Inheritance - Philip Levine

An amulet against nothing.

A rectangular Bulova, my Zadie

called a dress watch, I wore it for years,

and though it gave the wrong time

I treasured the sense of community

it offered, the beauty of certain numerals — 

the seven especially, the way it leaned

into its subtle work and never changed,

and signified exactly what it was

and no more. In dreams I learned

that only the watch and the circle

of ash trees surrounding me, and the grass

prodding my bare feet, and of course

my nakedness were necessary, though

common. Just surrendering my youth,

I still believed everything in dreams

meant something I could parse to discover

who we were.

As I write these words

in sepia across a lined page I have

no idea why they’ve taken the shape

I’ve given them, some cursive, some not,

some elegantly articulated, others plain,

many of no use at all. They go on working

as best they can, like the Parker 51

that spent its coming of age stumbling

backwards into Yiddish or the Bulova

that finally threw up its twin baroque arms

in surrender to the infinite and quit

without a word. The Parker still works

and is never to blame. On good days

it works better than I, and when it leaks

it leaks only ink, never a word best

left unsaid.

As a boy I would steal

into Zadie’s bedroom, find the watch

in a velvet box, wind it, hold it

to each ear — back then both worked — 

to hear its music, the jeweled wheels

and axles that kept time alive.

There is still such joy in these tokens

from back of beyond: the watch,

the Parker pen, the tiny pocket knife

he used to separate truth from lies,

the ivory cigarette holder — 

a gift, he claimed, from FDR

who mistook him for a famous

Russian violinist. I could call them

“Infinite riches in a little room”

or go cosmic and regard them

as fragments of a great mystery

instead of what they are,

amulets against nothing.