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Breaking Silences

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Breaking Silences, cc&d v173.5 front cover, 2007

This appears in a pre-2010 issue of cc&d magazine.
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cc&d v170

HIGH LIGHT AMID DIMLY RECALLED FACES

Richard Fein

My uncle Sidney repeated the same story till his time was up.
He’d always start by asking me, “Don’t you remember all of it?”
And he’d follow by, “Oh, you were only five.”
And I’m still wondering
if he knew the answer, why ask the question.
But it’s our questioning that defines our species,
even though we pass by a lifetime of faces,
never asking, except for a very few, who any of them are.
But there was that singular face in Princeton N.J.
when we were stopped for a red light.
A shabby old man with wild gray hair and baggy pants
approached my uncle’s window and asked for the time,
then held up his broken watch.
My tinkerer uncle took the shabby man’s watch
and from his bag took out a screwdriver.
The old man’s eyes seemed far away, turned upwards to beyond the clouds.
Three green lights later Sidney set the now working watch to 3:30.
The old man thanked him and then the fourth green light.
Suddenly somewhere near New York my uncle pulled off the road,
his face lit up, his voice so excited, “he was, he was. . ..”
And for the rest of his life he’d pester me,
“Don’t you remember all of it?” And he’d answer, “Oh, you were only five.”
“Oh my god,” then he’d deafen my ears, “I fixed time for Einstein!”



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