Three Poems by David Yezzi

Prepping the House

In quarantine, he took it on himself
to catch up with the odd jobs he’d been meaning
to get to if he only had the time. As it stood,
nothing had gotten done for many years
so that water leaked down from the upstairs baths
and paint-curls hung like gauzy spiders’ nests
from the ceilings and the archways in the hall.
But now a guest was coming, and his pride
would not allow him to receive this stranger
in a house where the very walls and appliances
betrayed neglect. He would put things in order.

While his family napped or talked with friends remotely,
he set about repairing everything.
This pleased him. The work went well. He wasn’t sure
what day his guest would come, and anyhow
it was more for himself, he told himself,
more for his peace of mind, amid the shutdowns,
the restaurants and the shops and schools that closed.

How long, he wondered, might the stranger stay?
Unclear. For now, he hoped his guest might feel
at home among his loved ones and his pets.
As for his needs, who knew? Though he imagined
they could be quite elaborate, his stay
proprietary and indefinite.

Sirens for Sherod Santos

Thank you, poet, for the rainy poem I read,
while first learning about love and the pain of love.
I found your book in a card shop in a white-florescent
mall, when I was a student and all poets were dead.

You wrote of bad weather in autumn and of sirens
echoing like mating calls down the glistening streets.
Sirens implied a warning, I knew—someone was sick
or in distress, a kitchen fire had leapt out of control.

But they were far away, their urgency swallowed
by the sound of downspouts trickling into gutters.
O blessèd time, when all that the heart enacted
still seemed in beautiful fulfillment of the world.

Today, sirens are nearer. We hear them, one and then
another, in all kinds of weather, high winds and sun.
They whine through screens, and their alarum is general,
though each one—hear it?—exhales its own shrill cry.

On a Street Piano

Outside the library
of this seaside town
each summer an old
upright is set out—

wildly painted, its
row of teeth, tarred
and yellow. It’s here
for anyone who

wants it: Any time!
says the rain-proof sign.
I have a tune I like to try;
others have theirs.

Our songs slip through
the open window, past
the giveaway pile,
the bug-eyed tamtam from

Vanuatu, three pewter
pitchers, and a curling chart
of Jericho Bay. Now
a child plays at scales.

Someone’s hands, not
mine, could charm
a summer night with
its faded beauty.

The young librarian
smiles, as I walk by.
She knows me
from my broken song.

David Yezzi’s More Things in Heaven: New and Selected Poems (Measure Press) will be published later this year. He teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins.