I had such plans for you.
I would paint the floor’s
linoleum with poppies.
I cut stencils, red centers and orange petals.
An old kitchen with new poppies.
I fell asleep on the floor, paint brush in hand.

I would paint inscriptions,
cribbed Latin across all the lintels.
Truth conquers all.
Faith before understanding.
Be what you seem to be.
Ancient lips speaking out of ancient doorways.

Impossible house! Ceilings’ plasters peeled;
grouted tiles loosened; walls’ wallpaper wrinkled;
wood floors blackened from two rutting
cats in caterwaul; wild lilacs grew
unpruned in a dead-wood thicket.
Faith before understanding was mockery.

The money just ran out, but the poppies
proved impervious and seemed to know
what the golem knew in silent-seeded shackled sleep.
House, with your poppies you are as the clay immortal
to the mortal breath: the Prague rabbi’s wager
to make the living out of the dead.

Valerie Wohlfeld’s first collection of poems, Thinking the World Visible, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. Her second book of poems, Woman with Wing Removed, came out from Truman State University Press. Her poems have appeared in Tikkun, The Forward, Studies in American Jewish Literature, Best Jewish Writing 2003, Midstream, The New Yorker, Poetry, and elsewhere.