If There Is a God
–Ewa Lipska
If there is a God
I’ll have dinner at his place.
Instead of a stoplight, a red hawthorn.
An angel will come for me in a car.
Doves of chubby clouds
will flutter over the folding table.
From empty jugs we will drink holy water and free will.
Even if God is near-sighted,
he will see eternity coming.
If God has a flair for languages, he can translate holy poems
for an anthology even holier
than the holiest first drop
from which a river sprang.
Later we will go cycling, God and I,
over a cherry tree, over the landscapes of paradise.
Earth’s reeds stand in vases here.
Beasts of prey lie fallow.
At last God will get off his bike and say
it is he
who is God.
He will take out his binoculars. He will command me
to behold the earth. He will tell me
how things have come to such a pass,
how long he has plied his trade and
how infallibly he has failed with the world,
launching tiny airplanes of ideas into the vacuum.

If God is a believer
he prays to himself for perpetual hope.
Oxen carry the sun upon their horns.
The folding table sways on its legs.
I will get medicine from God
and get well
soon after I die.