IL RITORNO TRISTE
Holding tight to the wooden railing,
Rosario climbed up the narrow stairs to my grandparents’ attic
Where he lived during the hard times, sleeping on a metal camp cot
In the quiet dark of an unfinished gambrel room used for storage.
He was small — shorter even than my grandmother, and I never knew
What he did exactly, or who he was —
Maybe masonry, like my grandfather? Maybe a cousin, I thought?
Maybe they came over on the boat together?
Rosario smiled, hiking up his oversized trousers, like Bojangles,
And I sometimes wondered if he was a little simple, or simply
Sweet, but it might have been his utter lack of English
Even after so many years in this country; smiling helped.
In the fifties he went back to Italy to visit family or friends —
I never knew, being just a child, but I do remember
When he came back. He was broken by the sadness.
The unchanged poverty. The desperation. The story of the theft.
Linda Dini Jenkins is the author of Becoming Italian: Chapter & Verse from an Italian American Girl and Up at the Villa: Travels with my Husband. Her new book, How Way Leads on to Way, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has been published in Voices in Italian Americana (VIA), Ovunque Siamo, Poeti italo-americani e italocanadesi and others. She writes for Abruzzissimo Magazine and lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and Sulmona, Italy.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 