B.Z. Niditch- Three Poems

 London, 2000

A century turns over
and I feel like Pip
with great expectations
at the turn of the new year
with justice on my mind
scaling weights in my room
not wanting vodka
to celebrate midnight madness
watching Garbo
long suffering in a silent film
not expecting Marx
Karl or Harpo to speak to me,
falling out of love
by twin beds and mirror
in a rainy wet dream
dislocated out of a room
inhaling an earful of noise
outside my window
putting on the Beatles
a Hard Day's Night
to get a metamorphosis
yet not become Kafka's giant bug.

PARIS VACATION

Passing dusty streets
doing a student paper on Renoir
on my cake walk by the Louvre
morning dances to a French tune
of the out sung bell hours
I'm all bundled up
in an Oxford tweed and scarf
a Christmas gift
from an ex who thinks of me
better than I am
but dropped me
for an older man,
as muddy shadows
turn on a few icicles
under my outcry
trying to cradle my time
when I am still young
not to forget the good will
at this refugee season
here among all the exiles
who look to art for solace,
and forget the past
in your own nature.



AT CAMBRIDGE, 2000

Listening to Coltrane's "Evidence"
on a jazz radio station
home from a writer's colony
the blanket of snow
in my wet dream
is second hand by now,
my bicycle is abandoned
and I have a shower conversation
for my coming lecture
on the Canterbury tales
about the wife of Bath
being an authority in marriage,
straight talking to myself
passing in and out
of brief encounters
in jazz and love
at the rapid
space of a school vacation.