In his workshop my landlord tells me
about Poland during the war
and those who refused shelter,
who turned away as the trains
chuffed past night and day
and of the soldiers who searched
the carpentry shop he and his
younger brother had struggled
for years to establish—
how they slid like snakes
into everything they owned until
they discovered his best wood,
hidden in the attic under rags,
and how, laughing, they tossed
the boards into the snow,
thanked him as they loaded their truck
and then torched the building.
He set up another shop, without
his brother, and moved what tools
he could salvage into the basement
of another man’s house, erasing
his tracks the best he could
before daylight.

One morning he woke up early
and walked three miles to take an order
from one of the last farmers willing
to deal with a Jew. When he returned
every house was empty, everyone gone.
It was good luck for you, Isak, the farmer
told him when he delivered the table
made from old scraps of barn siding.
He shouldered the table once more,
pulling the leather straps hard,
to control his hands,
and walked back.

Four years later he saw an old woman
step onto a trolley. He followed,
riding behind her until he was sure,
then placed his hand on her shoulder
and spoke her name. She did not
turn around, only reached back
and touched his hand, thinking
he might not want her,
now.

Hair black as night, arms that can
lift a five-foot board straight from his
body to sight its curve, he builds
all manner of bookcases and tables
now, from the finest woods available.
Beautiful work I cannot afford.
“Nothing is cheap,” he says,
waving away my claims of poverty.
“If you vant, you you vill vork.
If not …” he shrugs, smiling.

Shortly after I moved in
I happened to mention I heard
rats in the crawlspace above my ceiling.
I had some books and old clothes up there,
nothing valuable, I told him, but he would not
hear of it. He climbed his ladder and drove
them away with a vengeance that made me
smile behind his back—his voice claiming
victory, again and always, as below,
I began the lesson of work.