GUY GOFFETTEMax Jacob
Pray for the little acrobat with the yellow
cross, who envied a toad, pray
for him, an angel on days of defeat and
the cupbearer’s laboratory animal
Cyprien there, Max here, clown who’s bold
as an egg beneath his hat and weeps when bald
weeps blood and water all the Saviour’s wounds
and then switches skins, black in Paris, white
in St-Benoît, a rainbow at Drancy
to celebrate the harlequin’s mass
which opens Paradise. Pray for Max
king of Boeotia and prince of poets
who prayed so much for us, repeating that one breast
may stand in for another one, that beneath
the mask there’s only one truth hidden
the same one: ‘‘We’re going to die in a while.’’
—marilyn hacker
The Raising of Icarus: Envoi
I remember how the child was tugging his mother
by the arm, from left to right, a real
little circus horse, and how she
continued walking, a proud, deaf statue
whose head, cut o√ in another era
had rolled amidst the fruits and vegetables
into the basket hooked over her arm
with the plans, the loves, the thousand and one
nights of waiting, stacked on an unseen shelf