To re-teach a thing its loveliness …
Galway Kinnell
Nothing much lovely about Grampa Lou,
not the reek of his cigar, the ash and crumbs
tumbling from his vest as he snatched us up
onto his lap, not his prickly moustache kisses.
He’d suck his false teeth at meals, slurp soup
and slam the table in a pique, upsetting the gravy.
Made Grandma blush and squirm
with his salacious puns and Mae West jokes
and who didn’t wince at his tenor trills
while listening to Sunday night opera?
He pranced like a circus bear spouting Russian,
though he was only 12 when he’d arrived at Ellis Island.
Waving his cigar, he’d brag about the two jobs he’d worked
to pay for law school at night.
Weeping was a fine art for him and while Grandma lay dying
he wailed, Mummy, don’t leave me.
The old aunts rolled their eyes and muttered,
About time she went somewhere on her own.
At the nursing home, the staff learnt to avoid
his flirtations and the occasional pinch.
By 96, still healthy, he’d had enough
and refused to eat.
Cocooned in white blankets, he was
a shrivelled balloon minus his bluster and puff.
Groaning in his sleep, wrestling with bedclothes,
with beckoning angels, he’d cry out, No! No!
raising his palm to ward them off.
His eyelids flickered, then snapped open.
What time is it?
One pm, Grampa.
Seeing me, recognition dawned.
He asked after my children, recalling ages and names,
then drifted off only to wake and demand,
What time is it?
Once he sat straight up, grasping my hands in his icy ones.
He leaned his grizzled cheeks close.
Eyes, brimming like Russian lakes, revealed
the tender boy
he’d so skilfully concealed
beneath overcoats of bravado.
A luminous boy, we’d never met.
In the light of that naked gaze, he whispered,
You are beautiful!
spoken to me and to the reflection
of that boy beaming back.
The bare room glowed and everything
all of it – was made lovely.