I wink against the winter wind
and it winks back as if I’ve sinned.
I arrive at one end of a world
where men with power give no sign
they care that what they do is malign.
They give back little of what’s mine.
Morality seldom reaches stars.

We’ve won the war on nature now,
made tigers yield to plough and cow.
I arrive at one end of a world
where mystery is poured into a can
and woods reduce to blowing sand.
There’s nothing left to understand.
Morality seldom reaches stars.

When science saves what we destroy
we build new houses out of straw.
I arrive at one end of a world
where schools of doubtful quality
makes numbers up and pupils free
of values only blind men see.
Morality seldom reaches stars.

Above our orbit comets play
intelligent designs that fray.
I arrive at one end of a world
and wish it less apparent that
since we have learned the Earth’s not flat
its god acts like the Cheshire cat.
Morality seldom reaches stars.

I ask my muse to let me loose.
She says, ‘Let you loose on what?’
She says she’s sad that I confuse
What is with what is not.
I recognize she’s drawing me
Into another conversation.
That isn’t where I want to be.
What I want is cessation
Of all the memes she pelts me with
Especially deep in the night.
She says she’ll give me a wondrous myth;
All I must do is write.
I tell her I’m intolerably tired,
That her inspirations give me fits.
She says, ‘I feel I’m being fired!’
And just like that she quits.

The gods said it before. They will say it again:
An elephant’s memory is his foe not his friend.
Remembering the days when the old GOP
Was conservative and decent covers him in chagrin.
Like poachers depriving his brothers of tusks
The Donald’s and crazies have stolen his heart.
His herds decimated, his high hopes now husks,
He remembers the divisions that tore him apart.

Is it raining out? No, my dear, it’s raining in.
Our gargoyles are upended by the wind.
Black birds fly rounds in darkness seeking answers
or, more likely, looking for somewhere to light.
In those heavens where they remember Ogden Nash
and Nanki Poo, and Honour, angels fight.

I tire of the squirrels. They tire of me.
We agree to separate.
I walk towards the tree. They bark, ‘No, we!’
I retrace my steps and wait.
The squirrels run around me on the ground,
then they actually run up the tree.
I too could climb it given time;
I could climb it pitifully.
I will go home instead, perhaps to bed,
or more likely to a table
where I will sit and write though it takes all night
a squirrel-and-human fable.

This bee, this venerable possum, and this snail
Were my Christmas guests. We wore bright paper hats
And the smiles one tries when conversations fail.
The possum sang a song all sharps and flats
The bee did wing flaps humming this and thats.
The snail shelled out for sherry and was able
To drink the possum underneath the table.
The bee and I, bemused that we had learned
That possums playing dead was not a fable,
Sang lachrymosely while the pudding burned.

Stubs has the same number of names as the other angels

But they are persistent in addressing him as ‘Stubs’.

Today he wears faux ferret fur and bangles

And a frown, because too much sarcasm rubs

Even angels wrong. It’s not Stub’s fault he scrubs

Celestial floors and ceilings with his wings

Or that, in flying races, he runs rings

Around the cherubs, mixing metaphors

With miracles. His wings are wondrous things

That no feathered rival anywhere adores.

I’ve not been up to Dublin nor down to Istanbul
And so far I’ve resisted Prague’s and even Vienna’s pull
But I’ve walked and worked in London and I always found it great
And in Paris I have wined and dreamed often in a state
Of bliss that is the opposite of lapsing into coma
And once I brought the New Year in in a riotous flat in Roma.
Barcelona was and is a place where I could like to live.
Milano disappointed me although I did not give
It but one day — the loss is mine — but I’m so glad I am
Able to say every day Give me but Amsterdam.

Written on reading Las 10 ciudades más visitadas de Europa in EL PAÍS