Two Poems
By
Michael Hofmann

Family Holidays

The car got a sun-tan while my father worked
in its compound . . . Mixed with the cicadas,
you could hear the fecundity of his typing
under the green corrugated plastic roof.

My mother staggered about like a nude
in her sun-hat, high heels and bathing-costume.
She was Quartermaster and Communications.

My doughy sisters baked on the stony beach,
swelling out of their bikinis, turning over
every half-hour. Still, they were never done.

The little one fraternised with foreign children.

. . . Every day I swam further out of my depth,
but always, miserably, crawled back to safety.

Broken Nights

FOR BILL AND MARY GASS

Then morning comes,
saying, 'This was a night.'
—ROBERT LOWELL

Broken knights.
—No, not like that.
Well, no matter.
Something agreeably
Tennysonian (is there
Any other kind?)
About 'broken knights'.
Sir Bors and Sir Bedivere.
In my one-piece pyjamas—
My it-doesn't-matter suit,
With necessarily non-matching
—Matchless, makeless, makeles—
Added top, I pad
Downstairs to look
At the green time
On the digital microwave.
My watch, you must know,
Died on my watch
All at the top, at midnight,
After a few
Anguished weeks of macro-
biotic stakhanovite
5-second ticks,
And I haven't had
Time, it seems,
To get it repaired.
Further (weewee hours),
To patronise
My #2 bathroom en bas
(Though N.B.
Only for a pee).
Groping for a piss,
As the poet saith.
Wondering how soon
It might be safe
To turn on the wireless,
Without it being either
New Age
Help you through the night
Seducer mellotrons
(What's a tron, mellow I can do?)
Or merely
Dependency inducing
And wehrzersetzend,
Deleterious for morale of the troops.
I eat to the beat,
Then snooze to the news.
Drift off to Morning Edition.
Arise/Decline, Sir
Baa Bedwards.

Michael Hofmann