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.
