Because she lost her father
in the First World War,
her husband in the Second,
we don’t dispute
“There’s no Gemutlichkeit in America.”

We’re winning her heart
with filter cigarettes.
Puffing, she says,
“You can’t judge a country
by just twelve years.”

Gray days,
the wind hobbling down sidestreets,
I’m walking in a thirties photograph,
the prehistoric age
before my birth.

This town was never bombed.
Old ladies still wear funny shoes,
long, seedy furs.
they smell of camphor and chamomile,
old photographs.

Nothing much happened here.
A few jewelry shops changed hands.
A brewery. Banks.
The university put up a swastika, took it down.

The students now chant HO CHI MINH & hate Americans
on principle.
Daddy wears a flyer’s cap
& never grew old.
He’s on the table with the teacakes.
Mother & grandma are widows.

They take care of things.
It rains nearly every day;
every day, they wash the windows.
They cultivate jungles in the front parlors,
lush tropics
framed by lacy white curtains.
They coax the earth with plant food, scrub the leaves.
Each plant shines like a fat child.
They hope for the sun,
living in a Jewless world without men.

© Erica Mann Jong

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