In the Elementary School Choir

I had never seen a cornfield in my life,                                      [1.1]

I had never been to Oklahoma,                                                 [1.2]

But I was singing as loud as anyone,                                        [1.3]

“Oh what a beautiful morning. . . . The corn                             [1.4]

 Is as high as an elephant’s eye,”                                             [1.5]

Though I knew something about elephants I thought,              [1.6]

Coming from the same continent as they did,   [same continent = Egypt as Africa]  [1.7]

 And they being more like camels than anything else.             [1.8]

And when we sang from Meet Me in St. Louis,                      [2.1]

"Clang, clang, clang went the trolley,”                                    [2.2]

I remembered the ride from Ramleh Station                           [2.3]   

In the heart of Alexandria                      [port city in Egypt fdd by Alexander the Great, 331BC]  [2.4]

All the way to Roushdy where my grandmother lived,   [Roshdy neighborhood in Alexandria]    [2.5]

The autos on the roadway vying                                            [2.6]

With mule carts and bicycles,                                                 [2.7]

The Mediterranean half a mile off on the left,         [Mediterranean: see images above]   [2.8]

The air smelling sharply of diesel and salt.                            [2.9]

It was a problem which had dogged me                                  [3.1]

For a few years, this confusion of places,                               [3.2]

And when in 5th grade geography I had pronounced             [3.3]

“Des Moines” as though it were a village in France,     [i.e., pronounced as "Day Mwan"]   [3.4]

Mr. Kephart led me to the map on the front wall,                    [3.5]

And so I’d know where I was,                                                  [3.6]

Pressed my forehead squarely against Iowa.                         [3.7]

Des Moines, he’d said. Rhymes with coins.                           [3.8]

Now we were singing “zippidy-doo-dah, zippidy-ay,”              [4.1]

And every song we’d sung had in it                                        [4.2]

Either sun or bluebirds, fair weather                                       [4.3]

Or fancy fringe, O beautiful America!                                     [4.4]

And one tier below me,                                                           [4.5]

There was Linda Deemer with her amber waves                   [4.6]   [dominant culture] 

And lovely fruited plains,                                                        [4.7]    

And she was part of America too                                           [4.8]

Along with sun and spacious sky                                           [4.9]

Though untouchable, and as distant                                     [4.10]  [dominant culture] 

As purple mountains of majesty.                                            [4.11]

“This is my country,” we sang,                                              [5.1]

And a few years ago there would have been                        [5.2]

A scent of figs in the air, mangoes,                                        [5.3]

And someone playing the oud along a clear stream.   [oud = N African / Middle Eastern stringed instrument]    [5.4]

But now it was “My country ‘tis of thee”                                [6.1]

And I sang it out with all my heart                                          [6.2]

And now with Linda Deemer in mind.                                    [6.3]

“Land where my fathers died,” I bellowed,                            [6.4]

And it was not too hard to imagine                                        [6.5]

A host of my great uncles and grandfathers                         [6.6]    

Stunned from their graves in the Turkish interior     [Armenia earlier part of Turkey]     [6.7]

And finding themselves suddenly                                         [6.8]

On a rock among maize and poultry    ["rock": i.e., Plymouth Rock, where the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts]     [6.9]   [dominant culture] 

And Squanto shaking their hands.      [Squanto: American Indian associate of Pilgrims]      [6.10]     [minority culture]

How could anyone not think America                                   [7.1] 

Was exotic when it had Massachusetts                               [7.2]

And the long tables of thanksgiving?                                   [7.3]         [food motif of American immigration + Pilgrims]

And how could it not be home                                             [7.4]

If it were the place where love first struck?                         [7.5]

We had finished singing.                                                     [8.1]

The sun was shining through large windows                      [8.2]

On the beatified faces of all            [beatified = blissed-out]      [8.3]

Who had sung well and with feeling.                                  [8.4]

We were ready to file out and march back                         [8.5]

To our room where Mr. Kephart was waiting.                     [8.6]   [dominant culture] 

Already Linda Deemer had disappeared                            [8.7]

Into the high society of the hallway.                                   [8.8]

One day I was going to tell her something.                        [8.9]

Des Moines, I was saying to myself,                                  [8.10]

Baton Rouge. Terre Haute. Boise.                                             [8.11]

Gregory Djanikian, “In the Elementary School Choir” from Falling Deeply into America. Copyright © 1989 by Gregory Djanikian. Used by permission of Carnegie Mellon University Press.

Source: Poetry (January 1987).