After all our arguments I never told you,
“Don’t ride to your death on a bicycle
for Christ’s sake,” because Poland is
Christ’s country and Yiddish is not a jargon,
because your wife, daughters, and ex-wife love you,
Paradise is a social democratic state
since Hell was turned over to Stalin and Hitler,
and because I didn’t remember to tell you that
Stanley William Hayter painted his daughter
killed on a bicycle, and because your mother
told you gentlemen don’t carry packages—
they ride horses or limousines,
not bicycles on country roads.
What is there for me to do
but blow you a kiss goodbye,
say you were too good, too intelligent,
and too much loved to die,
the last of an endangered species.