The English Grandfather in Israel
That soft crash of the blown clothes horse
lifted me, slowly, from the sprung chair
to put me, briefly, to laundry work
to fix, to lock, and to re-dress the frame
found flat with unfurled tablecloths,
which the wind had upgraded to sails:
I stood the fallen hanger against the other,
that second still-stood skeleton for linen,
from which my brother’s old shorts hung,
now washed, to be worn, with amusement,
by his still-living wife: ‘And they object,’
was her laughing remark.
I see him in that same sprung chair,
with a noxious fag burning, shouting ‘Ma?’,
meaning ‘What?’ Then ‘Ken, Ruti’ – ‘Yes..’
His long crossed legs span the space
as his children, now grown, place their kids
on the tiled terrace, the shade he once built,
where the babies crawl and toddlers dance
below their invisible grandfather’s smoke,
that Englishman who has never left this place.