My ancestors came to America some generations back
They didn’t cross a river in the night
More like weeks they soaked in the holds
In the bowels of steerage
On the decks in the stormy sea
Nightmare crossing sailing into a dream
And they didn’t come as tourists
It’s a shame that I never thought to ask
What it was like in the old country
Grandpa and Grandma knew
They knew the old Slavic tongue as well
They were ashamed……
They never taught it to us
Never told us much
It was not to be our tale or our tongue
The old country started to die as the immigrant arrived
His daughters and sons would be Americans now
And who would speak of these things?
Why would anyone want to remember?
Polish still clicked off a grandmother’s tongue
But now English rolled and chopped like the slow passage
That brought them to the coal fields and factories
Mima and pa-pa
To America
Still they clung, sent children off to church
And to the school that was of the church
And married the girl that belonged to that church
And they were wedded (well you know the rest)
And the children didn’t ask much
And not much were they told
Oh there was the crazy aunt and the
Prodigal black sheep uncle back then
There always is
Much talk was made of the food
The sausage and the borscht
The Russian army ran on cabbage and rye
The Polish one as well
The officers… vodka and caviar
(Let’s not forget dessert, Belgian)
And Champagne is only French
And the Germans made poor masters
The Russians ever worse
State and fate and church were one
Your deepest thoughts were all you dared to hide
(So make your face a mask)
And never look too long or straight at any of them
Your betters…
The ones born to money, land, and title
The word slave comes from the root word Slav
One genetic font that flowed to make my blood
No one cared to hear what had come before
Of the famines, or horror at the door
And the Cossacks and the rape, the pillage
All the fun that could be had
In Poland.
At the time
And the nobles, the crown, the invaders
Were of one accord
In proportionate purveyance of misery
Let no one lag or fall behind
The little folk deserve their meager desserts
And more
There comes a time when there is no looking back
When something breaks free and birth and death compete
For your soul!
You can’t pine away for the old and be caught lock-stock in the
Barrel of the new…
There is a word few dared to say in the old country, lest it be funneled up to the King
And that word is Freedom
Another word was hope
Another Trunk of the tree
That is me
The Scotch-Irish, and the rest of the
Men that sailed before the mast and the
English and the Irish come now to a new world…
And if their station be on the hovel-dirt floor…or dungeon
Now they could claw the wall
Scratch and crawl up the slickened hemp
That now resembled more and more a ladder
If they remained down,
Well now at the least they had some choice
And some chance
In the land of the free
Freedom came sooner for some, late for others
And we all wait now on the new lords of the world’s manor
The fancy suited Lords, with insouciant airs
Well, they know how to rob
Of many a swindle they share
And by the time they finish with you
You say: Sirs you’ve been more than fair!
God bless you! One and all
Like an idiot Tiny Tim
With autism…
There are people that are left behind
They don’t know why
As they sightless strike about…
There is this: They may no longer own your body
But they still got a hold of your mind
Too simple for poetry
Too plain for truth
What can I do
At times lines surge into existence
I just thrash about in the flow and the ebb…
Some were captains
Some were lords
Some railed against the crown
From The Green Mountains came Ethan Allen
Against all odds
Wagons hauled barefoot through snow
Blood stamped into prints of frozen white.. These were the tracks
Of the ones that
Now wherever I go
I remember, the ones that came before
That made today
If I fail them it’s that I have failed me
Freedom is a thing of small degree
And it’s free?
It may be
But not for long
End of Immigrant Song
For now
