John Freeman
Passage
My niece passed her drivers
exam on the first try so we pile
into the kitchen with cake and tea
in the dark cove of a January night
reliving the inevitable first stall
a sudden judder when she let off
her clutch, how her instructor
let it pass and then she was fine,
more than fine, everyone recalling
their first solo flights in a car. The night
cold and bright, the house snug,
steam rising around us through the
pipes, traveling up the walls like friendly
sentinels, gathering in the radiators, all
while Uma the dog snuffles and snores
and farts on the couch, lips twitching,
haunches rippling in some unseen
chase. But here on the eve of Ruby’s
first drive, her ability to go fast, if she
must, we sit and slow time to a roue,
hip to hip on the cedar bench, elbows
resting on the long oak table, hands
reaching once and then again for a new
piece of lemon drizzle, the citrus having
fallen to the ground last week or maybe
the one before in Spain. Probably
Municia. A leftover from the Moors’
occupation, having imported their
irrigation system to those dry plains
from Syria. They also brought
pomegranites, grapes,
eggplants — and of course, all the
classics of ancient Greece and Rome,
which were translated into Arabic
and printed on parchment or paper.
Cordoba alone had seventy libraries,
its 400,000 volumes the crown jewel
of the Moorish empire, before it fell, and
Jewish scholars fled like sentinels
bringing the texts with them to Paris,
to Constantinople, to Sarajevo, setting
off new ripples where they landed.
Next week when my niece takes her
final exam she will be asked about Plato
because 1200 years ago, some scholars
thought to bring it with them to
a new land, and found the trees
on which to print these illustrious
secrets, and someone, somewhere,
thought when a man carrying a manuscript
into a new land arrived perhaps he
was given tea and cake too, and invited
to sit on a piece of wood, and allowed to
rest, to take another piece.
JOHN FREEMAN is the founder of the literary annual Freeman’s, and an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. The author and editor of eleven books, his latest is Wind, Trees, a collection of poems. He lives in New York.