After the Sabbath Prayers

After the Sabbath prayers

The Baal Shem's butterfly

Followed me down the hill.

Now the Baal Shem is dead

These hundreds of years

And a butterfly ends its life

In three flag-swept days.

So this was a miracle,

Dancing down all these wars and truces

Yellow as a first-day butterfly,

Nothing of time or massacre

In its bright flutter.

Now the sharp stars are in the sky

And I am shivering as I did last night,

And the wind is not warmer

For the yellow butterfly

Folded somewhere on a sticky leaf

And moving like a leaf itself.

And how truly great

A miracle this is, that I,

Who this morning saw the Baal Shem's butterfly

Doing its glory in the sun,

Should spend this night in darkness,

Hands pocketed against the flies and cold.