After the Failed Revolution, 1905

After the hunger march to the tsar's palace
begging for bread,
after the slaughter,

father sleeps in dialectical paradise and mother
packs the samovar, the china, the ruby glass,
the children.

Her face carries its tribe
just below the skin and
somewhere they are spinning the thread

measuring its length and breadth,
poised
with the terrible shears.

She restores the hair on her head,
gold teeth in broad smiles
and dreams of a land locked in amber.

Desire curled in her fist,
she sails for America
silent with all the others.

No wheel of miracles
just the hand which is, the eye which is
and the long nerve of history.

Breathless and sunblind, mother
tunnels through bitter earth
into salt of heaven.

She builds a fire to warm her children
and the flame is bright,
the shadows dim.

Learning English from the book
of exiles, she mouths words,
tonguing, polishing

until they grow liquid.  Then
she nibbles on chicken wings,
gnawing bones clean.

Her thoughts tug at their moorings:
the half-light of childhood,
daybreaks bursting like seeds,

a forest of old tongues telling stories,
winds rattling obituaries,
and the past spreading its stain.

She whispers names out of time
until the new world arrives
fresh with heat and light.
                                                                Flesh tones
of memory fade
as she stores the children
under her heart. Alone and growing
 
wiser, mother undresses the dark
and sleeps with moonlight
resting in her palms.

 

© Ruth Daigon