My Brother, The Artist, At Seven

is the title of the poem, by Richard Levine, which I have chosen. Of all the poems I looked through for Poetry Out Loud, many were interesting and well written, and many more were not. However, none of them quite connected the way this poem did. So as to not confuse the reader, here's the poem in its entirety:

As a boy he played alone in the fields   

behind our block, six frame houses   

holding six immigrant families,   

the parents speaking only gibberish   

to their neighbors. Without the kids   

they couldn't say "Good morning" and be   

understood. Little wonder   

he learned early to speak to himself,   

to tell no one what truly mattered.   

How much can matter to a kid   

of seven? Everything. The whole world   

can be his. Just after dawn he sneaks   

out to hide in the wild, bleached grasses   

of August and pretends he's grown up,   

someone complete in himself without   

the need for anyone, a warrior   

from the ancient places our fathers   

fled years before, those magic places:   

Kiev, Odessa, the Crimea,   

Port Said, Alexandria, Lisbon,   

the Canaries, Caracas, Galveston.   

In the damp grass he recites the names   

over and over in a hushed voice   

while the sun climbs into the locust tree   

to waken the houses. The husbands leave   

for work, the women return to bed, the kids   

bend to porridge and milk. He advances   

slowly, eyes fixed, an animal or a god,   

while beneath him the earth holds its breath.

 

     It's a bit lengthy, which is why I initially wasn't sure whether I wanted to read it, but it strikes a deep chord 

with me. Where I originally lived, we had a large (or so it seemed when I was five or six, anyway) backyard 

built on a gently sloping hill, with a small lawn and a gazebo at the bottom. This backyard was the subject of 

the many adventures my brother and I conducted exploring this strange, alien landscape. We had named almost 

every conceivable part of the landscape: the small downhill between the trees was a waterfall, the gazebo had a 

giant oracular snake inside, the small stone chair was a portal to another world, the sandy, secluded, part of the 

hill was a cliff prone to rockslides, the climbing tree granted powers to us small children, and the front yard was 

in reality a massive maze filled with strange creatures. We would craft elaborate morality plays in this landscape, 

mostly concerning random elements of whatever we had read or seen recently. And so the boy in the poem who 

the author describes with such fondness could really be myself, looking back on my childhood in the backyard.

     Another element of the poem which I felt fondness for were the lines about the immigrant families and their

neighbors. Like the poem's author, my parents immigrated, in his case from Russia, in mine from Iran, but I have

had the experience of having to translate what my parents heard into names that others understand enough times 

that it has become almost whimsical for me. These shared experiences form the reason why I have chosen "My 

Brother, the Artist, at Seven" for Poetry Out Loud.