Father

it is hard not feeling you inside me
for all those years you were so distant
feeling the new country take shape in you
trying to caress even the thorns on the gentile Christ

I live with you every day
but then I believed you weren’t inside me
I know I wanted to be something else
some farmer of words in my desert
I remember one day when we went camping
you laughed you wanted to do something for me
“to my dear son” this book I didn’t read for years
after you gave it to me

you were so distant when I was young
I wanted you next to me at night
so I could fall asleep on your lap
and you would carry me to bed half asleep
and I would dream and dream till morning

you were so good to me but so distant afraid
an immigrant afraid of the world
needing an enemy to live
to live on in you to define yourself
you took up painting to love something in yourself

I wondered if you loved your children
even when you worked hard for them
were you able to say what you really wanted to hear
your misery and your joy your fears the shadow
no one to listen the need to define it yourself

of all the years we were together
I hardly remember a moment
all of it is empty empty of your embrace
and I cry and cry for the loss for I am your loss
I am what became of you ashamed and slightly proud

inhibited with laughter afraid
of being alone of not being heard
afraid I won’t like myself
remembering the fear of death in my grandmother’s eyes
not peaceful but frantic
half ripened in the wrong oven
with only memories of another life

I want to understand what remains of you in myself
if only to forgive you for what I could not undo
and our ancestors we both carry with us
the dark shadows flow into the ground
when evening comes they are everywhere
no longer a ghost no longer a memory of wandering
permanent at night the look of the Jews

my father it is enough to look at you in your old age
to know how I wanted to be loved
this aching hole which is a mouth in the earth
where we are buried with your sorrows but still speak
father I don’t want to curse myself or my luck
I am here living each day with myself
putting my voice out to feel around
to laugh to smooth out the tired muscles
to be foolish to be extravagant in love
to awaken with the sun on my naked body
and my wife at my side and my dear son next to us
peaceful in bones and glance and voice and laughter

I am moving away from you now to warm a cold place
to burn off my awkwardness with my live heart
to know myself and my son and my wife each moment
and follow the eyes of the day across the sky
and the moon at night with its scars of change
I am going away to discover what I do not know of myself
and stop pretending my fingers are frozen at the waistline of my voice
all these years somehow seemingly wasted
the relatives who do not speak the friends dispersed
the love and comfort unreturned the life to be made and made again

you grew up short five feet one from the ground
looking up at the new land you came to many years ago
your mother leaving you your father gone
who comforted you whom did you feel you could love
securely at night who read to you was quiet with you
who walked by your side who gave you his smile your own
and I cried for you as you cried watching the moon
as tears fell and fell and the darkness fell around you
I remembered reading Call it Sleep and there you were in that book
and I cried and cried for what I wanted from you and never got
and now I am on my own repeating your sorrow
but washing it away with my own tears not with other’s
I do not know which way to go because there is nowhere to go
and yet I am leaving leaving with the moon at my back
and am happy to be going so far away
not for escape but for adventure
and each moment the adventure of what is happening
clearly and unreservedly I will not look only at parts

I want to say good-bye properly but I don’t know how
perhaps when the time comes I will find the way
it is hard to be strong but I am strong
stronger than you have made me

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Brother Songs/A Male Anthology of Poetry — in which this poem originally appeared — is a remarkable book, lovingly put together by editor Jim Perlman and brimming with superb work by Robert Bly, Gary Snyder, James Dickey and many other lesser-known poets. The book consists of poems about fathers, sons, brothers, friends, and lovers; here are men who express affection for other men, who question categorized relationships. Good reading for men, and women, who have let the image of the unfeeling, competitive man become a stereotype. Just plain good reading. $3.50 from Holy Cow! Press, PO Box 618, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55440.

— Ed.

©Copyright 1979 by Holy Cow! Press