My Small Grandmother        

My small grandmother

Who did not smile

Wore her mortal trial

Neatly on her shoulders

While somewhere in her dry silence

My grandfather’s shadow hovered

Fleshless as her bony Yiddish

 

Grandmother all gristle and wrinkles

Outlasted Czarist Russia

Survived the Cossacks’ plunder

Brought here her Sabbath’s wonder

Five sons and my mother

 

Now she is remembered

Late in my December

Seated at the window

Near the warm radiator

Her round eyes drinking

The bay’s dark waters

Its blinking shadows swimming

Starstruck in the moonlight

 

I know not what embraced her

As she stared in seeming torpor

Perhaps her mother’s figure

From a long-thawed Russian winter

Or the eyes of hostile soldiers

Fixed sternly on her father

As he held her closely to him

Fearing they might harm her

 

Or in another darkness

Its outlines even dimmer

The hush of three lost infants

Their bodies still within her

 

Tonight I miss her

12/12-12/17/96, 1/12-1/14/97, 1/7-1/l8/98, 8/22/98

Copyright 1998 by Maurice Leiter.

Posted with permission.