Renouncing
Seven of us told to line up, a ‘safe’ distance
from the glass cage separating us from reception.
​
Are you here for renunciations?
They don’t have the list of names yet
so we don’t exist, shuffle in the shadow
of the embassy.
Are we dangerous?
A uniformed official asks for passports: which one,
I stammer, and hand over both.
Are you here for renunciation?
An Orthodox Jew, white-bearded,
towering above us in his Shtreimel,
stands next to a daughter, granddaughter,
or youthful wife. Stocky in too many clothes
for the first warm day this spring, she studies
the ground through dark-rimmed spectacles,
her eyes short-sighted from close reading
Hebrew without vowels.
​
A honey-haired woman, American, to judge
from her accent, averts her eyes, her mouth
crooked with embarrassment, her daughter
bold-eyed beside her; her father with matching
eyes and a name that might have made the Haj.
What are their stories?
A man in his forties, tailored by Saville, his speech
Magdalen, Balliol -- brown hair clipped, has a slow smile
for each of us.
A woman, too muscular for her pinched face,
hovers, supported by her lawyer who’s not
allowed in, but offers crisp comfort, a pat
on her client’s stout arm, observes her hand
white-knuckled on a battered brief case.
What are their stories?
We’re allowed in, stripped of buckles, boots
anything electronic.
​
Are we dangerous?
He gives us each a number, ushers us into a room
large enough to hold a small army, leaves us to take
seats as distant from one another as we can manage –
to wait in front of television screens that broadcast
the news without any sound.
​
Are we in danger?
I am called, and it is over so fast I hardly know
it has happened.
Look at the flag
And when I do, the stars and stripes, the gold fringe –
look tired.
Do you renounce..?
I think: your word not mine, shutting out
the face of my great-grandmother, wet
with tears of gratitude as she kisses the ground
at Ellis Island, as I sign that part of me away.
