Two refugee pieces

from my All Around What Empties Out and Blood and Soap, respectively:




Longitudes

Walking for several lifetimes, we finally reached that country.
A city at the end of a 24 hour bus ride.
A walk across the street.
Oakland by the Seine.
The Trenton of the East.
The skyscrapers resembled adobe huts from afar,
And a well-paved road appeared as a river.
I ordered food by gesturing,
And asked for directions by gesturing,
And watched TV inside a well-lit coffin.
The earth is our stewardship, the dung beetle declared.
This far below the mirror’s surface,
Only cowards can survive.
I’ve lived my whole life by this speed bump, Sir,
And know every nook of this stinking alley.
A provincial often thinks himself superior to a cosmopolitan
Because he knows every nook of a stinking alley.
And I’ve been married for a century to this fire hydrant.
My dream is to travel to the dim continent,
If only for an afternoon.
Someday soon I hope to return
To the hamlet of the dozing fathers,
Where porch swings provide easy refuge
From the cares of the day,
And the movie house shows cartoons on Saturday.




My Grandfather the Exceptional

This is a true story about my grandfather: He walked a thousand miles from his native village. He did not intend to go that far. He had wanted to walk maybe one, at most two miles, but, before he knew it, he had walked a thousand miles from his native village. After every mile there appeared a new village, each one utterly different from any place he had seen before. At each village he settled down until they either threatened or politely asked him to move on. He would work at whatever job was available. He was, at various times, a barber, a woodcutter, a sculptor, a slave, a moneylender, a beggar, a politician, a policeman, a thief. He learnt new customs, new slang, new ways of standing up, of sitting on a chair, of sneezing, of scratching his nose. He got new haircuts. Without being aware of it, he learnt to dissimulate his true likes and dislikes. He became overeager to please. He also became hyper-conscious of every single detail of his increasingly abnormal body. He accrued many unpleasant nicknames. Occasionally he would fall in love, be rejected, reject in turn, propose, get married, father children, legitimate and illegitimate, divorce, then reconcile. Once he was drafted into an army and fought bravely against an enemy whom he half suspected to be men from his original village. (He was captured by these enemies, then repatriated in a prisoner exchange.) At another village he was anointed a poet laureate although he could not speak the local language. Finally, at his last village, he looked around and was relieved to find out he was no longer exceptional. Because all old men look alike, disgusted and disgusting, he was finally welcomed into the fraternity of those waiting to die.




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