When I was five, my grandfather took me to the tomb
of King Suro, lifted me over the stone fences
and watched me slide down the mound over
and over again. Did he do this because he was
an old man, because he didn’t know where young
parents take their children, like the aquarium
or the water park or the toy store? Or did he
because he was once a child who never went
to any of those? Was it because I was a child,
who he assumed would enjoy sliding
endlessly? And wasn’t he right? About how children
conceive of time differently or that their imaginations
work differently, and that every slide was, in fact,
different? Or did he do this because he was
an old man, who thought the only destination left
for him was the grave? Or did he not care about death
and ancient bodies? Had he become indifferent
to sacred things, like a young mother
hung over a stone fence with a child still crying
on her back or his village burned
to the ground? Did war take his morning
and night, his conception of time?
Did he know my grandmother then,
a young woman waking to amber light
from his village, thinking it was morning?
Did he do this because the park-keeper, also
an old man, let him? Was he an old man?
Was my grandfather? Was he old
at all? Was she ever an old woman, his mother,
whose grave he died on, cutting its grass?
From The Paris Review, issue no. 227 (Winter 2018)
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