Raphael’s Skull

The smooth, white skull on Goethe’s desk
Did not, as he thought, belong to Raphael.
It was the skull of a man with a brain disorder.
The salesman must have lied. Who knows
The posthumous destiny of bones? Donne’s
Lovers buried together, he imagined dug up
To make room for one more recently dead
And hoped they’d be spared disturbance.
They probably weren’t.
I look at the paintings
On my wall and think about the previous
Owners, how the portraits’ expressions
Never changed, no matter the scenes they
Saw and didn’t reflect, the seductions,
The arguments, how my grandfather fell
To the rug, his heart pausing unexpectedly,
How we ran for the small oxygen tank
And put the mask over his face—or the vases
That came from China by ship, crated,
Wrapped in paper, print that no one here
Could understand, and the books waiting
On my own shelves, impatiently I suppose,
Especially the ones that have gone unread.

My grandfather kept a fine-edged knife
For cutting the pages, thick ivory paper
With firm bindings. Southern humidity
And gas heat turned those bindings dry
And brittle. I mostly bought paperbacks
That yellowed within a decade or two.
Some had cost a quarter each from remainder
Tables, bookstore basements in Cambridge
Or New York. In Canto LXXXI, Pound
Remembers when “books cost a peseta,
Brass candlesticks in proportion.”
My parents lit candles at dinner on
Friday nights and recited a blessing.
I don’t remember if the candlesticks
Were brass. The past is an ossuary
Of broken things, books in dumpsters
Covered by garbage from restaurants,
Sauce gone rancid, debris from construction,
Demolition, copper pipes ripped out, taken
For scrap, luggage no longer fit to travel.

When my father died, we had an estate sale.
A pocketknife sold for a dollar, and his
Shirts fifty cents each. The dining room
Table and chairs, the blue sofa, the marble-
Topped table in the living room—they were
All gone by noon, and at six o’clock,
A man arrived with a truck to make an
Offer on everything else. I kept all sorts
Of things I should have left, porcelain
Plates—themselves made from bones
And white clay—fluted glasses, a pocket
Watch, and a soup tureen. All here to remind
Of things that aren’t.