From a Diary of the Plague Year (2)

The wind wants to play
today, coming in at all
angles. Clouds look weary,
sagging low, slow, spilling
a few raindrops like a drunk
pulling change out of a pocket.

As to the unnatural world:
people seem humbled by
the pall of the plague, as if
their ambition and certainty
had turned into old castoff toys.

Mainly we seem to be doing
what humans do when not
prodded into social madness:
one foot in front of the other, using
one or many wheels moving things,
caring about and for others,
gathering good information,
wondering how long good sense
will last.


hans ostrom 2020

Exhausted Monuments

Our monuments are weary.
They want to quit their jobs.
They hate fronting for history.
They like birds, rain, sunshine,
and snow because all four
play in the present.

Our monuments want to travel
abroad to meet other monuments.
Some days they just want
to break apart to become
the abstract and liberated
art of rubble.

One monument told me it
simply feels in the way,
heavy, ridiculous. It
stands there shilling
for something people
who have either forgotten
or want to forget what lies
behind the monument,
which wants only to support
birds, darken for rain,
shine for sun, change
shape with snow.


hans ostrom 2020

A Piece of the Moon Again

Drunks lose the sky. At night
they're usually soused and inside.
If outside they don't look up.
They're focused on the ground just
ahead of them. It's moving. They
focus on the cup that runneth
over. Soon their view

shrinks more. It retreats all the way
into the brain, where the brain
looks at itself. When drunks get sober,

their view enlarges. Circles and squared
expand. Slowly. Until one day
the sobering drunk gets back to sky.
The drunk looks up. Eyes and head
don't hurt. Eyes look at stars or
colored clouds, or simply blue
(all blue!), or a piece of moon.


hans ostrom 2020

From a Diary of the Plague Year (1)

For the moment plague
appears to us here in headlines,
broadcasts, and rumor. I wonder
if it will visit my lungs soon.
And kill me. My worry spreads

to family, friends, refugees,
homeless ones. By the time
it reaches my minuscule sense
of everyone it dissipates.

For the moment plague
turns gel into a verb and makes me
rub my hands together a lot
like a fly.

For the moment plague's pall
is subtle. Everyone looks
distracted as if they're doing math
problems in their head. Stock
markets stop pretending they're
rational systems. The grotesque
President of the moment
babbles in the high fever
of his stupidity. Crisis crawls
for the moment. It will
get up and start to walk,
to jog, . . . .


hans ostrom March 9 2020

Cicadas and Spider

A cicadian chorus sings
in my circadian sleep. In a dream
I weep and laugh and weep
a little more. I knock on a door.

Who opens it is a spider playing
four violins. "Why, come in,"
says the spider. "You're just in time."
"For what?" I ask.

"For to be yourself, to tap a drum,
to have some have some have
some fun." That's what's left
us in the the end: a chance
at fun, and then . . . .


hans ostrom 2020

Sand

Shapes of accumulated sand
reminded us we live among and are
insconstant forms:
a dune arcs, sags, collapses, reappears,
swells. We're

spending one long shifty afternoon
at a beach. Waves
unload more sand, delivery after
delivery. Land
tries to give it back. Projections

suggest the entire province
soon will be composed of sand.
What is soon? What is
a province? We're delirious

and barefoot. That lump there
used to be a castle. That
ocean there is coming for us.


hans ostrom 2020

I Don't Know What You're Thinking

I don't know what you're
thinking. What are you thinking?
Are you thinking? What is
thinking? Is it a big restaurant
just behind the eyes with light,
noise, and bustling? Is it
automatic electric theater?
Is it language marinated in
instinct? Well, I need a break--

too much thought! But
you go ahead and keep
thinking. Thank you.


hans ostrom 2020

Schrödinger's Dog

Schrödinger's dog sniffs
the outside of the box.
That hound can smell
past quantum nonsense.
It knows exactly
what's inside. And hair
at the top of it shoulders
bristles, electric. 


hans ostrom 2020

Photographs of Kafka

Photos of Kafka
bend the heart a bit.
They make you want
to buy him coffee,
also pastry, and listen
to him tell a joke.

He's slight, his face
is bony, his coat's
too big. He isn't absurd:
The photos mean too much.

You want to say, Come
back, Mr. Kafka, and have
another try. If God knows,
then God knows you've
earned a second chance
with fresh lungs
and time to write.



hans ostrom 2020

Erstwhilers

Yeah, I'm an erstwhiler. From
the province of used-to-be.
I used to exchange letters
with people. In handwriting.
Sometimes three, four pages.

I listened to the radio, lived
decades without a cell phone,
had no social network outside
the immediate. I know a vast
amount of things that are
no longer the case.

I got exiled to here and now,
where we erstwhilers have adapted
to the extent we fake it. We're
virtually tech-friendly, though
in our hearts we remain analogous.
We got used to getting our music
in a new form every decade.

We're obsolete. It's okay. It
doesn't hurt. Erstwhilers
aren't nostalgic. Just slightly
displaced, always at angle
from what's going on. We're
always a moment away
from saying something which,
if not stupid, at least sounds
that way. May it take you a
long time to join us.


hans ostrom 2020

Quantum Bus Stop

At the bus stop, a man
advised those assembled
in cold rain
that the cells in their bodies
were doing quantum things,
such as disappearing and
appearing at the same time.

"Is it bad reception?" asked
a thin gray woman. "Like
the old days, with TV antennas?"
A young woman wearing
a green hand-knitted cap
said, "I guess everyone
is a physicist today."

The bus appeared, hauling
its exhaustive, Newtonian heft
towards us. "All of its
molecules seem to be
in order," said the young woman.
She put her headphones
on her ears, and I imagined
electrons of music dancing
in her brain. Ups the steel

steps we went, finding our
places in spaces that were
empty in the seats.


hans ostrom 2020

Getting in Touch with Swedenborg

Swedenborg went to Hell
and Heaven and back to Earth
again many times when he was
alive in earthly terms. What a
great idea! "Just visiting."

I've been trying to visit Swedenborg
in Hell or Heaven or even a cafe.
(I think of Heaven and Hell as holding
down the two ends of a sliding scale.
Opinions vary.) I haven't

been able to make it over to Hell
or Heaven, let alone back, and
I don't want to get desperate
and rush the dying thing.

I've invited Swedenborg
to my place to discuss William
Blake, Uppsala University,
theology, pastry, or whatever's
on his spirit's mind. I haven't
heard back. Yet.


hans ostrom 2020

I Don't Know Why

I'm sitting in an office
and I don't know why.
I'm sitting on a sidewalk
and I don't know why.

Sitting in a Legislative Body,
sitting in a fork-lift, sitting
in a jail cell and I don't
know why. Lying

on a road, lying on a bed,
lying in a casket and very
very dead, and I don't know
why.

Standing up for someone,
for something, I don't know
why. Standing still in
panic. Why? Nobody

knows why. Nobody really
knows why they do what they
do. Practical answers
buy time. But eventually,

the why prevails, unyielding.
And you have to sit there
and admit, maybe only to
yourself, that you don't know why.


hans ostrom 2019