Impossible To Tell Poem Rhyme Scheme

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Robert Pinsky

Impossible To Tell Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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to Robert Hass and in memory of Elliot Gilbert	A
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Slow dulcimer gavotte and bow in autumn	B
Bash and his friends go out to view the moon	C
In summer gasoline rainbow in the gutter	D
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The secret courtesy that courses like ichor	D
Through the old form of the rude full scale joke	E
Impossible to tell in writing 'Bash '	-
	-
He named himself 'Banana Tree' banana	F
After the plant some grateful students gave him	G
Maybe in appreciation of his guidance	H
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Threading a long night through the rules and channels	I
Of their collaborative linking poem	B
Scored in their teacher's heart live rigid fluid	J
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Like passages etched in a microscopic cicuit	J
Elliot had in his memory so many jokes	K
They seemed to breed like microbes in a culture	D
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Inside his brain one so much making another	D
It was impossible to tell them all	L
In the court culture of jokes a top banana	F
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Imagine a court of one the queen a young mother	D
Unhappy alone all day with her firstborn child	J
And her new baby in a squalid apartment	J
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Of too few rooms a different race from her neighbors	M
She tells the child she's going to kill herself	N
She broods she rages Hoping to distract her	D
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The child cuts capers he sings he does imitations	O
Of different people in the building he jokes	K
He feels if he keeps her alive until the father	D
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Gets home from work they'll be okay till morning	P
It's laughter versus the bedroom and the pills	Q
What is he in his efforts but a courtier	D
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Impossible to tell his whole delusion	R
In the first months when I had moved back East	J
From California and had to leave a message	S
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On Bob's machine I used to make a habit	J
Of telling the tape a joke and part way through	D
I would pretend that I forgot the punchline	T
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Or make believe that I was interrupted	J
As though he'd be so eager to hear the end	J
He'd have to call me back The joke was Elliot's	Q
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More often than not The doctors made the blunder	D
That killed him some time later that same year	D
One day when I got home I found a message	S
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On my machine from Bob He had a story	D
About two rabbis one of them tall one short	J
One day while walking along the street together	D
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They see the corpse of a Chinese man before them	U
And Bob said sorry he forgot the rest	J
Of course he thought that his joke was a dummy	D
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Impossible to tell a dead end challenge	V
But here it is as Elliot told it to me	D
The dead man's widow came to the rabbis weeping	P
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Begging them if they could to resurrect him	G
Shocked the tall rabbi said absolutely not	J
But the short rabbi told her to bring the body	D
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Into the study house and ordered the shutters	Q
Closed so the room was night dark Then he prayed	J
Over the body chanting a secret blessing	P
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Out of Kabala 'Arise and breathe ' he shouted	J
But nothing happened The body lay still So then	W
The little rabbi called for hundreds of candles	Q
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And danced around the body chanting and praying	P
In Hebrew then Yiddish then Aramaic He prayed	J
In Turkish and Egyptian and Old Galician	W
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For nearly three hours leaping about the coffin	W
In the candlelight so that his tiny black shoes	Q
Seemed not to touch the floor With one last prayer	D
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Sobbed in the Spanish of before the Inquisition	W
He stopped exhausted and looked in the dead man's face	Q
Panting he raised both arms in a mystic gesture	D
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And said 'Arise and breathe ' And still the body	D
Lay as before Impossible to tell	X
In words how Elliot's eyebrows flailed and snorted	J
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Like shaggy mammoths as the Chinese widow	J
Granting permission the little rabbi sang	Y
The blessing for performing a circumcision	W
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And removed the dead man's foreskin chanting blessings	Q
In Finnish and Swahili and bathed the corpse	Q
From head to foot and with a final prayer	D
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In Babylonian gasping with exhaustion	W
He seized the dead man's head and kissed the lips	Q
And dropped it again and leaping back commanded	J
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'Arise and breathe ' The corpse lay still as ever	D
At this as when Bash 's disciples wind	J
Along the curving spine that links the renga	Y
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Across the different voices each one adding	Y
A transformation according to the rules	Q
Of stasis and repetition all in order	D
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And yet impossible to tell beforehand	J
Elliot changes for the punchline the wee	D
Rabbi still panting like a startled boxer	D
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Looks at the dead one then up at all those watching	Y
A kind of Mel Brooks gesture 'Hoo boy ' he says	Q
'Now that's what I call really dead ' O mortal	Z
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Powers and princes of earth and you immortal	Z
Lords of the underground and afterlife	A2
Jehovah Raa Bol Morah Hecate Pluto	J
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What has a brilliant living soul to do with	B2
Your harps and fires and boats your bric a brac	Y
And troughs of smoking blood Provincial stinkers	Q
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Our languages don't touch you you're like that mother	D
Whose small child entertained her to beg her life	A2
Possibly he grew up to be the tall rabbi	C2
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The one who washed his hands of all those capers	Q
Right at the outset Or maybe he became	D2
The author of these lines a one man renga	Y
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The one for whom it seems to be impossible	Z
To tell a story straight It was a routine	W
Procedure When it was finished the physicians	Q
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Told Sandra and the kids it had succeeded	J
But Elliot wouldn't wake up for maybe an hour	D
They should go eat The two of them loved to bicker	D
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In a way that on his side went back to Yiddish	E2
On Sandra's to some Sicilian dialect	J
He used to scold her endlessly for smoking	Y
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When she got back from dinner with their children	W
The doctors had to tell them about the mistake	Y
Oh swirling petals falling leaves The movement	J
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Of linking renga coursing from moment to moment	J
Is meaning Bob says in his Haiku book	Y
Oh swirling petals all living things are contingent	J
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Falling leaves and transient and they suffer	D
But the Universal is the goal of jokes	Q
Especially certain ethnic jokes which taper	D
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Down through the swirling funnel of tongues and gestures	Q
Toward their preposterous Ithaca There's one	W
A journalist told me He heard it while a hero	J
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Of the South African freedom movement was speaking	Y
To elderly Jews The speaker's own right arm	F2
Had been blown off by right wing letter bombers	Q
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He told his listeners they had to cast their ballots	Q
For the ANC a group the old Jews feared	J
As 'in with the Arabs ' But they started weeping	Y
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As the old one armed fighter told them their country	D
Needed them to vote for what was right their vote	J
Could make a country their children could return to	D
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From London and Chicago The moved old people	Z
Applauded wildly and the speaker's friend	J
Whispered to the journalist 'It's the Belgian Army	D
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Joke come to life ' I wish I could tell it	J
To Elliot In the Belgian Army the feud	J
Between the Flemings and Walloons grew vicious	Q
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So out of hand the army could barely function	W
Finally one commander assembled his men	W
In one great room to deal with things directly	D
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They stood before him at attention 'All Flemings '	-
He ordered 'to the left wall ' Half the men	W
Clustered to the left 'Now all Walloons ' he ordered	J
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'Move to the right ' An equal number crowded	J
Against the right wall Only one man remained	J
At attention in the middle 'What are you soldier '	-
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Saluting the man said 'Sir I am a Belgian '	-
'Why that's astonishing Corporal what's your name '	-
Saluting again 'Rabinowitz ' he answered	J
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A joke that seems at first to be a story	D
About the Jews But as the renga describes	Q
Religious meaning by moving in drifting petals	Q
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And brittle leaves that touch and die and suffer	D
The changing winds that riffle the gutter swirl	G2
So in the joke just under the raucous music	Y
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Of Fleming Jew Walloon a courtly allegiance	Q
Moves to the dulcimer gavotte and bow	H2
Over the banana tree the moon in autumn	W
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Allegiance to a state impossible to tell	X