A Walk with Jefferson by Philip Levine

Author:Philip Levine [Levine, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82974-0
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

THESE STREETS

If I told you that the old woman

named Ida Bellow was shot to death

for no more than $5 and that a baby

of eighteen months saw it all from

where she wakened on the same bed

but can’t tell because she can’t speak,

you’d say I was making it up. If I

took you by the hand and led you down

street after street until we arrived

at a door that seemed no different

from the rest and entered to behold

the flowered coverlet not yet washed

on the single iron bed, the calendar

stopped on the second Sunday in February,

the cluttered three-burner stove, the sink

of cracked dishes, the old wheelchair

Ida used to get around, you’d stand

in the middle of the bare floor as far

from everything as you could get

listening to the cracked window moan

and see nothing. The baby’s mother—

she’s only nineteen—says she’ll raise

the baby by herself now Ida’s gone,

and she’s not going to cry about it,

no, not in front of us two. No.

It was Cabin, the neighbor lady says,

Ida raised him from a child, raised

him up to this, and raised his sisters,

too, and she counts them off on her fingers,

one, two, three, four, she counts them off.

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