COURIERS

Where have they gone, the dead postmen

Who used to be everywhere, riding tandem bicycles,

Climbing out of wicker laundry baskets,

Carried on rugs by strong-armed women,

Sleeping in trees, pretending to be vultures

Improbably wintering on Snediker Avenue?

On cold nights they'd build street fires

A little apart from the fires the homeless men made. 

If you were hoping for a letter from the dead

You'd try to forget it. Dead postmen

Only deliver mail you don’t expect.

ROBE

Finding an unfamiliar robe in your closet 

You put it on and blango! You're a priest.

Since you've no knowledge whose priest you are

You stand in the early morning light with those 

Waiting to do day labor. No one chooses you

To pick fruit or asks whether you've done construction.

A woman shares a cigarette with you; a man

Asks to be forgiven. For all you know

You are a priest of a merciless god;

Some of the symbols on your vestment are disquieting;

You forgive him anyway. Finally, an old pickup truck 

Pulls to the curb; three demigods, pooling resources,

Are conducting test runs of a new faith. No

Human sacrifice is planned; light martyrdom

May be required. You ride in the back,

Doing small miracles to amuse some vestals

Drowsily watching the sun shrug itself upwards.

WREN

Bats and bees and seraphim bicker

Over precedence and protocols;

A drab brown bird nips in

To bid you farewell on behalf 

Of night and day and all the great world.

KNOCKING

Like a member of the secret police conscience

Enjoys waking you at three in the morning

When you're confused and likely to blurt out

The very things you meant to keep secret

So it was with me; there was barely time

To slip out the back as the front door shook.

No time to dress; I ran through Lvov

With a confusion of rags and tatters and dreams

Running alongside, urging me in shrill voices

To seek shelter in a barrel or an alley

Or in dark corner of an imagined church

Painted by the crook’d shade of Pieter Saanredam.

PRODUCTION

The ghosts of Lemberg are putting on an opera

My grandmother Esther -- who worked as a teenager

In a cigarette factory -- urges them to do Carmen.

For days her ghost, who looks to be about 15,

Has been looking sidelong at the other ghosts

And lounging provocatively on gravestones

In the cemetery where she isn't buried.

Her sister Irina, though, feels Nabucco

Might be a better first production.

She also laughs every time she sees Esther

With the shadow of a rose between her teeth.

While deciding, the ghosts -- unable

To rent the city's opera house --are renovating

The one that wasn't built, following the plans

The town council rejected in 1896.

TRAIN POEM

Satan cannot make it today so

His part will be taken by a bear;

He offers Jesus berries, honey,

Fish and the promise of dreams

About berries, honey and fish.

He expects Jesus to refuse

Which He does. Still, He 

Is very nice about it and

Says He'll think over 

The bear's offer to teach Him

Bike riding and juggling.

PIN

Since they've gathered to illustrate a principle of mathematics --

Namely that any number of things having location but not mass

Can simultaneously occupy the same point --all God's angels

Could as well dance on the pin's point as on its head

But that, they feel, would be showing off. Also

The pin in question has on its point

All of Hell's demons, marching and shouting slogans.