To the woman at the Retirement

To the Woman at the Retirement Center

You tell me when you were eight, newly arrived

from Czechoslovakia, your teacher made you memorize

a poem that began “I remember, I remember

the house where I was born.” Stranger

to our language you proudly learned all the verses,

practiced them over and over in front of your mirror,

but at the program when you stood to recite

in front of all the parents and other students,

you got as far as “I remember, I remember,”

and forgot all the rest and had to sit down shamefaced.

Now you live in this ten-story retirement center

where you cried most of the first month, so lonesome

for your son, transferred to another city, who couldn’t

take you with him because his new house wasn’t

big enough. Sometimes, you tell me, you slip away

from the recreation director who wants to teach you

how to turn plastic bleach bottles into bird feeders,

sneak up to your room, turn on the Bohemian radio station,

dance barefoot all by yourself, as you used to

years ago in the house where you were born.