Ernest Hilbert Poems

for Irving Feldman

Already in the whistling glass of January air
Beneath the thunk and rattle of the great steel Elevated, they sit
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Midway through a now familiar passage
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When tracing new borders for the Middle East,
Churchill., drunk, allowed his pencil to slip
And left a thirty-mile polyp on the page
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New Orleans

Decisions are uncomfortable
In this atmosphere. Valves drain, swell to ballad—
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Necropolis, Vulci

I arrive, one more uninvited guest.
A June storm coasts down the horizon
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My father chased pirates on the Yangtze
And sowed moats on the great rust hills of Mars.
I stretched on the gently tilted deck. Cool sun
Flared through clouds dyed and bruised like the sea.
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The harpooned great white shark heaves onto sand,
Nudged by waves, red cavern of dripping teeth.
A crowd comes. Loud gulls wreathe the booming mist.
Blue flies cloud the fishy sunset, and land.
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The sky is warm and heavy before rain.
You throw down anchors. They till lines in soft
Clay, blooming muddy clouds. You sometimes slow,
Sometimes speed, as you pass forest and plain.
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What is the chance that it would fold like this?
In the silted gutter, edged by gravel,
Flanked by cigarette ends, receipts, and leaves,
A rubber band, very easy to miss,
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Nine days

Eating never seemed such a miracle,
Rest never so lonely or bathed with dream.
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