Poem: The Persistent Accent

I have taken today's poem from The Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor. Visit the webpage to listen to the program.

"The Persistent Accent" by Patricia Dobler from Collected Poems. © Autumn House Press. Reprinted with permission.

The Persistent Accent

Until the grave covers me, on foreign soil
I shall remain Hungarian
Hungarian folk song

Because this fat old lady
has exactly the voice
of my dead grandma,
I find myself
trailing her through the supermarket
as she complains to her friend
about the Blacks, the kids, the prices,
age, disease, and certain death,
and I'm seduced
by that Hungarian accent
decades in this country can't diminish,
and I see the smoky fires
of the harvesters, a golden-braided girl
fetching their dinners of peppers and lamb,
and I follow her
through the aisles,
wanting to lay my face
between her hands,
to ask her for a song.