an old writer and his words

  • WHEN

    When I finally found you,when I finally knelt at your grave,when I finally said hello,when I finally said goodbye,when I finally touched the groundin which you are buriedon the hillside across the riverfrom the city where you were born,a Jewish girl in West Virginianot long removed from Lithuania,when I said my farewell that morningknowing I…

    Lou Faber

  • AND EVERYWHERE

    Where was my family from?Russia and Poland, mostlyby way of England and Austria,within nervous stop at Ellis Islandjust before the great warchanged everything for all time.Actually not. Not mostly Polandor Russia, the war not a changeof anything really, at mosta precursor of a greater war.You, too, questioner, may be dead nowspeaking from a plot in…

    Lou Faber

  • SAINTS AND SINNERS

    I am a distant grandchildof saints and Herod,kings and lords, andVisigoths for good measure. That half of me iswoven of ever thinnerbranches on a treethat threatens to topplefrom the lightnessof its other side, rootsdeep in the rich soilof Lithuania, the rootshitting bedrock, andthe branches stuntedand there a simpleAshkenazi Jew.

    Lou Faber

  • HOME

    I have never beento Liszkowo but I have beento Charleston, West Virginiaand visited the B’nai Jacob Cemeteryand for me, that is as closeas I need to come to Liszkowofor I don’t speak Lithuanianthough it runs through my veins.I have visited the Highlandsand the Isle of Islaybut I never saw myfather’s kin reach out to me,although…

    Lou Faber

  • ANCESTRY

    Children have an innate senseof their ancestry.I was a child of the cityit’s streets my paths, alwaysunder the watchful eyeof my warden – mother. Dirt was to be avoidedat all possible cost,so I never dug my handsinto the fertile soil of myvillage in the heart of Lithuania,or tasted the readying harvestthat dirt would remember. I…

    Lou Faber

  • IMMIGRATION

    When you got off the boatyou must have been scared,but getting away from that lifemade the fear bearable. I have no idea how you endedup in West Virginia, it wasn’tat all like Lithuania, and Jewsmight have had two heads I imagine. But you all made do, madea community, invited othersand were tolerated if odd,and I…

    Lou Faber

  • TIDAL SHIFTS

    It’s difficult enough, Mom, that Inever got to meet you, to see your facesave in a college yearbook, to haveonly a few relatives acknowledgemy existence despite the DNA testthat clearly links us, one to the other.What makes it more difficult istrying to figure out my heritage,my geographic roots before our familyarrived in West Virginia, backin…

    Lou Faber

  • FINDING

    Even when I was briefly in Edinburgh I dreamed of walking the streets of Lisbon or Porto looking into the faces of older men and wondering if this one was my father. the father I had never seen, never known. Was the one my Jewish mother described in detail to the social worker who took…

    Lou Faber

  • DACHAIGH

    Even when I was briefly in Edinburgh I dreamed of walking the streets of Lisbon or Porto, looking into the faces of older men and wondering if this one was my father, the one I had never seen, never known. the one my Jewish mother described in detail to the social worker who took me…

    Lou Faber

  • ADOPTING A HISTORY

    She likes to tell him that he came from a small village in Lithuania. He prefers to remind her that he was born in the District of Columbia which has never been mistaken for a small village in Lithuania, although he knows he could find several who speak Lithuanian there. And, he points out to…

    Lou Faber