He learned English.
By rereading
The instructions
The ingredients,
The head office addresses,
The countries of origin,
The nutritional estimates,
And the sizes and weights
Off the back
Of the heat and ready to eat cookie dough packages,
In aisle 5.


He studied the words
And salivated over the contents
Progressed quickly
And memorized the recipes of other
Easy to bake products.
Pictures of cakes and butter tarts in his dreams
A joyful discovery,
The sweet promise
Of the full shelves
In a giant grocery store,
Two blocks from the single room
He made into his home.

He was hungry. Always.
For all things,
And motivated by nightmares of wolves,
Packs of predators in his dreams
And his empty stomach,
Ruled him with a continuous hum,
A sort of tinnitus of his entire body
And so
To spend an hour in the dessert section,
Of a building full to the sadistic edge of its light fixtures
With food,
Made him drift again
And wish for better things.

Eventually he graduated to cookbooks
Second hand bookstores,  
Memorized ‘from scratch’ the recipes of hundreds of dishes,
Crispy potato skins, eggplant caviar, chicken- avocado and tomato soup,
He became a code breaker,
An industrial spy with intent
His focus narrowed by near starvation
Within a year he could recall
And write down
4500 different ways to prepare food.  
Each day he would memorize one or two new recipes,
An exercise
Where he learned measurement and actions.
He taught himself to stir, to ladle, to sear,
And he learned to convert grams and ounces and cups,
He knew temperature equally in Celsius and Fahrenheit,
He learned to sliver, to filet, to carve, and
To put butter under the skin of a guinea hen,
And roast it into a golden delicate anticipation.
Allant knew how to prepare.

On January 1st when all of New York stayed in bed
For a few extra hours
He approached a food truck in Brooklyn,
Whose owner was tired and hung-over.
Using the universal sign language of calm strangers,
Along with his easy charm
He convinced the weary man to let him cook.


Within 15 minutes he had made grilled peaches and split sausages
Over which he poured a light sauce made from
Orange, mango and mustard.
The food truck owner tasted a spoonful
And devoured the magnificent creation in two bites,
The look on his face as if he had seen God.


Allant went from truck to stall to indoor grill
Until line ups went around the block.
He was grateful of course,
Grateful for the hunger,
The night sweats brought on by memories
Of evil beyond belief,

He worshiped his good fortune,
Spoke loudly about freedom as a gift,
Loyalty as a lifelong obligation and
Guilty that the world had given him a chance.
He became
Unshakable in his belief
That others must be helped.
So he made the immigrant promise,

And never for one second
For the rest of his life,
Did he ever refuse a tired man a seat
A hungry man a meal,
A broken man an ear,
A lonely man his comfort,
Or an angry man his smile.
This ,he said, is the dream.