Richard Chess
Third Temple
When they build it, I will bring
chocolate lab, as my offering to the Lord.
in truth, with a bone in my voice. He bounds
up the bank in front of the house and races
to the rear where I wait at the door.
With his two brown eyes, he adores me.
I command him to sit, and he sits
and receives the reward. I command him to lie
and he lies and rolls over to offer his belly.
This is how I know he will dutifully accompany me,
when the time comes, when the dust of disassembling
the Dome of the Rock has settled,
when the thousands of elegant tiles that adorned the building
have been wrapped and shipped to collectors,
when the Muslims have slunk away for the last time, disgraced, ashamed,
when the righteous stonemasons have completed their work
on the pillars and columns and steps, and the metalworkers
have finished the seven-branched candelabrum and the yeshiva
boys have placed it and the lavers and display table and cherubim
and curtains, when law has been established in its third home.
Brothers and sisters, bring your pets!
Cat! Parakeet!
Angelfish!
Alpaca, diamondback, and pig!
Goats aplenty! Turtle, mare, and sheep!
From their cages, perches, fields, bowls and pens,
they have gazed upon us for years. Watched us
knot our ties, weep on the sofa, stare blankly at snow.
Have they known, all along, that we are lost?
The red heifer has appeared!
From this day forward, I will read to
from Leviticus so that he will understand, when we arrive
in
I will grill meat every day,
greeting first light with lamb and throwing
ribs and sirloins onto the grill well into the night,
thickening the air with smoke
so that he will grow accustomed to the aroma
which will be magnified, when the
by a power of tens of thousands of peace and sin offerings.
On the plaza below the
the achingly blue sky, the sun spreading its glory,
among wigged, frocked, pale, and fearful ones
performing meticulously every great and minor ritual,
I will shake with shame because
on state-employee’s wages I cannot care for more, but the Lord
deserves more than his extended paw.
Surely, the priests will marvel at his fine coat
just before they slit,
surely, because we are a good, kind, loving people
they will sing his favorite psalm
as blood drains from him, as his coat flames.
first
appeared in The Forward, January 2001.