The Lithuanians, and: 1910: The Morris Supreme Test, and: 1979:Tearing Down the Morris House on Perth Avenue

The Lithuanians

Christmas, 1997

Face down in the foyer, she lies, that statue my brother bought
from the son of a painter our grandparents befriended
before the Second World War.
In the afternoon sun, her bronze back - slightly arched - gleams
and her hair - black and thick as licorice-
as usual guards her features.

Today, on the corner of her pedestal, by her outstretched left hand
sits the box of song books,
their covers bearing merry blue carolers wearing red scarves in the snow.
As the evening progresses, the statue disappears
beneath coats, furs, capes;
an antique top hat slants on her left hip.

They were married in '26, my grandparents, quietly, in Paris:
Both were doctors, but Ruth
was the daughter of a stockyards baron,
and Harry, the son of Samuel Bokvits, a Lithuanian tailor
renamed Bakwin at Ellis Island in '96;
in aught-nine, when Harry was thirteen and reading in the synagogue
on East Eleventh,
Ruth was learning to ride sidesaddle, her brown velvet dress perfectly sized.
Of course it was Paris where these two exchanged vows.
And afterwards, raw oysters in their stomachs and drunk on champagne,
doctor and doctor walked the Champs Elysées
and talked of buying art.

And in the '30s, solvent as Marshall Field,
in their brownstone on the Upper East Side,
they held one supper after another, all the artists they knew
shoveling down roast beef and creamed potatoes, settling on the sofas
as Harry's chamber group played Wagner,
each artist, later, sending on a drawing or sculpture.
Diego Rivera was there, and Calder and finally, Ben Shahn-
a tall man, smudged yet not undignified,
ten years nearer Lithuania, with his eyes on injustice:
Dreyfus, Sacco and Vanzetti, sweatshops and the Depression.
Even so, Harry and he became friends, and soon
two of Shahn's watercolors - the Beach at Fire Island, the Clown
with the red face - hung in the front hall.

The Clown still hangs, in fact,
above the coats piled on the bronze his son made
a half-century later,
but the house is changed now my mother owns it: the walls,
a jumble of paintings and prints,
some she and my father bought in France in the '50s, after she quit medical school;
many more he bought, filling out his history of Revolutionary music
(soldiers stamping, fifes blaring, drums booming);
and here and there, a lesser work from Ruth and Harry's collection:
Kogan, Rivera, Volti, Derain.
(Gone the Cezannes, Van Goghs, Matisse's Woman in Blue.)

Now, instead of quartets and Grade-A beef,
the table is set with peanut butter sandwiches, buffet style,
and upstairs, with his wife and little boy,
Jonathan Shahn sings "O Holy Night" while, in the foyer,
his lovely sculpture gulps for air.

1910: The Morris Supreme Test

"We must not fool ourselves. We cannot afford to guess. We must know."

- Nelson Morris, explaining why Morris and Co. began testing its products.

Each week a different worker's family is invited
to dine in the sleek test kitchen of Morris and Company.
This week they are seven all together - they've brought the baby too-
seated on the benches to greet the numbered platters.

Which dish, the father strains to recognize, features
the Morris Supreme fare, the juiciest meat, freshest eggs,
"the clean and sweet and delicious oleomargarine"?
Today, it seems it's Platter Two, the dried beef
(prepared with milk and eggs) that betrays
the standard shape required by "the wonderful machines"
that packed them into vacuum tins - no human
had a hand in those perfect medallions.
And yes, they're tasty, they are "supreme."

Yet, to mother, thinking of all the times she stretched
half a dollar through a week of meals, even Platter One,
its eggs congealing, looks appetizing.
"I wouldn't scoff at it," she says, and to her children:
"Eat up now, clean your plates, eat everything."

1979: Tearing...