PREPARATION

The last public letter writer has no mirror.
Every morning, she rises from the ground
And models herself on a faded photo
From 1910. She wills herself into focus,
Dabs on a touch or two of color,
Waits for customers. There are always some.

MORE ON THE LAST PUBLIC LETTER WRITER

By the terms of her contract
The last public letter writer
Cannot retire. Nowadays
She often writes for bears
And pigs and angels and those
Who mistrust machines.
When she takes a break --
Going for coffee or ducking
Into the secret bathrooms
Beneath the Plaza hotel --
Her cat uses her quills
To draw pictures of flowers
And horses and cats
Walking upright, with glasses
And dressed as if for golf
Sometime around 1925.

MOVING

The last public letter writer
Puts her feathers and inks in a bag
Which she slings over her shoulder.
The table and chair follow her
Since she's too old to carry them.
The cat lingers in the photo
For a few minutes, then comes too.

AESRED ON TUESDAY

When Eugene Atget took the photograph
In 1923 the last public letter writer in Paris
Was already centuries old. You can see it
In her eyes. Her equipment was scant --
A bent-legged table a centurion gave her,
Inks made from oak gall and copperas,
A chair, some quills, the customary cat.
When you needed her, she'd turn up
Next to a fountain or under a bridge
Or outside your house or in a dream
If your need was truly desperate.

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.