"Lines Declining a Transatlantic Dinner Invitation," Marilyn Hacker

Regretfully, I proffer my excuses.
Number not less than Graces, more than Muses:
Auden's casting call for a dinner party.
He was a genius who was often smart. He
did not think hosts should count their guests in pairs,
unless they had love seats and no hard chairs.
He was benignly daft for Small Odd Numbers:
a table choked with elbows soon encumbers
wit. I'm sure you'll all be very witty.
I'll miss it, snowed in here in New York City.
But, being d'un certain age, we come to know:
better to be discussed than be de trop.
The unexpected often is disaster.



If one arrives a month or an hour faster
than looked for, something that one cannot like
might happen: cab drivers would be on strike;
one's friends would be that morning reconciled
with lover, spouse, or adolescent child,
whose tears, A-Levels, or Social Disease
will call them home before the fruit and cheese;
the woman-poet-hating editor
looms ominously near the kitchen door
where a zinc bucket slops up the cold rain
that's sluiced down since the roof fell in again;
one host is wrapped in blankets in the attic: a
damp-inspired episode of his sciatica;
the other, peeling sprouts in a clogged sink,
scowls through a fourth compensatory drink;
somebody else has brought along a new
chum who was scathing in The New Review;
there'd be the flight to Amsterdam at nine;
simply, there might be insufficient wine.
As passports take two weeks to put in shape,
this all may have a flavor of sour grape.
Speaking of grapes—I hope you brought Biscuit—
pour one more brandy, as it were, on me.

(originally posted in greatpoets by switchercat)