(A saucy, punning monologue from the MOMA courtyard)

Madam, I'm looking up
Your you-know-what!
Or do you know?

Holy Hippocrates!
We females are
More than all the warp and woof

Of galaxies,

Not thirty foot
Of tubing capped
At either end
With fur and ivory.
You stand indignant



                                  Goat, 1950

Like a haughty Roman statue.
Relax.
Would you chop me up
From nose to tail,
Tack me out upon a board,
One horn in my spleen
One eye below the other
As my maker did his woman!

Holy monokeros!
Your fingers scream propriety.
Your eyes are fenced
With wonder.
Sweet Zeus! don't bend your head away
Like an angry ostrich.
(Get it? Long neck, Ingres,
etcetera, etcetera.)
They won't call you too loose
To listen to a clever goat:
Not some lusty emblem
From the bestiary,
Nor fish-tailed constellation,
But a gathering from the hornbook
Of modernity.

You think me lewd, obscure,
And pompous
And scarcely debonair.
How unlike the Nadelman,
You say,
The dapper bronze in bowler hat
With a branch run through his arm
And the tie that casts a shadow
On his breast.
Apollo Sauroktonous in modern dress!



                      Man in Open Air, 1915
No ball sack here, my lady!
How the rodents play
His furrowed brow
In the moonlight.
No ball sack here.



               Rodin,Monument to Balzac,1897-98 

Madam, just mill around awhile

And share the rites of female.

Replace that scowl with the smile

Upon your daughter's face.



Here I stand

Discreetly shaped of metal,

Palm-frond, vinewood, cardboard,

With twisted wire for tail

And kiln-fired udders.

My maker had a sense of humor.

Did yours? I think He did.



But all is not frivolity,

As the satyrs knew in darker days.

Don't fret. I've not been munching

Purple foxglove.

I would bring you something

More unconscionable than crows

(O Thomas Stearns!)

Above the yellow cornfields.



Saint Patrick rears its spike

In the thick green jelly

Of Wall Street.

Christo! Wrap that soaring glass

And steel  with Cloth o' Gold!

Suffer more than astroturf to grow

In lower Harlem, our monument

To Auswitz, Dresden.



Turner's clouds boil eastward

Over Wall Street, Manahatta

(Frederick Jay, my dear,

No Joe-Em-Doubleyew!)

       .  .  .  .  .



Giverny land, lots of land

Under starry, starry nights.

I gazed at the moon

Until I lost my senses.



The Western valve is closed,

Like stone.



Away, Melancholy!

More than goats can enDURER!

Umlaut, umlaut, umlaut!              
Durer,Melencolia I, 1514, after his mother's death

Viscount Faulkland

Or mad Kadafy

May do us in

As well as some crazed terrorist

Or gentle soul with ax to grind.

It seems, dear lady,

We've put an "n" in "ethic"

And a "t" in "moral."

When WILL the killing stop,

My master always said.

But he, alas, is dead.

. . . .

My lady,

Your little daughter flutters

Like a robin or a wren-

Saint Christopher!

Her wire-rimmed rosy glasses

Shielding sky-blue eyes.

Saint Paul!

How she circumnavigates and fondles me

All over over over

Polymorphously.

In my more nanny moods

I love the great Black Mother

(You could do with some of that)

And, in my dreams,

Her sister in her cosmic chair

(Lachaise, Lachaise, Lachaise!)

Her eyes upon the curve of space.



                                 
Standing Woman, 1912-27

My maker's gone to parts.

And so will we.

They plan to fill this place

With all his pilgrimage.

Those Old Makers:

In his youth, at their feet,

In age, they gladly queued

Within his mind.

And the STATUS QUO,

He dragged them neighing

Through their changes.

. .

GUERNICA will go home

To bask in native sunlight.

The Minotaur, my greater self,

(I can't hold a candle to the one

upstairs)

Will find a lover

Equal to his passions and regrets.

In my dreams

I sometimes fly these walls.

I get a handle on eternity.

There is a higher bacchanal

That overrides these bones

And flesh.

On quiet nights, with my courtyard

Friends in shadow,

I go where goats and sheep

May safely graze.

Far out, across the blue Aegean

You would see us,

Sheep and goats

(Dear fondling child,

And you, my dear seeenooorraa)

Would see us as

(Like China's wall from space)

A signature of pearls

Upon the mountains.

And then life would seem to have

An unudderable

(You thought I never would)

JE NE SAIS QUOI.