This is a poem I wrote last summer
when my grandfather died.
Not much to say about a grandfather.
It's about growing up, I suppose.
Growing up through other people's deaths.
[LAUGHS] This guy's a little strange, maybe.
"Grandfather."
"Each day my grandfather dies, I grow a little.
Soon I will reach the table.
Soon I will leave home.
Grandfather was a gentleman.
I never saw him cry until the last day, when
the blood already clotted a little here, a little there.
My fingernails and hair grow at an enormous rate lately.
Each morning, my grandfather loses his memory.
He rehearses his life by counting to ten in Russian,
Hebrew, and English.
The blood sighs.
Each morning, I grow stronger.
I crushed fruit with my bare hands today.
Soon I will be a man.
At grandfather's funeral, no one had much to say.
When a man is a gentleman for so many years
and no one fears him, he is lost among relatives.
They toss a little earth, they wonder if it will rain.
If only he could find a story to tell us.
What do the dead eat?
Is it fun, like travel?
And the pain, is it still unreal, like here?
A week before he died, I wrote a letter.
Dear grandfather.
What else could I say?
Here are a few words for the family to say at the funeral.
Dear grandfather.
Over and over.
There are no new stories.
They all end the same."