I found the poem below recently in a pile of papers from around 2008. I had no memory of having written it, but I’m sure many writers have the same kind of experience. Forgetfulness enshrouding us all. What intrigued me is that the poem seems to predict what happened a year or two after I wrote it. In late 2010, I sold a precious piece of my past—an Irish button accordion I got when I was around 8 years old. I can still dimly remember going to Manhattan with my father and his best friend P.J. Conway to buy this instrument, which I think cost about $200, a fortune for my family in those days. It was beautiful but hard to play—the keyboard action was high and stiff.
The Black Box, painting by Susan Campbell
When I retired from the Smithsonian in 2009, I needed to look for some extra money, and that’s when selling the old box occurred to me. I’d hardly touched it since 1980-81, when I replaced it with a succession of instruments that are easier to play. I don’t think it was a bad decision to sell it. My father had a kind of Zen-like non-attachment to material things, and I think he would have blessed the de-accessioning of the box. It was bought by a Dublin accordion-player of impressive ability named Ray Dempsey (pictured below). He in turn sold it to a Frenchman named Laurent Jarry, who presides over an accordion emporium in the Paris suburb of Montreuil that I would love to visit one day.
Black Box
My father took me downtown
and bought me the most amazing
black box. A beauty, with flags,
harps, and flowers,
all in rhinestone. My name
affixed to it, in big block
letters, also of rhinestone.
To me, they were white diamonds.
The box was very heavy.
As I got older, it grew
even heavier. Because only
an expert could open it,
I never put anything into it.
After my father died, I put
the black box into a bigger
box and didn’t think
about it for many years.
Until a few weeks ago, when
I was overcome with a sense
of the past, which has a distinct
smell, like that of someone eating
Doritos in the Metro, and I looked
everywhere for the box. But it’s
gone, and all those ancient
attachments, so glittery
and fragile, gone with it.
Laurent Jarry's Accordion shop