The Letters of Her Name

She was told to make her X on the line,

I was quite young, but understood her shame,

A burden that makes others look away.

She pinches pennies by not eating meat,

Living on what the government will pay,

And Brooklynese she picks up from the street.

Ellis Island, her passage long ago,

A child of two or three from Sicily.

She never spoke of it, I did not know,

If guardians brought her across the sea,

Or if she endured the voyage alone,

Cast on the water like a bit of bread,

To die without ever seeing the stone,

On the Hudson, near Lady Liberty,

Where her name is engraved in memory,

With others on a ledge the city built,

For those we are unwilling to forget.

After a little while, flowers wilt,

But I can see, along the parapet,

The letters of her name that had been set.