1953: The Bus to Menton, and: For Despina

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1953: The Bus to Menton, and: For Despina Marilyn Hacker (bio) 1953: The Bus to Menton Her own displacement seemed easy in comparison.She had been a reporter. She would be a novelistand her country (she'd write about it) seemed provincial.The war was over. Near the roadside, sheaveswere tied. Gossip behind her, a new dialect. She listened.Beyond sprawled olive terraces, unlike the farms of home, whose outbuildings circled like a garrison.Her notebook's lined page waited to be kissed.The noon heat condensed into a mortal chillup her spine. A blondish man with rolled-up sleeveshad pushed the bus window open. Sunlight glistenedon the long number tattooed on one of his sunburned arms. [End Page 64] For Despina Why is it I don't like closing the curtains?Even pinning panels of blue voile togethercuts me off too much from the winter morning'scomings and goings and the tall, reassuring neighbors' windowssome with window boxes, some with their shades downsome cracked open from last night, so cold air couldrefresh a sleeper. Pick the stitch up, there in the place I dropped it.Weave the raveled sides of the day togetherif December sun in a bedroom windowcalls for a garment. There are alphabets I could still decipher,learn to read a stanza, or write my name in.There are conjugations of verbs instructingspeech, song and silence. Fear or hope or both of them made of me achild who thought I'd probably be abandonedif I misbehaved, if I lied about myparents—or didn't. How are you a Jew? asked the young Greek woman.First, because I haven't the choice to not be.Those who thought they chose found the same unchosenbarbed wire and ashes. How am I a Jew? Through my mother's birthright,turned into a death warrant once; excuse toseize the farms and villages of a people"exiled by exiles." [End Page 65] You, the dead, my interlocutors, whetherfriends or strangers—child on a no-man's land, hersatchel and school uniform clear in gunsights,riddled with bullets— while I clutch the moment, with a safe childhoodas my history, no grandparents' village,no street where her father made shoes, his mothermeasured out barley. Strange that all I know of them is—religion?Not if they had land, sent their sons to cheder;not which ones spoke Yiddish, Hungarian, orPolish, or German. Not which child, renamed, fed the pigs and dug upfrozen mud for potatoes; not whose notebookbrowned insidea cupboard, while trains moaned through theGalician winter. Must a murdered child, after generations,be avenged by gunning down other childrenfar away from winter and pigs, potatoesand nameless railroads? If a Jew may not deconstruct the question(two Jews, didn't we say, and three opinions?)if they call the peacemakers anti-Semites,who are my cousins? Lost lands which I never would call my country. . . .How are you American? she might ask me.Language, economic determination. . . .Once, it was lucky. [End Page 66] Marilyn Hacker Marilyn Hacker is the author of twelve books, including Desesperanto (W.W. Norton) and Winter Numbers, which received a Lambda Literary Award and the Leonore Marshall Award of the Academy of American Poets in 1995. Her translations include Vénus Khoury-Ghata's She Says (Graywolf) and Claire Malroux's Birds and Bison (Sheep Meadow). Copyright © 2007 University of Nebraska Press