Unhappy with being assigned
To an abandoned building
In Beijing, my great-grandfather
Juda (his name once had an "h;"
He bartered it away for
Magic beans which grew overnight
But led only to the floating castle
Of a giant so impoverished that Juda
Lent him two dollars and a half)
Searches for new places to haunt.
The store he rented in 1912
Was torn down to widen the entrance
To the Holland Tunnel. Drivers,
Seeing him approach, rolled their windows
Lest he squeegee them. Graph paper,
Toy cars, rose bushes and old issues
Of The Forward all proved unsatisfactory.
For now, he's haunting a silver teapot
His daughter Jenny gave my mother
But this cannot last; the teapot
Houses too many ghosts already.
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