On Being Given a Photograph from 1929

Backlit by strong sun, in the tall window 
of the Athens Maternity Hospital,
my five-pound mother held both
by a nurse in a nun-like veil, 
and my grandmother, 21 years old,
her long dark hair plaited
in a kind of bun as she smiles. 
She has put on a stylish cap, buttoned
her coat to the top as if she is ready to embark
through the deep fathoms of time
that brings them here to me, rising and rising. 
She cannot possibly dream of the sorrows to come—
her second child, a son, dead at three years old—
she is simply standing before my proud grandfather
and his camera, all of them held 
there in the corridors of light.