Today I must leave you for a city
that, like you, will not sleep.
I am burning our ancestors
to get there. I am going
to have the beef short ribs.
I am going to buy a new hat.
One day you will tell me,
Dad, that hat looks silly.
You will be too honest.

Right now you are kicking
your poor mother. She
can feel you below her ribs.
She forgives you in labored breaths.
She forgives me that I cannot
rest my hand on her womb
and say, Calmate. Sheket.
You know my voice through
the thickness of muscle.
Already you know my touch.
I think you may be magic.
Perhaps you are the Messiah.

I leave you today for a cold
you will know only in stories
we tell you by the fireplace
when it dips almost to freezing.
The glint in the eye that became you
was born in the ice and snow
that hit your mother in the chest,
hit me in the head, stuck to my hat.

I leave you for a city of concrete,
fire & flood, of weeping, drama & song.
I leave you in a city of concrete,
fire & flood, of weeping, drama & song.
Do not believe them when they tell you
this is what cities are. They do not see
what you will see. They do not know
what you will know.

I leave you and the cold gathers
in gray masses arrayed against us.
When the cold holds us like an anvil
to the hammer-thrusts of warm, wet sky,
the shudder of metal and plastic
jolts an echo through me I had not known.
I close my eyes and see your face.
I think I will always be afraid now.

Before me the work lies unfinished.
May you live to tear it down and
build it right. May you dodge the bullet
meant for me. I have had too much wine,
too much. They do not stop pouring.
Do not stop being too honest. They will
hate you for it. Love everyone anyway.
Have pity on us poor sinners.