published in Heroes and Householders ©2009 Orchard House Press
THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ADAM AND EVE
Why do young American poets pay so much attention to
their immediate family and neglect a deeper reality?
Adam Zagajewski
Let’s be literal about this. Let’s be fundamental.
Four generations per century, maybe five, means
Jesus died one hundred grandfathers ago.
Adam adds maybe another two-hundred.
“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth”
So. In Brooklyn, New York, in 1919. Raymond Glover,
my maternal grandfather, grandson of an English immigrant,
three-hundredth great-grandson of Adam, married Catherine Teller,
three-hundredth great-granddaughter of Eve.
“the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair;
and they took them wives of all which they chose”
Catherine, my maternal grandmother, English-American iteration
of the Mother of Us All, had five children in ten years. Her husband
was dead before my mother, Ann Grace Glover Turtell, was four.
Loretta, oldest, a pimento red-head with luminous skin, died of leukemia at 19
“through great pains will you bear the next generation”
Raymond Jr., first-born son, fought Hitler=s armies in WWII,
was lucky and survived, went to college at night; became a successful
stockbroker; his two sons and two daughters all have children of their own.
He is an aging widower in Garden City, Long Island; his children dote on him.
"Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth”
Helen, third child, second daughter, married Vincent Dolan,
an Air Force colonel, raised three sons all over the world:
Rome, Tokyo, London, settled in Albuquerque,
New Mexico where she doted on her grandchildren.
“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother,
and shall cleave unto his wife.”
Anna Grace, my mother, married a charming gambler, Richard Turtell,
only son of Mary Kelly, whose husband Roland abandoned them both
and never saw them again. Richard was lucky in love, Anna loved my father
through three bankruptcies and one suicide attempt. She died on September 7, 2005.
“Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return."
That’s my lineage, an Irish and English roll call: Glover, Kelly, Dolan, Turtell.
So please Adam, I beg you, for your namesake, remember:
“Birth, and copulation, and death.
That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks.”