At a relative’s funeral,
A tall, skinny, white-bearded,
Very old man in a sweat-soaked blue suit
Approaches me and
Stinks up the air I’m breathing
With his obnoxious, repulsive odor.
“Hello,” he says.
“This is your grandpa,” Dad tells me. “He’s my dad.”
They wait.
“Say hello Grandpa.”
I stare, vacantly, at them both
I stare,
Captivated in my fear and prejudice
Against immigrants.
I especially hate this old man in the blue suit.
He is obviously a crazy man.
He has a crazy hat.
He looks odd.
He talks funny.
He is made of harsh stuff, mean stuff.
He is easily angered.
He could as soon crack you upside the head
As smile and offer you candy.
“Here,” he says. “Take dat. It’s goot, ya!”
It’s a piece of hard candy,
The kind I most dislike,
The kind I’d never choose to eat,
But instead of telling him so,
I take it and put the repugnant
Piece of sugar in my mouth.
He has touched it with his immigrant fingers,
His work-swollen, scarred, bony,
Ugly immigrant farmer fingers,
That have shoveled mountains of cow shit.
But I put it in my mouth
Because I’m afraid of him,
Because I know he wants me to do this
To show my acceptance of him.
I wish this awful man
Would leave me alone.
I look away, sucking the awful shit
In my mouth.
“Ya,” says Dad, speaking in his German brogue,
More brogue-ish now, in his family’s company.
“He’s just a little shy, you know.”
“Ya,” says the old man.
And then then they both speak German,
The old man first,
Then Dad,
In that fearsome, awful German tongue,
And they both laugh, and look at me,
And I know they’re laughing at me.
Two Germans,
One a genuine immigrant,
One a first generation American
Barely removed
From the immigrant.
Two men to be feared,
Germans, hated Germans,
Third Reich Terrorists.
One I sincerely hate,
The other I sincerely love and respect,
And will love until the day he dies.
How odd, to love and hate this way.
But I’m a silly child, and I cant help feeling
That people who talk and act and dress
This way are killers
Of many kinds of people.
Later, I would learn,
Killers of Queers and Jews,
And French and Spanish and English
And many brave Amerikaners.
And even though
I don’t know
All these things yet,
Even in my infant brain,
I carry with me a
Prejudice of hatred, that I’ve caught somewhere,
Like some God forsaken disease, and
Somehow, I am sensitive to
A single side of all of that
Without understanding the facts.
It’s an awful thing,
To reject such a man,
As I did,
Sixty years ago.
I dearly wish I’d been man enough to say,
“I know your life as an immigrant
Has been hard, very, very hard.
Thank you for your courage,
Moving into a country that despised you,
And still despises you,
Mocking your ways,
Fearing your temper,
Hating you for your oddness.
Thank you for giving me a new start
In a new country where at least we’re free,
Free even to believe only what we want,
If we so choose,
To dismiss that which we find distasteful,
If we so choose,
Free even to bathe ourselves in our own childish prejudices
If we so choose.”
But looking at these Germans,
I am so young.
I am still such a child,
I am still such a child.
I’m not man enough
To say such things to this
Ridiculous, fearsome old creature.
He finally turns away from me,
And I spit the hard candy out,
And throw it under the coffin
Of his brother.
So, forever sorry for this sin,
I go out of my way to smile,
And greet beautiful immigrant people.
I can see their beauty now that I’m old, and man enough,
If I so choose.
I can look past all their strange and curious ways,
If I so choose.
I admire them for their courage.
I so choose.
But I’m still afraid, just a little afraid, still.
And when I’m stabbed with prejudices that live in me still,
I just recall the time a fearsome, old,
Courageous, skinny, stinking, bearded man
Gave me hard candy at his brother’s funeral.
I can’t guarantee a better life for them.
I know my smile and friendly greeting are not enough.
It’s a little piece of hard candy that I offer them,
But I offer,
In my clumsy, apologetic way,
Trying to express my profound respect.
It’s all I can think to do.
