NUMBERS

Glancing at a column, my grandfather Max

Knew instantly what they’d add up to.

My grandfather Joe could play chess in his head
And once forced the ghost of Paul Morphy
To accept a draw. My brother at ten
Half invented calculus before finding out
Leibniz and Newton had beaten him to it.
Once, because I missed you greatly,
I discovered a way to square a circle
Which, unfortunately,  I have forgotten.

ALSO, A LENS

If my grandfather is recalled into being
By some fine watch that wants a maker
Or if a shadow, needing someone to cast it
Causes him to gradually cohere, midstride,
On Second Avenue, he will likely want
His watchmaker's hammer returned. Tell him
I have it hanging on the wall and that
It's willing to go back to work

YETIS

That yetis invented chess, if they did,

Cuts no ice with me. My brother likes chess

As did my Grandfather Joe but I was never

Much one for patient strategy. Besides,

Orang utans, when not murdering Marie Roget,

Brought backgammon into the world and tarsiers

Invented language in order to make puns

And where has it gotten them? Granted,

There is a yeti in my house -- quite likely the one

Who stayed with the great Wasliya Szymborska.

Granted, too, that he’s brought a chessboard

And holds a white pawn in one of his hands …

Very well – I chose, of course, the left hand

How my grandfather would have laughed

As if he always wins when his ghosts

Demands he meet them in Union Square

And play until the day breaks.

FIX-IT

My grandfather Joe could tell why a watch had stopped
By winding it, holding it to his ear and then tapping it --
Three precise taps. After this, the diagnosis:
A bit of grit in a cog wheel or a broken spring
Or a simple desire for attention. He'd ask for a tool --
A needle, say, or a butter-knife or a drop of oil --
Which always proved to be the right one. If people
Had been watches, he and his older daughter
Would've gotten along quite splendidly.

ENCOUNTERS

 When she was 4, her father decided

It was time for her to meet her mother.
They took a trolley to the cemetery. For a while
My mother pictured hers as a polished stone
With my mother's name, Lillian, written on it. At 15,
My mother went back on her own having decided
To let the first Lillian have the name to herself.
It took less than a minute to say. The explanation
Took just over two. It seemed impolite to just leave
So my mother -- now Patricia -- gave a detailed synopsis
Of Random Harvest, in which Ronald Colman,
  An amnesiac veteran, is in love with Greer Garson.

NIGHT HAWK

After he died, my grandfather Joe
Got a job in a good copy
Of an Edward Hopper painting --
The famous one, Nighthawks.
I visit sometimes. He hangs
In my doctor's waiting room
Sitting on the corner stool
In the center left of the picture.
The pay, he says, is not much
But the coffee is good
And the refills unlimited.

HOME FROM THE LAKE

Now that they're both dead
Do my mother and her father
Still fight or are there days
She is eleven and, at twilight,
Waits for him by the lake
Knowing he'll come for her
Knowing he'll let her stand
On the running board
Almost all the way home?

GRANDFATHER

He had strange, wonderful tools
But could fix his daughter's watch
With a knife tip and a bent wire.
His own watch was always
Precisely five minutes fast.
His shadow kept time by the sun;
The two of them never agreed.

When my grandfather played chess
In Union Square, his shadow
Would wander away to listen
To the blind man and his daughter;
She sang; her father played a flute.
Sometimes the shadow danced.

FROM 1940

Beyond the computer screen is my mother
In 1940, looking at me from a census summary.
She is 13, still called Lillian, living in northern Brooklyn --
The 23rd Assembly District -- with her father Joseph, 43,
Her stepmother Fannie, 38, and her half-sister, Tamara, 6.
How young they are! My mother has reached
Her full height of five foot nothing.
She has been accelerated, as we used to say,
Skipping two grades, making her
A very short high school student. If this is a weekday
She is wearing a middy blouse. If it is Saturday
She is going to, or is at, or has come home from the movies
About which she knows everything a bright 13 year old
Can learn from reading the news and fan magazines
With a skeptical eye. (It will never be easy
To fool my mother.) Perhaps she is in the kitchen,
With Fannie's mother (Jennie, 67), explaining in Yiddish
The plots of movies she's seen. Fannie and my mother
Have been at war for years. Jennie and her husband
(Charles, 76) have joined my mother's camp.
Jennie has taught my mother Yiddish
So that, once she has children,
My mother will be able to say things
They don't understand.
I’m not certain, but I think she's just told Jennie
That some man in 2016 is thinking of her.
"Eh," says Jennie, "just a ghost; don't mind him.
Everyone knows ghosts are crazy."

ASE

If you want the semblance of my Great Uncle
Open Alice in Wonderland to Tenniel's picture
Of Humpty Dumpty. The likeness is uncanny
Except Humpty looks arrogant and Ase
Looked only kind, like a benevolent ogre
His child-eating days long behind him.
Surely he wasn't always bald and craggy
With a grinning, gaping mouth and eyes
Droop lidded but still seeing wonders?
Unlike my grandfather, his younger brother,
Who was small and deft and dapper
Ase was large and sprawling. His fat fingers
Could not do card tricks. What choice then
But to learn magic?

SOME THINGS WE MIGHT HAVE DISCUSSED

When you left school at ten, Grandpa,
What was your first job?
Your mother -- what did she call you?
Were you with your young wife
When she slipped on an icy stair
Then died bearing your daughter?
Was it returning from her grave
That you first set your watch
A few minutes fast? How surprised
Doom's henchman must have been
When next he leapt from the shadows
To find you five minutes away!

16 GAMES OF CHESS

When his wife died in childbirth

On February 25, 1927 my grandfather Joe

Felt his heart stop and then contract

Until it was small and hard and round

And cold as a marble. Ase, his brother,

Brought him home and sat with him.

Joe's deft fingers shook. For three days

He sat in the dark. On the fourth,

My great aunts Jenny and Lena

Brought his chess set from the apartment

Joe never visited again. Jenny opened the blinds

While Lena set up the board. She won

Fifteen games in a row.

She thought she was winning game sixteen

When Joe's eyes narrowed. "Mate in five," he said.

"So you remember how to talk?" said his sister.