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.