clarinettist

I listened to Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman.

I liked the keys’ silver superstructure,

and the ebony stick with its subtle bell,

and its tones – mellow, lustrous, shrill, caressing.

So, to and from school, I chose to pass

a second-hand shop with a clarinet

on display in its eclectic window.

I saved for a year. ‘No,’ said the man. Next day

it was gone from the display forever.

 

My daughter took up the instrument

unprompted. Her daughter has followed.

I like to think that an ancestor of ours

was clarinettist in a klezmer band

with a cymbalist and a violinist,

in Bialystok, Lvov, or Kishinev,

walking and playing from shetl to shetl,

marking life’s circle of weddings

and funerals with that joyous music –

before the world was set on fire.