I Genitori Perduti

The dove-white gulls on the wet lawn in Washington Square in the early morning fog each a little ghost in the gloaming Souls transmigrated maybe from Hudson’s shrouded shores across all the silent years— Which one’s my maybe mafioso father in his so white suit and black shoes in his real estate office Forty-second Street or at the front table wherever he went— Which my dear lost mother with faded smile locked away from me in time— Which my big brother Charley selling switching-signals all his life on the New York Central— And which good guy brother Clem sweating in Sing Sing’s darkest offices deputy-warden thirty years watching executions in the wooden armchair (with leather straps and black hood) He too gone mad with it in the end— And which my nearest brother Harry still kindest and dearest in a far suburb— I see them now all turn to me at last gull-eyed in the white dawn about to call to me across the silent grass