I Am Trying to Understand -- by Lynn Saul

 

2017

 

My big sister, Lynn, passed away in 2019. I think about her every day.

She was a lawyer, but gave it up to become a poet. This one's about our great-aunt, Annie.

I Am Trying to Understand (1997)

 

I am trying to understand a woman
who chose handmade lingerie
over America
who returned to her husband
to a place where their son
would be shot

Whose hand sewed the yellow star
onto her coat?

I am trying to understand how, four years after
they returned from the camp
a man and a woman are smiling at the lake
they are there with her cousin and their friends
Seven people
enjoying their vacation

What have the healing waters at Héviz
been able to wash away?

I am trying to understand
what a woman who has lost her son can think
when she plants four-o-clocks and daisies
in her garden
where they once sat, reading

I am trying to understand how a woman like that
can plant any garden at all
how she could tend her grapevines

The Communists allowed them one room in their house
that had been a wedding present from their father
the house confiscated in 1944
"Jewish owner: title cleared"
Which room did they receive?
Had anyone kept
the lace cloths, the crocheted bedspread?
I am trying to understand --
Did she want them back?

I am trying to understand
how they told her that her son was dead
Did it happen at his school?
Were they taken to the camps the same day,
or the next?

I am trying to understand
why I am standing in Annie's courtyard
Why I bend down to smell the tarragon
and chervil growing among rocks
Why I photograph bunches of fat grapes
Why I think this could be mine

 

-- Lynn Saul