FAMILY MATTERS

It is 1890; my grandmother Esther is one year old
And Max, whom she will someday marry,
Is two -- twice her age; it is obvious
They’ll never suit each other. Her mother
Is alive or dead. She anxiously asks me
Which but I don't know; after consideration
I allow my great grandmother more time
To walk the broad streets of Lvov and to look
At the river about which her daughter will dream
When she’s thousands of miles away.
Irina, Esther's sister, is already born
Or perhaps not. There may be other children;
I'll lodge them in Paris until I discover
Whether they existed. If they did,
I'll bring them home. If they didn't, at least
They'll have had some very good meals
And the consolation of speaking French
With Parisian grace and assurance.

RIVER

My grandmother once, only once, mentioned to my father
That she used to dance by the river with other children.
He was astonished. A song was playing on the radio
The very music to which she'd danced when radios
Had not been invented. How little I know of her! She made
Noodles from scratch; she wanted three but had nine children
With a man she didn't much like. She learned English
By studying her children's schoolbooks. Her dreams
Mostly took place back in Lvov. Before her marriage
She worked in a cigarette factory; I don't know
What the brand was called. She  spoke Yiddish
And Polish and German and English; she also 
Could get by in Russian and Ukranian.
She disliked hearing the Emperor Franz-Joseph mocked.
She'd stay awake late, reading. She might keep a newspaper
For forty years, waiting for the time to finish it
Her son Morris died when he was twelve. She never
Spoke about him after she sat shivah. I like to think
He turned up now and again in her dreams wandering
Through the broad streets of Lvov with her or dancing
Down by the river.

IN LEMBERG

When she slept in Brooklyn, her rest scant and uneasy,
My grandmother Esther walked the streets of Lemberg. There,
In 1922, she met Joseph Conrad. Not the version who still
Walked in daylight but the one who'd taken
His uncle Tadeusz' advice to forget the sea
And go to the famed University of Lemberg.
He'd become a lawyer and married a Magyar flautist
Who died on a cold February afternoon
At 4:35; he'd written down the exact time
And always kept the note in his wallet.
As he aged he became unhappy at being unreal
He'd sleep for weeks then walk through dreams
Desperate for food and a bit of company.
Through two years -- he and his other both died
In 1924 -- she read him Yiddish translations of his works.
Their favorite was always Nostromo;
They wept together over the fate of Martin Decoud.

ALONG

That Tonto spoke Yiddish was no surprise;
From listening with her youngest to episodes
Of The Lone Ranger my grandmother knew
That Tonto could do almost anything.
After she died, he’d clattered up
To offer her a ride on Scout. They chatted;
Tonto, it turned out, was an orphan too.
He'd never seen Lemberg but had heard
That its streets were wide and that
The second oldest fish in the world
Lived in the waters of the Poltowa.

DESCENT

Esther was named
After her grandmother
Who was named after an aunt
Who bore the name
Of a half-sister who carried
Her own mother's name
For three days and a half.
The progression
Is long, not endless.
You can trace this line
Back and back and back
Until you are in Babylon
With Ishtar, the lion-rider
Who made an angry trip
To Hell and came back
Still angry but without
Any clothes.

THE EMPEROR COMES TO SNEDIKER AVENUE

My grandfather Max disliked emperors
On principle. Still, if Franz Joseph
Suddenly appeared on Snediker Avenue,
Running for his life from his enemies,
Max would surely offer him shelter.
He might -- but only might -- tell his wife
That the Emperor was in their kitchen
Eating a large apple. It's possible
Max would think it better to let Esther
Find the Emperor herself  rather
Than having a discussion on how unlikely
A man so old and habit-bound
Had slipped off his throne and turned up,
Hapsburg jaw and all, in Brooklyn.

SUM

Fourscore and ten years ago my grandmother

Brought forth on this continent a new baby

Who’d have been called Naftali Meyer

In Lvov but here was Nathan Martin

And married my mother

And flew with angels

And talked with cats

And earned a death

More gentle,

More kind.

ESCORT

Her youngest son had, with the best will in the world,

Made her listen to The Lone Ranger five times a week

For six years, so my grandmother Esther recognized

The spirit come to escort her to the next world.

It was Tonto. He was riding Scout, who nodded to her.

She had always suspected Scout was a nicer horse

Than the high-strung Silver, who got all the attention.

Tonto, she knew, spoke every Indian language,

As well as English and some Spanish, so when he smiled

And said bakumen aoyf, Fraulein, she did not gasp

Or ask him where he had learned to speak Yiddish

With a strong Galician lilt, but got up behind

And settled herself to ride through the Badlands.

FAITHFUL INDIAN COMPANION

The Lone Ranger, my grandmother said, was a show-off;
Catch Tonto naming his horse Silver! No, Tonto
Rode Scout, an unobtrusive paint, patient and durable.
Unlike Silver, Scout never needed to be rescued
From an enraged buffalo ("and why was the buffalo mad?
Silver probably said something to insult him.")
My father, 11, who listened in the kitchen
Almost every day, decided he'd know he was old
When he woke up preferring Tonto.

WAITING

My father's late for the rehearsal
So this poem's supporting cast -- a banshee,
Two cats, my grandmother, most
Of the 1939 Dodgers, Sts. Brigid and Jerome,
Jerome's lion and Hans Castorp --
Amuse themselves as best they can
Crowded into my grandmother's kitchen.
(It is 3 a.m., but she would've been awake
Even if I hadn't sent this crowd along)
The banshee tells a very involved joke
At which only my grandmother laughs
The cats debate proper ways to greet
The ghost of the last Ming Emperor
Who is said to be travelling with my father.
There is a noise outside, but it is only
Castor Oyl and J. Wellington Wimpy,
Players from Thimble Theater, hoping
For some work as extras in the poem.
The banshee is starting another joke:
"Nat Silver, the ghost of an emperor
And Li Po's shadow walk into a bar ..."

A CUP OF TEA

While everyone else in that large family slept
My father would be awake in the attic
Studying perhaps, or writing imperishable things
Which have perished. After her hard day's work,
His mother would read old newspapers
In the kitchen. (She got full value from her papers
Never letting one go until she had read it all
The news, the ads, the serialized novel,
Advice, recipes and those strange short bits
Compositors used to make the columns even.)
A few hours before dawn she would go upstairs
And bring him some tea and perhaps a cookie.
Did she bring a cup for herself sometimes?
And what did they discuss, those nachtvolk?

MEETING THE EMPEROR

One day in her home town my grandmother Esther

Saw the ghost of the Emperor. This surprised her;

Franz Joseph was alive and even if he wasn’t,

Why would he be selling used clothes in Lemberg?

Still, she had no doubt. This was the face she’d seen

On stamps and coins, in schools and post offices.

She had always a soft spot for the Emperor;

And many decades later, in far-off Brooklyn,

Deemed herself still a reasonably loyal subject.

Her husband could, if he wanted – and he did –

Vote for Roosevelt but she, having grown up

With a monarch, considered a president

To be something inconsiderable. Franz Joseph

Did not roam about asking people to elect him.

Esther was 15 that day in the market with no intent

Of ever leaving Lemberg. Sometimes in her dreams

She flew, but when she looked down, saw the Poltowa,

Its bridges filled with statues which craned their necks

To see her flying by, waving at them.

(Her ninth child, my father,  also flew in his sleep

But I don’t know if he ever saw the Poltowa.)

Brave, she walked up to the Emperor

Who was extolling a pair of almost new pants

To a skeptical buyer, stretching the cloth

In his semitransparent hands. He gave her a smile

Behind his enormous mustache. How we have dwindled!

I cannot talk to dogs; I cannot fly in dreams

The closest I’ve been to an emperor is not very close

Though Dwight Eisenhower walked into my mother,

Knocking her down, three months before I was born.

BY REQUEST

When my grandmother died her ghost
Lingered for a few weeks to finish reading
Some of the decades-old newspapers
She had stored in the basement.
It was 1977, but she wanted to finish
Some serialized novels and be sure
That the Siege of Stalingrad was over
And the Allies had still won World War II
Leaving her free to revisit her real home
In the debatable lands of middle Europe.

A LEMBERGOISE

My grandmother Esther was from Lemberg
Also called Lvov, Lwow, Lviv and Leopolis.
When there was a kingdom called Ruthenia,
Its king lived there. Karaites drifted in

From Byzantium. It had  -- still has -- broad streets
Leading to an opera house, so my grandmother
When she was a teenager making cigarettes
With other factory girls may have gone
To see Carmen, which is also about a girl
Who makes cigarettes. Due to Lvov's shortage
Of Escamillos, or even Don Joses, she married Max,
A very nice man. Over time, mild affection for him

Blossomed into serene and settled dislike.
Had they stayed they likely would have died
Along with almost all the other of the towns’Jews.
She deemed New York no substitute for Lemberg.
The moon over the Hudson River was never

A match for the one whose white double

Swam through Poltowa’s broken willows.

A BIT OF FAMILY HISTORY

My grandfather Max was quite religious
Until he got married, my aunts tell me.
My grandmother, though, had her doubts.
At some point her doubts apparently decided.
They actually liked him very much better
And began following him about everywhere.
At the very height of the busy season
Max would have to work almost without stop
He and the other tailors would snatch brief naps
On the long cutting tables.  While he slept
His wife's doubts purred quietly on his chest.
Deserted by her doubts, Esther, my grandmother,
Bitterly decided to keep the most kosher kitchen
On all of Snediker Avenue. It got to the point
That rabbis sometimes called to consult her
On abstruse points of dietary law.

REASONS

When she was in her teens
My father's mother Esther
Worked in a cigarette factory.
True, hers was in Lvov, a city
Which, depending on the weather
Was Polish or Austro-Hungarian
Or even Ukrainian, but not Spanish.
Nor, I am fairly certain, did she
Have affairs with bullfighters
Or get sprung from jail by Don Jose.
She sometimes danced by the river
But probably not with gypsies.
For these reasons, and others,
Including Bizet's decision to die
Ten years or so before her birth,
There is no opera about her.