I've had a-- a lot of poems I write are about the past,
about my childhood, or about the past of my family.
And the last year or so, I've been pursuing-- somewhat,
anyways--
a genealogy.
I've got a few poems that reflect that interest.
This first one is called Naming The Children,
and it's also about my grandfather on my mother's side
of the family.
And I'd been trying to write this poem for a long time.
I think I must have written-- this is the fifth time,
I think, I wrote the poem.
And I think it works now, this time.
Each one was different.
But the experience that I wanted to talk about--
one afternoon, when my wife and I were back east,
we visited my grandfather in a nursing home,
and he had had several strokes and had
lost part of his verbal ability and part of his memory.
Gail and I were supposed to bring him
to a party at my mother's house.
And my grandfather was a quiet peasant gentleman,
and his wife--
who sort of had run the family-- had died several years before.
Anyways, he couldn't find a clean handkerchief
to bring to the party with him, and he didn't want to go.
He started to cry, he was very upset by it.
And that sensitive moment somehow connected my wife
and him together, something passed between them that seemed
lovely, and delicate, and permanent.
Well, the poem, one more thing about it
is that there's mentions of names-- how names change.
When we drove from the nursing home to my mother's house,
he told us, in order to keep his memory going,
that he would recite the names of his children
and his grandchildren in three languages--
in Russian, in Hebrew, in English.
And that he would count to 10 in those three languages,
and so he did count to 10 in those three languages.
He got it all wrong.
Just a little humor in it.
But one of the things that he told
me that interested me is my grandmother's given
name in Russia was Hadassah, and her nickname--
her Jewish friends or family called her Hodya.
The Russian people called her Olga.
And then when she came to America,
she was called Ida, which is not quite as not
as earthy or exotic a name, I don't know.
But there's some mention made of that in the poem.
"Naming the Children."
"He remembers good night and good morning.
He remembers my wife, Gail, which
is the wind, who sits beside him, stroking his thin right
hand.
From back of the car through the neighborhoods,
he recites the names of his children
in Russian, Hebrew, and English.
The names squeeze through the damaged arteries,
pass the house in Odessa, over the remarkable ocean
to New York.
Mischa will be Morris, Hodya will be Ida.
10 years later, my mother, Beatrice Florence,
stares into polished stone.
At last, she sees herself, nee Bryna Fagel, beautiful bird,
which is how it is in America, over the graves of our parents,
how we are named."
[APPLAUSE]