THE DAY I MET AUDEN

The wintry day
of half muffled speech
though weary
from the taxi
in my red pastiche
of an overcoat
as a son of thunder
meets Auden
become enlightened
as we discussed
Eliot and Titian
and Keats' Grecian Urn
drinking a Sprite
in a Jamesian mood
invited to nones
at the Advent Church
on Beacon Hill
where Lowell
had his funeral parlor
among the blue bloods
and many wives
driving all to madness
from incestuous mirrors
by December's
conspicuous snow
and this poet and truant
now in private marble halls
near broken Greek statues
heads up to private legacies
trapped by his instinct
under aristocratic curtains
by travesties of past wills
as only laughter offers
a respite of escape
of stray sympathy
among these wasps
always fatally complaining
as idle memory builders
lost in chromatic fevers
and wrenching high estates
of Anglican virtues
in playfulness
of family riddled disasters
these Boston patrician exiles
with tentative sadness
bitch to enthusiasms
self-indulgent necrologies
taking a fortune cookie
and say a blessing
at least knowing you
W.H, in your charm offensive
as you promise me
to attend my first reading.