When I was a little boy,
I was afraid of the dark.
Baba sat at my bedside
and told me bed-time stories
of events in the old country,
how Zeyda’s heavy coat
saved his back from an axe
during a pogrom in Kiev
after Stolypin’s assassination,
of Kiev opera stories
where Baba’s friend worked
and would let her in
to sit free in an empty seat,
Rigoletto, La Juive
with Baba’s take on each story.
“Baba, tell me another story.”
And so it would go on
until I would fall asleep.