We have traveled all this way to see the real France: these trays of apricots and grapes spilled out like semi-precious stones for us to choose; a milky way of cheeses whose names like planets I forget; heraldic sole displayed on ice, as if the fish themselves had just escaped, leaving their scaled armor behind. There’s nothing like this anywhere, you say. And I see Burnside Avenue in the Bronx, my mother sending me for farmer cheese and lox: the rounds of cheese grainy and white, pocked like the surface of the moon; the silken slices of smoked fish lying in careful pleats; and always, as here, sawdust under our feet the color of sand brought in on pant cuffs from Sunday at the beach. Across the street on benches, my grandparents lifted their faces to the sun the way the blind turn towards a familiar sound, speaking another language I almost understand.
by Linda Pastan,
originally published in Poetry, April 1985
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