An American Journey by A. S. Maulucci

 

AN AMERICAN JOURNEY

 

 

My grandfather Antonio

left Apulia, Italy

for New York in 1923

pursuing not his dreams

but the man who murdered his deaf-mute father,

promising his mother he would avenge

her husband’s death

and return with honor,

his vendetta fulfilled.

 

 

When the blood is roused

such vows are quickly made,

but when the head cools

they are abruptly broken

especially in Manhattan where a man

who does not want to be found

can hide like a leaf in summer.

 

 

Antonio found a room on the Lower East Side,

went to work selling perfumes door-to-door,

the wrong sort of job if you’re sniffing out

the man who murdered your father,

but perfect for meeting a woman.

She was a beauty

from a small village near his own,

a woman such as the one in Fellini’s Amarcord

who walks the earth like a goddess.

 

 

From then on, my grandfather’s wife

occupied the foreground of his life.

He worked hard to make her rich.

Prosperity came to them,

the next generation was born,

and the old world withered like a dying olive tree.

But not for good.

 

 

 

Decades later, weakened by cancer,

my grandfather was sitting on a park bench

in Hartford, Connecticut when a man

in a wheelchair stopped under a nearby tree.

With him were two male attendants.

Antonio watched them warily

until he was sure it was the man

who murdered his father, stricken now

with paralysis. The two men with him

both deaf-mutes, appeared to be his sons,

and they were having an argument in sign language.

 

 

Asking his parents for forgiveness,

Antonio walked quietly away

His American journey

was finally over,

but it was much too late

to go home.