By Gerald Stern
In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture
and wrinkled ties and baseball trophies and coffee pots
I have never seen a post-war Philco
with the automatic eye
nor heard Ravel's "Bolero" the way I did
in 1945 in that tiny living room
on Beechwood Boulevard, nor danced as I did
then, my knives all flashing, my hair all streaming,
my mother red with laughter, my father cupping
his left hand under his armpit, doing the dance
of old Ukraine, the sound of his skin half drum,
half fart, the world at last a meadow,
the three of us whirling and singing, the three of us
screaming and falling, as if we were dying,
as if we could never stop—in 1945—
in Pittsburgh, beautiful filthy Pittsburgh, home
of the evil Mellons, 5,000 miles away
from the other dancing—in Poland and Germany—
oh God of mercy, oh wild God.
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It rained most of the day Thursday and my computer drove me bonkers. So apart from getting a new Thor face mask with around-the-head instead of over-the-ears straps, having Paul make bangers & mash for St. George's Day, and finding out that the National Theatre will be streaming both versions of the production of Frankenstein in which Cumberbatch and Miller switch off playing the doctor and the monster, it was not my favorite quarantine day.
We were going to watch the streaming Twelfth Night in honor of Shakespeare's birthday but I was fighting with an upload, so instead we watched the start of the NFL draft (I could not pass a quiz on a single choice though), followed by the Belgravia we had missed -- this time I won't know whether all my predictions are right until next week. I have had requests to see more of my grand-dog, so here are photos Adam and Katherine sent the past week:
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