An Argument

Stanley Moss

When you said that you wanted to be useful

as the days of the week, I said, “God bless you.”

Then you said you would not trade our Mondays,

useful for two thousand years,

for the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.

I said, “Endless are the wonders

to which I can only say ‘ah,’ that our ‘Ah’

who art in heaven can easily become the

‘ah, ah’ that comforts a baby.” Then you said,

“Go make a living on metaphors for ‘ah,’”

that I, a lunatic, secretly want to be

the Lighthouse of Alexandria,

a fifty-story-high collaboration

of art and science, a mirror of light

that might be seen five or ten days out to sea,

Poseidon standing on my shoulders,

the Library of Alexandria at my back,

all the wonders of Greek Africa.

I said, “Today is Monday. I want little more

than to be a hand-mirror my wife carries

in her purse with a hankie

to stop my hemorrhaging humility.”