AT THE CITY GATES

Rav Samael came to me while I slept

Insisting I go with him to the City gates

Where, as most days, he would wait

In case the Messiah came. (When he lived,

Samael went every day but after his death

He’d take the occasional day off

To arbitrate the law suits of the dead

And meddle in the affairs of cats.)

The gates were as I had imagined them

Guarded by old and sleepy soldiers

Who invite us to sit with them.

The last public letter writer,

Whom I’d not seen since the 1920s,

In Paris, was there. Her table

Seemed more rickety than ever

But she was younger by a decade or two.

Her prices were fair so I told her

My ideas for this poem. Reading it over,

It seems different than I meant it to be.

IN MEMORIAM AES

“Just before dawn,” Mr. Stefanacci told us,
“A messenger on a tired white horse
Comes galloping into an Italian town.
Standing in the stirrups he shouts
‘Constantinople has fallen to the Turks;
The Middle Ages are over! It’s the Renaissance!’
The town bursts into activity, with banners
Appearing everywhere and crowds cheering
As the Mona Lisa strides past, arm in arm
With Michelangelo’s David.” After a pause
He went on: “That isn’t how it was; History
Does not happen that way.” There was, I now think,
A note of regret in his voice. It is because of him
That this messenger who never was
Still comes to me sometimes, on his tired horse,
And I join the crowd, cheering for the Renaissance.