In My Grandfather's Library

Jon Montague (2010)

In my grandfather’s library
there were many volumes,

Bibles massive as flagstones;
heavy print my eye could trawl along:

the thunder of the Old Testament.

I climbed the Mount with Moses,
stood in the presence of the Lord,
or listened as he spake from a cloud.

For, lo, I had suffered the long exodus
from Brooklyn, and New York, where
they worshipped the Golden Calf

which now staggers, newly born,
rasped clean by its mother’s tongue,
on the cobblestones of our farmyard.


Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2010/04/26/100426po_poem_montague#ixzz0lbhbGdOA