I don’t know why I didn’t recognize it
Sooner, that vague shape made up of
All the lives I could have had and
Didn’t choose and the one I did choose—
All asking for me to remember them.
In Manhattan, there were sidewalks
Where I passed couples having lunch
In the old Cuban-Chinese restaurants,
Banana omelets and avocados, wonton
Soup with corn, café con leche and flan.
I was walking back to work near
Lincoln Center, teaching Whitman and
Christina Rossetti to students retired
From years of hard labor in department
Stores and the garment district—their
Pasts overstuffed suitcases, cities
In Europe before the war, photographs
Of boys in buttoned suits, girls
In white dresses standing next
To their mothers, books in Hungarian
Or Polish. There was nothing I could
Teach them about poetry. Each
Was an epic, an Odyssey, but one
Where Odysseus never makes it
Back to Ithaca. He spends his life
In a foreign city where no one
Recognizes him. He eats Cuban-
Chinese congee instead of Greek
Avgolemono or a sheep roasted
On a spit and dreams in English
With a New York accent. Home
Was in poems they would probably
Never write. The epics wouldn’t
Be finished because that wasn’t
Something I knew how to teach.
I watched ballet dancers walk
Out of the studios in mid-afternoon
Sunlight, priests and priestesses of
A religion of the body, of movement—
There was a famous choreographer
Who limped badly, an old injury,
While the Chagall murals windowed
At the Met hung like a blue sky
Above tragedy. That was all forty
Years ago. Now, Cuban-Chinese places
Are returning to Manhattan—I saw
One on Amsterdam the other day. I don’t
Know what happened to my students, but
I doubt any are still alive. I divorced,
Married, and divorced again. Only
Christina Rossetti still sits in her room,
Writing, her heart breaking for a little love,
And patient Whitman still watches from
Brooklyn Ferry.
Published in ONE ART: a journal of poetry, June 14, 2026.
