BUCHAREST Poem by Charlotte Van den Broeck

Some places are so small
they'd fit on the tip of a finger.
I try to point at where everything was
but I can barely remember.

Among the rubble of forgetting stands
my grandfather's bookcase and that Sunday afternoon
when we read the atlas together, his finger
resting on the capital of Romania.

‘A smashing bunch of slags' they had, he said
and I thought a slag was some sort of Eiffel Tower
and resented him for never
bringing me back a miniature version.

Later I learned that borders and grandfathers are relative.
Only that afternoon is marked in the atlas
by raised alphabet letters, as the afternoon
when I still saw in him the most perfect guide.