Poem for Willy Silber
By Paul Hostovsky
April 15, 2023
April 15, 2023
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She was only ten, my mother
said, but you kept pursuing her at the tender age of twelve, Willy Silber, nice, quiet boy whose parents owned a bakery, or they lived above a bakery— there was some connection with a bakery, the smell of bread in the oven, she said. This was in Maastricht, in 1939, and everyone had a bicycle. So she had a bicycle and a boyfriend, though she didn’t call you her boyfriend because no one else in her class had a boyfriend, and everyone teased her about you, and it made her feel uncomfortable, she said. Then one day you invited her to your bar mitzvah. And she didn’t know if she should go. She didn’t want to especially, but she didn’t want to hurt your feelings, she said. But that never came about, she said, because our family fled Holland— a mad scramble on the last ship out. The ship was called The Statendam, she said. And though she didn’t say what happened to you, Willy Silber, nice, quiet boy who stayed behind with your family and the other Jewish families, of course I know what happened to you, gentle, faceless boy who loved my mother when she was ten and you were twelve, who invited her to your bar mitzvah, and she would have gone, she would have, because she didn’t want to hurt your feelings. You would have been very hurt, she said. |
Paul Hostovsky’s poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer’s Almanac. His latest book of poems is Mostly (FutureCycle Press, 2021). // paulhostovsky.com