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I picture wicker chairs
In summer, a garden party
For Trotsky, a gramophone
In the weeds…playing
That song again
A chorus
For the workers
Who finally
Have enough to eat

Auntie history hears books
Shelf-talking
This is ok at home
But not in vast libraries
Once in Madrid
She went almost mad
The cacophony
So she ran
Into the Plaza de Colón Square
Convinced her hair
Was blazing
Later
When she was calm once more
She reflected
That negative electricity
Is as good as positive
Since both are electricity

A muffled music box
Is the first thing Uncle History remembers
How he went searching for it
In the sad palace
Looked high and low
Everyone has this
This musical toy
That can’t be found
Now he’s old and thinks
He’ll soon lie
Beneath the earth
Where music
Is concerned
It’s not likely
Underground
But the tune
He remembers
Was indistinct
This might mean everything

“Something smells bad in the refrigerator”
Says Uncle History—“Maybe its
A rotten egg” says Auntie
“I think it came before the egg”
Says Uncle—“the stink
Is the malador
The primal stench…”
“Its a funk” says Auntie
“Its been sneaking up
For some time”
They say this
Simultaneously
Like children
Spotting a ballon
It drifts over them
And inured as they are
To mephitic vapors
They salute

Because they’re “Auntie” and “Uncle” History

One surmises they’ve brothers and sisters

“That’s a good guess!”

(As they say on game shows)

Alas they’ve no relatives

Though strangers often come

To camp on their lawn 

Who are these folks 

Claiming kinship?

There’s old Slappy

Who feeds the furnace

And laughs at nothing

And Alexander Blok

Waving his bloody shirt

My spirit is old; 

And some black lot awaits me
On my long road…

Auntie History wants a small life
But she can’t get it
Things balloon
Even the death of a mouse
Becomes Napoleonic
Her needlepoint
Is a wall of hieroglyphs
She’d reverse engineer everything
Make a circus tent
Into a simple hat
But small things
Won’t let her
Negentropy builds
Systems grow
She can’t say
Who is doing the measuring
She thinks
She should have married Nietzsche
When she had the chance

Uncle History imagines a world without words
He knows that the place would kill him
So he’s essentially suicidal
Persistent too—keeps thinking
No language
People free to do as they wish
His face darkens like Rousseau
The prospect
A planet minus nouns
No one to keep track of things
And Uncle’s grave unmarked
Perhaps an old mule walking there
To nibble the grass
He just can’t snap out of it
He knows he should
He knows lots of things
That’s the trouble

Suppose I told you about the killing
Not of enemies but your neighbors
You’d say it can’t happen here
Until you’re forced, until its clear
And rubbing your eyes does nothing
They’re innocent the murdered ones
Latin: not harming—innocent
Gunned down, people you know
Or knew—or knew—or knew
We listen for their steps
But they’re already gone
The good ones
People next door

Its the sort of rain
That starts in late afternoon
And now all the houses stand alone
Women and men forget their names
Though some
Still carry pocket watches

**

America
Is like seasickness
But without the ship
On a ship they bring you
Consommé and toast

**

Carl Jung:

We can certainly hand it to Augustine that all natures are good, yet just not good enough to prevent their badness from being equally obvious.

This is also seasickness.

**

Run around in childhood
In old age run around in your head

**

I need the alms of my own kindness

**

Jung again:

Whatever happens in a given moment has inevitably the quality of that moment.

Here’s where our power resides: the given moment changes every time we remember it. As a small boy I had a toy monkey. I kept him in a cupboard. When I remember him today he’s my brother.

**

Difficulties are necessary for health, again, according to Jung.
I must be very healthy. Very.

**

Tell me about the music under the museum, below the sewer and beneath the bedrock. The original song of Manhattan. Whitman heard it. I want to hear it also.

The music says there are no intellectual shortcomings and you can be a genius without personality.

**

This seasickness and the song above are promises. Each of us, alone, must figure it out.