Babies have no special history.
Born, you were rosy and round, gurgled like any other,
horizon was mother’s breast and father’s chucking finger;
peeped from your bunting, saw only the friendly sky.
Crawling, the world enlarged to father’s watch
fat as a golden moon in the fairy tale;
innocent blocks spelt out no tattling word,
and even raised to high-chair the scene was cheery:
nursery walls in pink or charming blue,
Jack and Jill the only handwriting there.
While you were yet young, however, the swag was stolen.
You were blamed.
At school the children stumbled over your name;
you were never the Prince in games. Always your nose
made you Rumpelstiltzkin or the Dwarf.
Your father’s cap was queer. (But freckles are queer,
too, and red hair, and your father drinks too much!)
No matter. The money was never found, let’s call him Ike the
Thief.
Ike, modern clubmember of the Lost Tribes of Israel:
lost, yes, but not your ancestry.
It was the glittering swag: never found,
all these million years: and you’re to blame of course.
Oh I grant
they could have blamed the snake in Eden, the apple,
or even dirty goat grazing on the garbage;
rain might have been victim, earthquake, or suspect fire
indigestion, dreams, roses, or constipation.
But they chose the Jew. Surely your rabbi
read you the Hebrews were God’s anointed race?
Now how would you like to take yours: mixed or straight?
We are sorry to inform you our enrollment is complete.
No Dogs or Jews Allowed.
Someday when the swag is found, you can cancel kike
and nigger, wop, hunky, chink, and okie.
But just now the chances look very slim;
the swag is either underground too deep
to drill, or too high for the heavenliest plane
Maybe, quite sensibly, it was never even lost,
but the myth continues, a colossal Judge Crater,
Kidd’s map, the virgin birth, life on the moon.
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