Volume 16 ~ Spring 2004 ~ ISSN 1543-6063

AMY GERSTLER

Greece
Or
My Mother as Pola Negri


I.

In her eightieth year, having survived two wars,
four revolutions and six husbands, my mother
announces we’re sailing to Greece. Once again
I’m drafted as traveling companion.
Think of it as a pilgrimage, darling, she cajoles
in that fake sounding accent of hers. I simply
must set foot in the Parthenon, and see the crumbling
pillars at the temple of that wild-eyed oracle at Delphi.
Imperious, exotic, and still much sought after,
she was once a popular film star whose sly blend
of wit and innuendo confounded even the strictest
censors of her day. Born in Warsaw, she considers
herself spiritually Greek. This has been the case
ever since her fourth husband, Mikos, died
in her arms on the dance floor decades ago.
Despite the fact that she cannot walk unaided
or hear much below a shout, she has booked us
on a 3-week tour of Greece and its nearby islands. We
are to stay at the Hotel Cecil in the heart of old Athens,
with its magnificent roof garden and views of the Acropolis.
Her early years were spent in dire poverty. As soon
as she began to command lavish salaries she devoutly
embraced excess. Stories are told of her ordering lychee
nuts flown to her film sets round the world—enough
for the entire cast and crew. Strong, passionate, earthy,
and still quite beautiful when she removes her glasses
(their lenses thick as storm windows) she’ll mutter
“That’ll settle your hash” after indulging in some frisky
bit of wickedness. “I am but one infinitesimal mote
in the cosmos,” she likes to sigh, rolling her eyes
heavenward. She’s never above fainting to get her way.


II.

Here’s a snapshot of me, the mousy, unmarried daughter,
juggling her hatboxes. That was the trip to Nepal, I believe.
Here’s another of me bribing officials in Cordoba to allow
her rust-colored Pomeranians to be sneaked into a Mosque
in her oversized handbag. When I was twenty-two I
chaperoned her to Egypt. At the foot of the Sphinx
she picked up a handsome, blind music lecturer fifteen
years her junior. They pal-ed around the Mid-East
for three weeks while I cooled my heels in cafes
giving myself headaches from swilling that overly
sweet, tooth-decaying mint tea. Perhaps you’ve
seen a few of her movies. They show up from time
to time on film classics channels on TV. Kitten
in a Lace Slip, Her Good Name and Shame in Autumn
were among her big hits. In A Free Soul, my favorite,
she plays a slave girl. When a potential buyer tries to pry
open her mouth so he can examine her teeth, she twists
out of his grip, tosses her pretty head and says, “There is
no path the virtuous cannot tread, and no suffering
they cannot endure.” Though she has often ignored me
and been oblivious to my needs, though she is a rotten
listener and I have sometimes prayed for her ruin, when
I hear that line, or rather, when I read it in flickering, chip-
ped white subtitling (because A Free Soul is among her early
silent films) I know my hour has come. Then love reveals
itself to me as all it ever was: a haphazard mix of charisma,
the power of enchanting eyes, and lies, lies, lies. 

Poem © Amy Gerstler 2004. All rights reserved.

Duncan Hannah
www.jamesgrahamandsons.com

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