THISTLES
Elegy for Vincent Scambray

We know this much:
You were not a polygamist
An anarchist, deformed or crippled
Or mentally ill
And probably not even in possession
Of $50 or more in 1898

What would your father Pasquale have thought
If he had lived to watch the scirocco
Erase your last footprints from the dry road
Leading north to Palermo?
In a gust his patrimony was extinguished
A betrayal of what was left of hopeless Sicily

This we think we know:
You hated the island long enough
The feckless Sicily lacked purpose
Its unresponsive soil
Like the cold hand of an indifferent woman
Sent you careening westward to Bryan, Texas
America’s ersatz Sicily
The silted banks of the Big Brazos whispered of hope
But like a faithless lover
Each spring it betrayed you
For the last time it smothered you in its loathsome embrace
Cradling you, your crops, and your house down river

After Bryan, Fresno was your 2nd port of call:
1903 packing house worker, laborer, field hand
What had changed since before steerage?
You retired on Fresno’s Chinese lottery
Your only pleasures your ménage a trois
The jug of wine at your heel
That in your dreams you filled at the pool of Lethe
Your walks to pay the Chinaman his due
You tried to resurrect Sicilian patrimony
With those tyrannical Sunday rants
For more of your sons’ paychecks
While a quaking wife wiped your chin
Did Pasquale mock you in your dreams?
When wordless you passed me on the street
That torrid August day on your way to China Alley
Was your mouth filled with thistles
Or was I merely shrouded by your cataracts?
Did you even know that the Partisans had hung Mussolini
Like a slain and drawn deer up side down
That you didn’t need to carry your pink booklet
That now you could carry a camera
Listen to a radio
Carry a shotgun to the west side vineyards
Or have a signal device
Whatever that was?
Did Jap pilots understand Sicilian?

As I turn your pink booklet in my hand
I have to wonder what you were supposed to do
With its nine blank pages:
Describe the day grieving Carmella packed your bag
Or the day the Klan visited you in Bryan
Or outline the Promised Lands
Jerusalem, Malta, Sicily, Texas, and California
Or explain how Shekhemberi became Schembri became Scambray
Became Alien Registration no. 5748454
How you never found a home in name or number?
Were you supposed to explain
How thistles came to grow in your mouth
That never knew a song?