WHAT SINKS IN

Every photo in your album has women workers crowded
so close together their temples touch each other,  
staring straight ahead, as the photographer wanted.
You in the corner, kneeling, sorting sugar beets,
as if refusing to take part in the proletarian pose.

The day I looked gently at your beautiful legs, I discovered teeth marks
on your calf.  That’s how a child discovers by chance a scrap
of her parent’s torment.  All the years you walked around this country –  
a world foreign to me was driven into your legs, a forbidden garden,
as it were, a cruel landlord, watch dogs, a girl attacked.
And once in George Eliot Lane, close to the Sisters of Zion convent,
I was overwhelmed by fear they’d drag me in, put me in orphan’s clothes,
lock me in a cellar soaked in the odor of crucifixes, and from the folds
of a monk’s black robe, Satan’s dogs would bite me.

WHAT SINKS IN