My Grandparents

 

 

There are no photographs

of who they were

what they did

 

One was beautiful

with hair like the sun

setting in late August

but more pale

 

Another was slow, a third fat

with fingers so strong

they never let go

 

The last, a wanderer

who became lost searching

for work in Galicia

 

They come to me

as I sit after breakfast

in the kitchen

and I tell them

the truths I have found:

 

Time is a windmill

the world exhales each day

inhales each night

 

Friends come to us

when we are dying

or struggling with mysteries

or joyfully shedding our skin

in summer on a beach

somewhere

 

Don’t worry, I tell them,

we are never alone

 

And I tell them stories,

true ones, like this:

 

Once in an airport

while I sat alone, writing

a poem about Primo Levi’s

death in Turin

 

An Asian woman walked

back and forth near me

singing deep in her throat

  

de    de    tay

               de de     tay     tay

                             de      de      tay

 

and she stayed by me

singing

 

singing

 

until I finished

the lines about Levi’s

guilt and forgiveness

in the moment before

he threw himself down

to his death

on the stairs

in Turin

 

She did not see me

hearing her song

as she walked there

singing

 

her song

as deep in her throat

as Jesus or love

as deep in my throat

as it was in hers

 

de    de    tay

               de de     tay     tay

                             de      de      tay

 

And when I tell my grandparents

this story, they sit

in their brown suits

and dark babushkas, smiling

 

and nodding as if they

understood my words, as if

my English was their Polish

 

 

 

 

     —About the poet, John Guzlowski



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