I lived on Mendelson Street near the corner of Spinoza
where Kafka’s stray archives emigrated
leaving the stale air of a room in Prague
to find themselves stuffed in shelves and drawers, peeling paint
a flat overrun with street-smart cats.
Closed shutters, an extravagant sun on the streets
where pedestrians speak the language of the Song of Songs.
This is not the parable that burns its own manuscripts
plays solitaire, Russian roulette, or harbors the stings
of a critical father.
If I had time enough, I’d redress our parents’ wounds
settle our nomadic selves whose only homes are itinerant words
and the scar tissue on a circumcised heart
slipped loose at the shoveling
at the slow sliding
down cheeks
earth landing on the wooden casket
I gripped a shovel’s neck
dropping its steel-cold handfuls
into the gaping ground
soil swallowing the past
the God of surprises woke me early
splashing me with sunlight
and an absence a father once filled
a voice I can’t retrieve, advice I couldn’t heed
a love too often camouflaged in conflict
those party photos peopled by the dead
where smiles and toasts “to life” called across a table
a hall filled with song, laughter, loud talk in Polish mixed with Yiddish
who would guess how they were orphaned,
what will propelled them to walk on
with hope buried alive all around them
they could not plaster over the fissures in the façade
undo the wars that forged them
the mass graves, the smoke and ash that is a birthright
I pass on second-hand
my son must sense something imported from Poland
beneath my borough of Queens English
an undertone of exile
God stunned silent