Roman Vishniac, Grandfather and Granddaughter in Warsaw, 1938​, by Andrew Miller

Grandfather and Granddaughter in Warsaw, photography by Roman Vishniac (USA, b. Russia) 1938

Roman Vishniac, Grandfather and Granddaughter in Warsaw, 1938​

You woke and the woman who 
For fifty years had weighed down 
The left side of your bed—  
Each night as namelessly as love--
Was cold. Her cough you heard 
Some time in the night, 
And though the silence that followed it 
Seemed to you too simple to be called ‘sleep’, 
You dozed off and woke in the morning 
Once the spirit had flown. 
It will take two years before you know 
Her death was a gift. Now, 
Someone readies to weep in the next room.
There are guests to gather, 
A rabbi to be summoned,
This granddaughter to break the news to softly. 

Andrew Miller

Andrew Miller is a poet, critic and translator with over eighty publications to his name. His poems have appeared in such journals as The Massachussett’s Review, Iron Horse, Shenandoah, Spoon River Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Laurel Review, Hunger Mountain, Rattle, New Orleans Review, and Ekphrasis.  In addition, he has had poems appear in such anthologies as How Much Earth, Anthology of Fresno Poets (2001) and The Way We Work: Contemporary Literature from the Workplace (2008). Finally, he is one of the co-editors of The Gazer Within, The Selected Prose of Larry Levis (2001) and the author of Poetry, Photography Ekphrasis: Lyrical Representations of Photography from the 19th Century to the Present (Liverpool University Press, 2015). Presently, Miller resides Copenhagen Denmark with this wife and daughters.