‘To Be a Jew in the Twentieth Century’ (after Muriel Rukeyser)

Keep going. No one taught me that better
than you did. There is only one world
and we are here. Bright, blustering, you
pretended to be cheerful until you were,
your face purple and blue from many falls
but no broken bones – a miracle each time
you fell down then just stood up. Survival
was one of your many gifts: Inherited.

Your grandfather came back from exile.
Your mother left Warsaw just in time and
then Paris before the Nazis arrived.
What were your struggles compared to theirs?
To know history was to know gratitude —
to prize the latitude you’d been granted.

Hilene Flanzbaum is Professor Emerita at Butler University.