Waiting for Her Origins

Fiorella and Husband are doing the Ancestry.com thing, and his results have just come in. He's standard white bread, with 51 percent of his heritage from western Europe, 29 percent from Ireland, 12 percent from Great Britain, and the rest scattered in Scandinavia, Italy/Greece, Spain, and the European Jewish community.  There was also a miniscule salute, about 1/2 percent, to Asia, but Fiorella wants to know what happened to that Indian princess his mother wrote about in her family bio. Fio's also wondering if, when she gets her own results, the gypsy great-grandfather she's always heard about when she was growing up will meet the same fate. And what if it turns out that Fiorella, who has always touted her Slavic origins, is not as exotic and interesting as she's always hoped she is?

Oh well, one of her best friends, who grew up Jewish, did the Ancestry thing and turned out to be--surprise--half Irish. Maybe there's hope for Fiorella yet.

Fiorella's Inspiration

This is one of my favorite poems.  Have I presented it to you before?  It's one of the most powerful things I've ever read and is what set me on my present course of reflecting reality in my poetry.  The title refers to Shakespeare's admonition not to over-act.  The references are all to WWII.  Hecht is Jewish.

"It Out-Herods Herod.  Pray You Avoid It"

Anthony Hecht

Tonight my children hunch

Toward their Western, and are glad   

As, with a Sunday punch,

The Good casts out the Bad.

And in their fairy tales

The warty giant and witch

Get sealed in doorless jails

And the match-girl strikes it rich.

I’ve made myself a drink.

The giant and witch are set

To bust out of the clink

When my children have gone to bed.

All frequencies are loud

With signals of despair;

In flash and morse they crowd   

The rondure of the air.

For the wicked have grown strong,   

Their numbers mock at death,   

Their cow brings forth its young,   

Their bull engendereth.

Their very fund of strength,   

Satan, bestrides the globe;

He stalks its breadth and length   

And finds out even Job.

Yet by quite other laws

My children make their case;   

Half God, half Santa Claus,   

But with my voice and face,

A hero comes to save

The poorman, beggarman, thief,   

And make the world behave   

And put an end to grief.

And that their sleep be sound   

I say this childermas

Who could not, at one time,   

Have saved them from the gas.