HOME

Once in a while my dreams take me
To a small village, whose narrow streets
Are filled with low wooden buildings.
Folks nod at me in the marketplace;
At times I'll nap in the bath house
Where the ghosts make space for me.
Never have I doubted where I was:
My grandmother's much-missed home town --
The only place, she felt, which did things right.
But now I find she came from a large town
With wide streets and gleaming bridges
Where statues looked out on the river.
There were more statues in the opera house
(The opera house? Why would a shtetl have an opera house?)
Including a bust of John Gielgud's great-grandmother.
The bath house ghosts know of her town
"You're much better off here," they tell me.