A Tale of the Grateful Dead

by Robert Cooperman

Grateful appreciation and acknowledgement to the publishers of ArtWord for permission to reprint the parts of this book that won their 1999 chapbook competition. We feel fortunate to be able to carry on a small part of their good work.

ISBN 1-930907-39-7
60 pages $9

 

Robert Cooperman lives in Denver with his wife Elizabeth. His latest collection is Petitions for Immortality: Scenes from the Life of John Keats (Higganum Hill Books). The Widow’s Burden (Western Reflections) was a finalist for the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year for 2001. In The Colorado Gold Fever Mountains (also published by Western Reflections) won the Colorado Book Award for Poetry for 2000. In the Household of Percy Bysshe Shelley was published by the University of Central Florida Contemporary Poetry Series. In addition, Cooperman has published five chapbooks, most recently Not Too Old To Rock And Roll (Snark Publications) and Greatest Hits: 1981-2000 (Pudding House Publications).

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The Dead Man

 

There I lie
in the crossroads,
the whole village spitting on me,
kicking my worthless husk,
calling me names I wouldn’t
have used on a donkey that sat down
under a badly balanced load.

In life, I played the lute
at our hovel of a tavern,
until men tossed me a coin
for a drink, my hands
shaking with ale’s palsy.

I hated their smugness,
so a plan came to me, Saul
blinded on the road to salvation:
I talked subtly as the Serpent,
and soon everyone clamored
to invest in my scheme,
wealth certain as a priest
with eyes only for the wenches.
Even the Lord of the Castle lent
me pounds at interest high enough
to make usurers’ mouths water.

But luck was never my companion:
I wastreled everything I’d collected
and before I could fly away
like a bird winging off for winter,
I was murdered, owing everyone.
So I hover and wait, praying,
but for what I dare not even think.

---

The Tavern Owner

 

The lad should have stuck
to plucking his lute
and smiling at wenches,
catching coins like a dancing bear
when he was sober enough
to strum the strings and sing.

But no, schemes of gold
and more gold his interminable
sermon; and the worst part,
his slippery tongue separated
everyone in the village
from their small hoards.

Even I—who knew him
for a rascally fox—
lent him all my ready coins,
dreams of profits shimmering
like blue lakes in the visions
of desert saints.

I suspect one of us—
when he saw that no alchemy
would bubble from the gold
he had lent my little lutanist—
slipped a dagger between his ribs,
to end all our golden fancies.

Now, he sprawls, naked
to the freezing rain and snow,
unless some melon-pated fool
will pay off his debts.

---

The Scholar Speculates on the Ghostly Rescue

 

Along with William of Occam
I seek simpler explanations
than a grateful ghost.
That avenging apparition?
A knight returned
from the Holy Land
scattered those brigands
as a child routs an anthill
and thinks no more
of his godlike destruction.

Men in extremes of peril
can rise to heights
of strength and courage
as hidden from them
as diamonds are buried
deep in the earth.

Perhaps the merchant himself
drove off those thieves
without knowing his bravery,
and so attributed his deliverance
to a grave-festering savior.

Reason alone
can lead us to salvation;
but reason’s as frail
as a thawing dagger of ice
when rattled against
the two-handed sword
of superstition.

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The Leper’s Wife

 

He’d have the world believe
I was more lecherous than Lilith.
True, but I never stopped loving him—
or rather, missed his scorpion wit—
when I had to banish him: to keep
contagion’s siege from our chambers.

Word reaches me he loiters at a shrine,
hoping a rustic saint will heal him,
restore him to what he believes
is his rightful place, here, with me.
Better he take the mendicant path
and find Heaven, after his Purgatory
of pain and my playing him for a cuckold
the way some can tease a trout.

But what if this saint can work miracles?
Rumors spread like wind-borne seeds
he’s already cured a crippled boy;
so why not restore my husband to health,
and me to my once holy innocence?

I’ve thought of joining my husband;
my prayers, added to his might cure him
and make me worthy of salvation:
my sins legion as the kitchen ants
my maids go mad beating at with brooms.
Afterwards, I’d take shelter in a convent,
forsake this world of fleshy temptations.

But the blacksmith’s standing
in my scented chamber doorway.
“Pour some mead for us, sweet man;
tomorrow, plenty of time to consider
our final accountings to Christ.”