IRINA

Arriving just too late to save her, Irina’s angel
Gave her company the entire way from the roof
Of her apartment building to the pavement
In the courtyard. My great aunt
Had excellent reasons for stepping off a roof.
Her angel had his reasons, too, for being late:
There was something wrong with his visa;
His wings did not match, one being longer
Than the other, so that when he wasn’t careful
He’d fly long, lazy circles, repeatedly finding
The Bug River beneath him when he’d meant
To trace the Vistula. Also, he was absent-minded
Once saving an old woman in Dublin
When he was scheduled to rescue a child
In Warsaw.

                    Irina, my grandmother’s older sister,
Listened to the angel as they fell, occasionally
Trying to get in a few words. She was a musician
Though what sort I don’t know. For years
My imagination gave her a violin but now
It demands stranger things, as if she deserved
Krumhorns and sackbuts and tall therebos.
It could be that she sang; perhaps her angel
Provided some sort of counterpoint.

THE THIRD EXPERT

The third expert expressed doubt

That the soul in the box

Was Paganini’s. “Too small,”

He said, “and not shiny.

When we gave it a violin

It didn’t twitch an eyebrow

Or pretend interest. Probably

The work of some local botcher;

In the early 19^th century,

After all, Europe was filled

With unscrupulous artisans

Willing, if their price was met,

To make anything, no questions asked.

Why, in my own father’s family

There was an uncle who,

During the late Risorgimento

Lost his soul or had it stolen

And came home with one jerry-built

From copper tubes and spiderwebs.”

TANGO

Listen; there is no violin

But the same clarinet is there

As in a klezmer song

Ecstatic, miserable, screaming;

But for history's accidents

The tango might have been ours

When other folk heard it

They would think of passion

As they do now, to be sure,

But also of rabbis. "The Lvoviner Rav,"

We'd read, "was a pious man and wise

And when he tangoed furious angels

Put aside for a moment their wrath."