Poetry from The Literary Review


Uncle

I'm older than you will ever be,
Uncle, dead the year of my birth.
You closed your eyes at the bris, a seer,
and swore the child will be a scholar.
Perhaps it was then my father,
that unlettered scholar of horseflesh,
turned from his son in his fragile heart
and, waving his hand dismissively,
sealed my fate like a displeased king.
And your half-sister, my mother,
beamed and imagined you, a gentleman
and almost a scholar, my father.
And she lowered her eyes and veiled them
against all the future to come. Uncle,
I saw you today as you strolled in 1946
on Southern Boulevard, humming under your breath
How Deep Is the Ocean,
on your way to the Garden and the Zoo.
And I turned to you from the gaze
of my father's brief life of making small bets
and slicing the pages for the books
he never read--The World Almanac
and Book of Facts, Who's Who
In the World of the Jews--until one
rose up in protest and cut his eye.
And I saw you as my mother envisioned it,
lifting me above your head to see
the serpents and exotic birds, the great apes
mocking us in their austere cages.