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.