The Telephone

“Or is auctioned on eBay
to aficionados of the past”
—David Trinidad, “Black Telephone,”
The Best American Poetry 2010

A long distance occult call—
This evening on the Telephone.
I queried the famous queer couples
Merrill & Jackson, Auden & Kallman
About domestic couple happiness.

By then Auden was settled in—
Kirchstetten seemly unremarkable.
A welcome containment of landscape,
A house backed by orderly woods,
Facing a tractored sugar-beet field.

“Routine in an intelligent man”—
Auden said, “was a sign of ambition.”
He began writing at 7, then bed at 9:30.
A compulsive routine in between with
Kallman fixing meals, a modern stoic.

Merrill & Jackson the same way—
The light changing over Sandover,
The teacup moving over the table,
Shaping the material into a whole,
Beyond their conscious hands now.