When the pandemic began, some of us were bound inside, and some of us took to the road: displaced, and sometimes, dispossessed. I began hearing the word “gypsy” again. This poem is dedicated to Sophie.
People say gypsy
pointing to themselves
when they mean they live on a sailboat,
hoist their anchor
at whim,
ride the tides of their yearnings,
or if they sleep, turtling,
in a metal shell
beneath the ancient,
interwoven branches
of the overstory,
a tiny burner
to make coffee, popcorn, soup,
a foldout table
to study the shells
and delicate fossils
gleaned during their wintering,
far from owls
and teeming creeks,
or even if,
in the past decade,
they unburdened themselves
in three different cities
they claim it,
a word as colorful
and concealing
as a twirling skirt.
My grandmother
gave the word bones;
the kitchen warm,
the onions frying,
herself a girl;
the spook of them,
crowding her mother’s porch
on the cusp of night
with their dirty fortunes,
their lusty hair.
They were given
food, whiskey, coins.
Bad luck to turn
them away empty-handed.
They could sing
better than anyone, she said.
They could dance.
And that’s where I left them
for years,
dissolving in the coal-flecked mists
of the depression,
along with tramps and hobos and vaudeville.
What a shock
to go to Europe and find their camps,
feel them walking in the pointed shadows
of the old square,
to hear the silences, see the masks drop,
when I asked whether their children
could go to school,
or whether they could have
property of their own.
The Germans call them zigeuner,
The Czech cigani,
words which derive
from a Greek word for untouchable.
Gypsy, an English word,
is hardly better,
with its connotations of lawlessness
and trespass,
medieval in its ignorance.
They were never from Egypt.
Their survival spanned
a far greater distance.
But Hollywood has
its way with us,
and the false word lives on.
Whenever I hear it,
I feel a cold splash of warning,
reminded of all that lies
beneath the surface,
and sometimes,
if only for a moment,
I see my own eyes
across a cracked stone square.
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