Mourning
by Maxim D. Shrayer
My generous father, a myopic Jewish boxer,
lies buried in a suburb west of Boston.
His parents sleep in what was once called Leningrad.
I used to visit them before the outbreak of COVID.
Two years later Putin’s troops were sent to kill Ukraine;
I gave up hope of going back to Russia—once again.
Which in a way could be an immigrant’s blessing:
to bury one’s dead where one’s children will go on living.
The irony is sweet: his cemetery’s called American Friendship.
Some of my father’s neighbors came to Ellis Island on a ship.
I’ve walked around his block, I’ve stood under a giant oak,
and I have yet to find a single Russian Jew or a refusenik.
My father, a New England poet by choice and by persuasion,
rests in the neighborhood of Jewish trades for all occasions.
I bring him round pebbles, place them on the sagging loam.
There’s no gravestone yet. We’ll give his body time to settle in.
We’ll give it time because I, too, will need more time to finish
the curve of grief. It’s taken me a while to say in English
or to whisper it in Russian: He’s gone. He’s physically gone.
My father won’t go fishing with me or read my poems. Alone
I’m bound to fail where the two of us used to be so eloquent.
Yet I still wake up every day attempting an experiment.
And is it any consolation to know that time is lenient
with those who refuse to give up hope of a reunion?
I know my father is alive. There’s no end to lineage,
as long as there’s memory and universal language.
Maxim D. Shrayer is a bilingual author and a professor at Boston College. His recent books include the collection of English-language poetry Kinship (2024) and the bilingual volume Parallel'noe pis'mo/Parallel Letters (2025).
