A poem called "Prodigy."
When I was very young, well, I do mention the date,
I played very good chess.
And the pleasure of being a kid, kind of a juvenile delinquent,
all the parents warning their children not to play with me,
was that I could beat, not just the kids,
but even grown-ups in the neighborhood.
So this is my glorious period.
Nothing matched it since.
"Prodigy," "I grew up bent over a chessboard.
I loved the word "endgame."
All my cousins looked worried.
It was a small house near a Roman graveyard.
Planes and tanks shook its window panes.
A retired professor of astronomy taught me how to play.
That must have been in 1944.
In the set we were using, the paint
had almost chipped off the black pieces.
The white King was missing and had to be substituted for.
I'm told but do not believe that that summer I witnessed
men hung from telephone poles.
I remember my mother blindfolding me a lot.
She had a way of tucking my head suddenly under her overcoat.
In chess, too, the professor told me,
the masters played blindfolded, the great ones
on several boards at the same time."