In the Elementary School Choir

I had never seen a cornfield in my life,

I had never been to Oklahoma,

But I was singing as loud as anyone,

“Oh what a beautiful morning. . . . The corn

Is as high as an elephant’s eye,”

Though I knew something about elephants, I thought,

Coming from the same continent as they did,

And they being more like camels than anything else.

And when we sang from Meet Me in St. Louis,

“Clang, clang, clang went the trolley,”

I remembered the ride from Ramleh Station

In the heart of Alexandria

All the way to Roushdy where my grandmother lived,

The autos on the roadways vying

With mule carts and bicycles,

The Mediterranean half a mile off on the left,

The air smelling sharply of diesel and salt.

It was a problem which had dogged me

For a few years, this confusion of places.

And when in 5th grade geography I had pronounced

“Des Moines” as though it were a village in France,

Mr. Kephart led me to the map on the front wall,

And so I’d know where I was,

Pressed my forehead squarely against Iowa.

Des Moines, he’d said. Rhymes with coins.

Now we were singing “zippidy-doo-dah, zippidy-ay,”

And every song we’d sung had in it

Either sun or bluebirds, fair weather

Or fancy fringe, O beautiful America!

And one tier below me,

There was Linda Deemer with her amber waves

And lovely fruited plains,

And she was part of America too

Along with sun and spacious sky

Though untouchable, and as distant

As purple mountains of majesty.

“This is my country,” we sang,

And a few years ago there would have been

A scent of figs in the air, mangoes,

And someone playing the oud along a clear stream.

But now it was “My country 'tis of thee”

And I sang it out with all my heart

And now with Linda Deemer in mind.

“Land where my fathers died,” I bellowed,

And it was not too hard to imagine

A host of my great-uncles and -grandfathers

Stunned from their graves in the Turkish interior

And finding themselves suddenly

On a rock among maize and poultry

And Squanto shaking their hands.

How could anyone not think America

Was exotic when it had Massachusetts

And the long tables of thanksgiving?

And how could it not be home

If it were the place where love first struck?

We had finished singing.

The sun was shining through large windows

On the beatified faces of all

Who had sung well and with feeling.

We were ready to file out and march back

To our room where Mr. Kephart was waiting.

Already Linda Deemer had disappeared

Into the high society of the hallway.

One day I was going to tell her something.

Des Moines, I was saying to myself,

Baton Rouge. Terre Haute. Boise.

Source: Poetry (January 1987)

Poetry and Music