My paternal grandmother Leah c.1950s  

 

Some of their generation were unsure 

of the dark people who worked  

            in their houses – my grandmother,  

fearful, unkind to the man who helped  

my grandfather plant grapevines in the yard. 

 

As a young girl, never tutored to read or write, 

                      kept her unknowing  

locked inside – like the dark wardrobe 

with fine dresses of wool and silk, 

stayed in the house at her Singer,  

            her nerves stirred with the needle  

to remember Cossack soldiers –  

           horse hooves, the burning,  

                      the breaking of her girlhood. 

 

She spoke the language  

           of the mother she’d lost – 

                        but would not tell her stories –  

Ich ken nicht reden – her mind farfaln 

in this new world – bereft of words 

she might speak to the dark man outside         

          in recognition –  

 

held her head high,  

kept everything inside her house 

          protected, curtains closed 

                      against the sun.  

 

 

Yiddish: farfaln – lost, fallen; ‘ Ich ken nicht reden’ – I cannot speak of it