WEBVTT

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And I'll close with
the title poems

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of "Squares and
Courtyards," which

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also goes back and forth
between Paris and New

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York, the present and past.

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"Across the Place du
Marché-Sainte-Catherine,

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the light which frames a
building that I see daily

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walking home from the bakery,
white voile and open windows,

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sudden green and scarlet window
box geraniums backlit in cloud

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encouraged clarity against the
century-patinaed grey is such

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a gift of the quotidian,
of benefice of sight

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and consciousness.

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I sometimes stop,
confused with gratitude,

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not knowing what to
thank or whom to bless,

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break off an end of
seven grain baguette

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as if my orchestrated senses
could confirm the day.

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It's fragrant.

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I eat it.

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Confirm the day's fragrance:
I eat, bit by bit,

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the buttery pain aux
raisins shell-coiled beside

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my steaming afternoon tea.

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It's the hour for a
schoolchild's treat, munched

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down, warm in waxed
paper, on the street

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or picked at on cheap
earthenware (like mine)

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beside books marked
with homework to be done

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while the street's sunlit,
dusk-lit, lamp-lit.

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She sucks her pencil,
window-framed.

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I sip nostalgia for a childhood
not my own Bronx kitchen table,

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with a fire escape in the alley
shaded by sumac trees which

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filtered out the other
languages I heard the airshaft's

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crosscurrents intone.

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I heard the aircraft's
crosscurrents intone

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below the minyan
davening morning offices.

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A childish rasp that
slurred and sputtered

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was the Polish janitor's
red-knuckled son helping

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his father empty garbage cans.

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His voice was why I thought
him rough (as is English when

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spoken by its novices) --

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a voice I never heard
speaking its own language.

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His name was Joseph.

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He was six.

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Other syllables connected
news from gutted Europe

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to the dusty motes
of Sabbath morning.

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Ash settled on bricks,
spun up the shaft

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with voices of old
Jews, was drawn down

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garrulous
chain-smokers' throats.

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Drawn up from garrulous
chainsmokers' throats

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at square tin tables
on wet cobblestones

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just hosed down by a green-clad
African street-cleaner:

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strikes, prices, who still
votes Left, sex, a sick child.

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Hands unbutton coats halfway.

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The wind's mild, but it looks
like rain above the Place du

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Marché-Sainte-Catherine,
where charcoal-bellied clouds

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converge like boats in the
mutable blue harbor sky.

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Another coffee,
another blanc sec --

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as if events were ours to
rearrange with words, as

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if dailiness forestalled
change, as if we didn't grow old

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(or not) and die as long as
someone listened when we spoke.

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As long as someone listened
when I spoke, especially

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someone walking
a dog, I'd launch

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into juvenile monologue:
Greek myths, canine behavior,

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and could I stroke
the Lab or spaniel?

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Speech and touch
evoked my grandmother,

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the bookkeeper from Prague
who died as I emerged out

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of the fog of infancy,
while lives dispersed

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in smoke above the camps
(and Dresden and Japan)

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and with them someone
else I might have been

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if memory braided with history.

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I pressed my face into the dog's
warm fur whose heat and smell

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I learned by heart,
while she receded

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into words I found for her.

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Receding into words I
found for her delight,

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someone was dispossessed of
her own story (she thought)

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by mine.

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Receding into words, the frail
and early rising neighbor who

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died during my cancer
treatment year is not summed up

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by 'centenarian'.

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Her century requires a lexicon.

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I wrote a girl on paper when I
bore a child, whose photocopied

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life became letters
tattooed across a watermark,

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a woman's in the world,
who shares her name.

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And Gisela, who
took me to the park,

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for whom I pieced
together sentences --

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it's all the words
she said to me I miss.

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It's all the words she
said to me I miss, down

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to unechoed accents.

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Did she speak Yiddish to me?

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With whom did she speak Czech?

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German was what my father
spoke till his sixth year,

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first grade.

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When did he tell me this?

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His parents common tongue.

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And did they make love
in their second language?

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The air's thick with cognates,
questions and parentheses

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she'll scribble down once
she's back in her room,

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chewing her braid, tracing
our labyrinthine fragments.

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She zips her anorak and shifts
the heavy satchel on her back,

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watching low clouds gather as
she walks home across the Place

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du Marché-Sainte-Catherine.

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Not knowing what to
thank or whom to bless,

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the school girl at the
window, whom I'm not,

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hums cadences it
soothes her to repeat,

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which open into other languages
in which she'll piece together

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sentences while I imagine
her across the street

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as late light shifts,
sunlit dusk-lit, lamp-lit.

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Is there a yellow star
sewed to her dress

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as she exults, confused
with gratitude:

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her century requires
a lexicon of memory

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braided with history she'll
have reflective decades to write

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down?

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Not thinking she'll get
old (or not) and die;

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thinking: she can
if anybody could."

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Thank you very much.

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[APPLAUSE]

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