Libretto

Libretto. That's the first Italian word

she wants to teach me: ‘little book.’

This afternoon (but why are we alone?

Were Daddy and my brothers gone

all day, or has memory with its flair

for simple compositions airbrushed

them from the shot?) she's set aside

just for the two of us, and a lesson.

On an ivory silk couch that doesn't fit

the life she's given in Detroit,

we gaze across the living room at the tall

‘European’ drapes she's sewn

herself: a work of secret weights and tiers,

hung after cursing at her own

mother's machine. She lets the needle fall

onto the record's edge; then turns

to pull a hidden cord, and the curtain rises

on Puccini's strings and our front view

of shut two-car garages, built for new

marriages constructed since the war.

Well, not so new. It's 1962

and though I’m only eight, I know

that with two cars, people can separate.

He went away; he came back for more

operatic scenes heard through the wall

as if through a foreign language. Muffled

fury and accusation, percussive sobs:

they aren't happy. Who couldn't tell

without the words? Libretto. On my knees

the English text, the Italian on hers,

and a thrill so loud the coffee table throbs.

I’m following her finger as

we’re looping to a phrase already sung

or reading four lines at a time

of people interrupting and just plain

not listening, and yet the burden

of the words is simple: Butterfly must die.

Pinkerton will betray her, though the theme

rippling above him like a hoisted flag

is The Star-Spangled Banner. Mother, why

would a Japanese and an American

sing Italian at each other?

Why would he get married and not stay?

And have a child he’d leave to wait

with the mother by the screen with her telescope

for the ship of hope? Why, if he knew

it wouldn't last, did he come back to Japan?