FRIENDS WHO HAVE PASSED

This January third
taking poetic inventory
in taking up my word
interrupting my history
on this reading bench
in my sound proof studio
not forsaking a cup
of Russian kvass
up to my chin
feeling at loss
of poetry's friends
who have passed away
this year
trying to say cheers
in spite of their cross,
maybe you have not heard
of our loss,
let me fill you in
as we're feeding the sparrows
some French bread
by my snowy shadows
outside my studio doors
of my reading room
hidden by a shade
on snow flake windows
as we awake
to remember the dead
in this library
whose poetry and portraits
will always
be on my hallway walls
as love calls me above
by mirrors of my skin
away from chaos
as this year begins,
like Alexander - Volpin
son of Sergei Yesenin
of blessed memory
the famous son
Russian poet and dissident
who was at Boston University;
it is also a semi -centenary
of the French surrealist
and my mentor Andre Breton
as a critic wrote of me;
and already missing
the Beat poet David Meltzer
who loved books on loan
and from his own library
of the San Francisco
Sixties Renaissance
we also bemoan;
Ida Fasel,
born with a pencil
opening in her wise hand
rises from her first breath
and unwilling to let go
at the time of her death
who loved Faulkner
and Milton
of "Paradise Lost"
who wrote as a Puritan
so beautifully to atone
as a breather of phrases
about either Heaven and Hell
as Ida Fasel's pencil
at last crossed her paper
at the death knell;
John Berger
a well known
and well bred English
art critic also has departed
who was advanced
our understanding
Picasso's surreal art
as part of his dialect
and Marxist dialectics
to persist and resist,
but we go on like a swan
chartered on my map
from my kayak
I'm soon be back on the lake
under the red sun
near the Charles river bed
to celebrate with bacchanals
at the birthday
of Edgar Allen Poe
who like me born in Boston
also in January
B.Z. the eighth, Poe the 19th
when we awake at dawn
out -of -doors
even out among a labyrinth
of meteors and stars
or trudging through the snow
by composing lyrics,
panegyrics, elegies or epitaphs
near my studio windows
over my piano's music bars;
and all I ask as a poet
is not to be selfish,
separated or complicated
in this late metamorphosis,
but to be relevant
not tied up in knots
or to be outdated
by my dressing room
of past gloom and doom
or guessing at lasting
mournful shadows
but to realize what is up
not wishing to be confessing
as a scornful Hamlet
whom I played
and directed on the stage
but to live and love
above my circumstances
to summarize and share
at my age and deposit
from a task of language
and not to be a stiff
but out of my closet
playing solo jazz riffs
on my soprano sax
as I'm in a still life
trying to relax
watching "The Prisoner
of Zenda"
by my self-portrait
on loan
in my own artistic agenda
as an avant-garde poet
play writer,essayist
novelist and surrealist
as a bard at Cambridge
here by Harvard college
being supportive to create
at the strongest tree of life
to walk in forgiveness
in all branches of knowledge
supporting all who are free
by listening to birdsong
on my call of vetting words
and following
my rapid glances
on my computer
quoting Neruda,
"Love is so short,
forgetting is so long."