can to alarm or allay.
Yet even in their crumbling, words may leave
behind vivid after-burns of passion,
orange arias, vermilion swan-songs
sad and fragile in the antique fashion.
So the tender intuitions of April,
swollen by October to voluminous
tomes, fall with ruined wisdom as the leaves,
like old blind Oedipus, turn numinous.
The Emperor’s Nose
A man from Osaka
all dressed in alpaca
and wielding an ashplant of grey
once said a strange thing
to the Emperor Ming
on a very cold, very wet day.
As they strolled in the garden
he remarked, “Beg your pardon,
but Your Highness’s nose is all green,
and I think you had better
not get any wetter,
or you may give a sneeze that’s obscene.”
Now the Emperor sighed
and at length replied
that the weather was really to blame:
“It’s true my green nose
looks grotesque when it blows;
when it rains it is always the same.”
“Fear not, great Mikado,
though it’s quite avocado
a remedy’s easily found:
just wrap a blue string
on the end of the thing
and roll seven times on the ground.”
His Highness agreed
but I scarcely need
tell you how well this worked out;
though the Emperor rolled
like a ball that’s been bowled,
the pigment remained in his snout.
Sawbonical bores
were summoned by scores
to consult on his proboscan fate.
None knew what to do;
indeed very few
said anything till it got late.
At last one Asiatic
whose knees were rheumatic
stood up and wheezingly spoke:
“Should Your Majesty please,
I can cure your disease
with nothing but heavy blue smoke”—
whereupon he produced
a pipe and induced
great clouds of colloidal suspension:
“Sire, it cannot fail,
if you’ll lightly inhale—
it’s a cure of my own invention.”
Saying “I’m not afraid,”
the Mikado obeyed
and in minutes his color was normal.
They celebrated all night
with Nipponese might
in ways that were grossly immoral.
And now when it rains
on the hills and the plains
the Emperor knows what to do:
he lights up his briar
and the smoke from that fire
keeps his nose a quite charming hue.
©2015 Robert Wexelblatt