One chain-smoked cigarettes
rolled his own
with slow deliberate movements…
He was a disgrace
to the family
for he worked on the Sabbath.
His grandfather
had been head Rabbi
in Palestine
and his brother
was a Rabbi in Salonika,
who changed money on the side.
He had a little booth
on a busy corner.
My father,
who is now a grandfather,
remembers it well.
This brother was thought highly of
by the family.
But my grandfather, the black sheep,
saved his money.
He left for America by steamship
with his oldest son Alberto,
to keep the boy from being drafted…
My mother’s father
was from Jannina
from an ancient line of Greek Jews.
In America, this grandfather
worked in a cigarette factory
and lived in Harlem.
He is best remembered for
his big beautiful brown eyes
and for the love he showered on his wife,
his children
and on distant relatives,
arriving by boat at Ellis Island.
He died
in the influenza epidemic of 1919…
My grandmother followed him,
Dying in Harlem six months later
Of a broken heart…