The Viennese Cafe
The Viennese style café,
with indescribably good poppy seed cake
and Viennese coffee
strong and stimulating
The waitresses in their starched white laced blouses
and long black aprons
efficiently whisking trays of
treasures to waiting customers
I sip my cappuccino
Read the paper
Sit back in my Thonet
bent wood chair
on the red striped
baroque patterned seat pad
and think of my childhood
Far away from L’viv, Lwow,
L’vov, Lemberg Deep into the Bronx on
a Sunday afternoon
Munn cake, poppy seed strudel
At my grandmother’s kitchen
table
My head a rest on the dumbwaiter
door
Nailed shut
with a wooden handled awl
My milk to accompany
The rich sweet mass
of poppy seeds encased
in their crisp golden crust.
The café is on the
Street of Old Jews
And so is my apartment
In the old ghetto
Whose ghosts are not
Just those of the 100,000
and more who perished,
being wrenched away
from these streets,
with their yellow stars stitched
to their tattered coats.
The ghosts also gambol
with my grandparents
Halyna Lubchonsky sits
in the park by the
Opera House fountain
and Dora sips tea in her
small apartment.
Nafteli sells his wares
Ansel drinks his ales.
And I,
I catch the froth of
my cappuccino on the tip
of my silver spoon
and dream about what
it might have been
Had I, Akiva, been here
With a star sewn to his
Tweed vest.
From In the Borderland: A Selection of Poems
