for my dear family, lost in Russia– and in America
Tonight,
the history finally written,
the family huddles together
at last,
from Kholmich to
Brookline,
and the Bronx in between,
from shtetl to
death camp, from
the neighborhood
to a cemetery in New Jersey,
from Hanna and Chaim, and Isaac Hirsch,
to Bessie and Max,
from Uncle George and
my mother,
to Grandma Sarah,
their faces flickering
in the light of a
vast, weeping century
of Yarzheit candles
on my table.
