Day 173

Now we are all Refaat   I cannot claim this, 
do not belong to this
A friend tells me the story of his grandparents:
how they fled the Nazis, 
landed in Cuba, then New York
then, finally, rural New Jersey
on a chicken farm  In a dream
I am on a boat that is nowhere, headed to nowhere
Drifting in the middle of a sea with nothing to orient by
Not even a compass  not even the constellations
Someone asks when did you start to write poetry
Someone asks can poetry save anything
Someone says I went to the protests but I failed
to stop the bombing   I think of Refaat
telling stories to his daughter, and she
telling him hers   Refaat    saying she never before
liked to read, but now I think
if she lives she might grow up to be a storyteller
I am italicizing everything I don’t belong to
Is the child alive?  How she must miss her father
My friend tells me what his grandmother did
to secure her husband’s escape
from the concentration camp
It is something, we say, anyone would do
The body as currency   The body as guarantee
If you were asked to do this
to keep a person you loved alive
If you knew this was the price   If you knew you would be asked
half a century later    to reveal it
When the bombing is over, if something remains,
will the child be found?  Will she, years from now,
in a moment of calm that we might imagine –
the sea drifting outside a window, a warm breeze,
fragrance of oranges –keep telling the story?