Housing Refugees

I remember his wrinkled raincoat,

A mole low on his cheek,

and the Hershey bar he brought me

each time he came to talk with my parents.

I’d sit on his lap, a rare trust for me,

until they would close themselves up

to whisper in the dining room.

All I knew was his name was Sam.

Each time after he left,

a strange family would appear

to live with us for a while

and sleep in the rooms in the attic.

One, perhaps the first, stays in my mind

unmoving like a snapshot –

fading at the back door:

carrying a small, patched valise.

A humbled, moustached father,

slender braid-wound mother,

and a girl named Margot.

Eleven years old with a fine blond bob.

But I could learn nothing more.

She paid me no attention

perhaps because I spoke no German,

and we were not of their class.

Other families who came

after each Hershey bar

stayed longer, sometimes months,

before they found work, home, school.

Before their pride returned

and they could feel life pumping

in their withered limbs

“Do not distain me!”

The toothless old woman cried,

When I was old enough to jeer —

Her bald head covered by a slipping scarf.

“I am for more important than you know.”

I was probably twelve, and tired

Of the foreign language women

Who continued in their old ways

In a new land, tired of the tales

of greatness in rags.

Years later I learned

that all their tales

were true.

Sam never told me

of the agonies he hid

behind the sweetness

of the Hershey bar.