Return  for my grandfather

this is not about the terrified eyes of the soldier
who pointed his rifle at our plane
the drive through snowy forests
to see empty  ski resorts
nor is it about the young man
who begged me to marry help him escape
I was not in Romania to write about you Zeyde
born a country away  buried an ocean away
what were you doing on the curb 
the unbugged sanctuary where I sat
with guide and driver argued politics?

Bucharest 
crab apple blossoms dress a gray city
assignment 
report on so-called life-prolonging treatments  
bee pollen  herbal baths   procaine 
the drug agitates 
evokes a sea-voyage back to Brooklyn
shul  your hug  delighted chuckle
when I ran downstairs to daven 
I want to write about
Hanukkah   dreidles and latkes
open the wrong door  find dolls 
brown Didy  cried when squeezed
wet when turned over
fat Chuckles with bitten fingers 
red-haired Toni  wig torn off
a doll stuck with pins?

I talk incessantly about Romania
women lined up at barren markets 
men playing chess in cafes
as if I'd never crossed a border 
or handled foreign currency
I don't describe locked ghetto gates 
elegant  black  wrought iron
synagogue I couldn't visit  Rabbi unavailable
nor do I reveal that you disrupted prayers
in the church where I admired icons

you whispered about Shakespeare violin
studies interrupted by split skulls splattered tissue
spoke finally of hiding in luggage bins
hurricaning onto this alien planet
sleeping on shop benches with father and brothers
until mother and sisters had safely arrived

I miss pastrami lunches at your factory
machines' thrum medley of yiddish and Spanish
wonder at journeys without papers
I read the Story of Lights to children who have
never starved or seen someone they love taken away
smell the Raggedy Bobbe kept for me
imagine myself in your lap again