Dear Robert, I

wake up in predawn
Brooklyn,
make water, heat water, squeeze
lemon, crush home–grown (at Joseph’s
on 68th between 3rd & Ridge) peppers
(cayenne), make first pot of coffee
(peruvian organic medium roast) in
orange French press thermos, look out,
windy, rain while we slept, heavy
colored dreams we tell us
we had but don’t remember
more of, take her hot lemon
& coffee to Nicole finishing
this past Sunday’s New York Times in bed,
take my cups to my study
remembering last night’s sweet
Mets win in Washington but really
listening as I have since I got up
to France Cul where Olivier Cadiot speaking
of his new Shakespeare translation playing right
now in a mise–en–scène by Thomas Ostermeier
at the Comédie française, says
“Il n’y a pas de vers français pour accueillir
le vers shakespearien aujourd’hui,” which I
think is totally accurate as I put cups on
desk, pour first coffee, turn
to look out at whitecapped
waves — nothing
melvillian, just normal fall
adjustment — can’t yet see the anchored ships,
the leaves still all on the trees
in the Narrows Botanical Garden
across Shore Road,
wind tires or tortures them or tries to,
at least shakes them without spearing them so
a big white incongruous light shines through every
so often all the way from Staten Island
while all the way from
wherever I was in my sleep
to this moment of opening the red notebook
& unscrewing the black “Sailor” fountain pen
I have really thought of nothing else than
that this day
is your birthday, Robert —
many happy returns, joyeux anniversaire, alles
Gute! before I’ll turn (in a minute,
right after sending this off to you)
to the last three poems
from Celan’s Niemandsrose
that remain to be translated so that on
this your birthday I may finish what I started
in Annandale 51 years ago under your guidance.
I raise my (by now second) cup (of Peruvian)
to you, dear friend.

Bay Ridge, 9/25/18