Pretending To Be Blind
In summer, when the tourists come to my father’s hotel
my grandfather sits in the lobby with his Chinese cane
and his purple slippers, and wearing his dark glasses
he pretends to be blind. He calls out in a friendly voice
(with a soft cough or two for dramatic effect)
to the prettiest of the tourist women as they come in
out of the sunlight and in from the heat of the street.
Grandfather knows three hundred languages and can flirt
in every one.
While my father whispers orders to the bellboys
and writes passport numbers in the big blue book
my grandfather strikes up his conversations with the waiting guests.
What do they think of his country?
Is it still beautiful?
Did they smell the oranges when they flew in
over the gold and green domes of the airport?
He guesses their ages from their voices and they laugh
(always the same laugh) and correct him
(always the same correction)
-Oh no! I’m much older than that!
Once he has them under his spell he guesses what country
they’ve left behind for the weekend, or week, or month.
He never gets it wrong.
-But how can you tell? my older sister cries,
stamping her dainty feet and angry at the mystery of it.
-how can you tell when these foreigners all speak our language
so poorly!
Grandfather smiles and strokes his big nose,
wiggling it between his rough fingers and calloused thumb.
-A man’s eyes may lie to him but never his nose. Girls
wear their homelands like a scent!
My sister isn’t pleased and puts him to the test.
-French girls. How do they smell?
-Wood-smoke and roses.
-And Italian girls? What are they like?
-Garlic and orchids.
-Greek girls?
-Oranges and ocean.
-And, my sister crinkles her eyes, looking so sneaky
that even her pretty ears have points …
-and what about Jewish girls?
-Ink and sandalwood.
-Old man, my father asks, what will you do when you
really do go blind? Follow your nose like a hound dog?
Grandfather taps his cane, dances in his slippers,
wiggles his nose and laughs.
-It’s never steered me wrong yet!
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Identity Crisis
For 2 weeks I was a prisoner in the Stamboul Cinema.
When I emerged (after twenty-thousand one-hundred
and sixty minutes of black and white, Technicolor,
Panavision, Pathe newsreels and beauty too sweet to bear)
I was different …
so different that I didn’t even gawk when the old lady
selling chewing gum and oranges turned out to be the
Princess Anastasia.
Oh, and my stutter was gone and my vocabulary was huge!
and after 2 weeks (or one million two hundred and nine
thousand six hundred seconds) in the stifling dark
with my face following the light like a flower’s follows the sun)
I had Jeanne Moreau’s mouth and Jean Simmons’ nose
and Bibi Andersen’s eyes and Melina Mercouri’s chin
and Audrey Hepburn’s neck and Greta Garbo’s laugh
and other lovely things too numerous to mention
from Claudia Cardinale and Natalie Wood and Ingrid
Bergman and Deborah Kerr and Sophia Loren and others
too numerous to note …
At the corner I got on the bus which let me off
where the yachts come to dock in Tokyo Bay
and Gregory Peck helped me aboard and we sailed
up the Thames to Rome where William Holden
admired my many anecdotes and said “Here we are!”
and Marcello Mastrioanni danced me round the Eiffel
Tower and I turned the corner and ran into a crowd
of girls from my school.
-Oh, said first this one and then that, who have we here?
A movie star, I think! But which one?
-That’s no movie star, said my sister Beauty,
that’s just silly Kashi, dreaming her silly life away …
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Ugly Duckling
When my sister Beauty and I quarreled
it was white hot fury.
We fought like Moors and Christians,
like Jews and Philistines,
like cats and dogs,
and our words were arrows tipped in poison.
My aunts sat round me in the kitchen,
with sweet black tea to dry my tears
and squares of cinnamon and almond paste
to hush me up.
-You musn’t be so mean to your sister, they scolded,
you, who have a dozen futures that she’ll never have!
-Like what! I asked and foolish me, they happily obliged.
-You could be a secretary in a big bank
with a bun and spectacles and your very own desk.
-Or you could be the assistant to the girl on the flying trapeze,
darning her stockings and ironing her wings.
-Or you could help put up the displays in the souvenir shop
at the airport.
-What else? I asked, licking cinnamon
from my fingers and still tasting my salty tears.
Grown-ups don’t often understand
sarcasm from a ten-year old and so
they happily went on. After an hour
I begged them to stop, crying:
-But Beauty is … Beauty! She can be anything she wants to!
-Oh no, my aunts replied, your poor sister
has a future as narrow as a little mouse.
She will either marry a millionaire Prince
or become a film star.
I looked out the window to the garden
where Beauty stood, a slender column
of pure silvery aura, surrounded by her admirers,
and my sister swayed as I watched her,
back and forth in the haze
of my tears of forgiveness and pity.