150 Father poems

I made up a story for myself once, That each glove I lost Was sent to my father in prison That’s all it would take for him To chart my growth without pictures Without words or visits, Only colors and design, Texture; it was ok then For skin to chafe and ash, To imagine him Trying on a glove, Stretching it out My open palm closing And disappearing In his fist.

Because the birds sculpted the air with their song — I sent that flash across the sea. Candle in a paper lantern, the flame rose and dipped. • I’ve been hiding from my father. Fog-damp pall over the city. I ink this bruise onto paper. Years ago, in Highland Park, we’d picnic in the backyard. We slept in the living room. I clung to my beautiful mother. Flipped the pillow and pressed against its coolness. I held grudges like tiny fists of sand, then, let go. I kissed the fog and sky and the ocean’s cobalt hue. You. I hadn’t yet met you. • Murky alphabet — I falter the letter, I elide the gaps. If the opalescent dew meant anything, it meant that one day I’d be lifted above my feelings. You’d become less than a feeling, the way every lover I’ve known no longer hurts me. Those old charges detonated. • Here and now, I make room for joy. Birds ribbon the air with their singing. Bird voices riot up. The planes with their hulking engines — they fly too. The jags of each cliff head — Your lips — I uninterrupt. I charley horse and miracle ride your absence. The whipped froth of the ocean. Puddle of salt water, shivering wound. Seaweed, we sing of losses. Cold under this blanket, I wait for my alarm to sing. • I’ve polished this anger and now it’s a knife. I’m hardened as a hunter ornamenting his cave with the bones of the dead. I’m so sick of history dragging behind me. Today, I don’t want to be sad. But my father has retreated into silence and the lashes across his back have not healed, and my mother tells me he could have killed himself that night and we’d be blamed. Call the police, she said. We stood barefoot on the street, listening to him throw things against the garage walls, detonations of only what we could imagine. I hurl stones into the ether. I wash my hands in ink. The lost in the fog body borne of matter, history-less, untethered. Better to be alive and bewildered. At least I can name the thing. To love my father is to love his wounds. In times like these, we present our hurts like old toys we polish up to show each other who we used to be.

I To see my father lying in pink velvet, a rosary twined around his hands, rouged, lipsticked, his skin marble ... My mother said, “He looks the way he did thirty years ago, the day we got married,— I’m glad I went; I was afraid: now I can remember him like that ...” Ruth, your last girlfriend, who wouldn’t sleep with you or marry, because you wanted her to pay half the expenses, and “His drinking almost drove me crazy—” Ruth once saw you staring into a mirror, in your ubiquitous kerchief and cowboy hat, say: “Why can’t I look like a cowboy?” You left a bag of money; and were the unhappiest man I have ever known well. II It’s in many ways a relief to have you dead. I have more money. Bakersfield is easier: life isn’t so nude, now that I no longer have to face you each evening: mother is progressing beautifully in therapy, I can almost convince myself a good analyst would have saved you: for I need to believe, as always, that your pervasive sense of disappointment proceeded from trivial desires: but I fear that beneath the wish to be a movie star, cowboy, empire builder, all those cheap desires, lay radical disaffection from the very possibilities of human life ... Your wishes were too simple: or too complex. III I find it difficult to imagine you in bed, making love to a woman ... By common consensus, you were a good lover: and yet, mother once said: “Marriage would be better if it weren’t mixed up with sex ...” Just after the divorce,—when I was about five,—I slept all night with you in a motel, and again and again you begged me to beg her to come back ... I said nothing; but she went back several times, again and again you would go on a binge, there would be another woman, mother would leave ... You always said, “Your mother is the only woman I’ve ever loved.” IV Oh Shank, don’t turn into the lies of mere, neat poetry ... I’ve been reading Jung, and he says that we can never get to the bottom of what is, or was ... But why things were as they were obsesses; I know that you the necessity to contend with you your helplessness before yourself, —has been at the center of how I think my life ... And yet your voice, raw, demanding, dissatisfied, saying over the telephone: “How are all those bastards at Harvard?” remains, challenging: beyond all the patterns and paradigms I use to silence and stop it. V I dreamed I had my wish: —I seemed to see the conditions of my life, upon a luminous stage: how I could change, how I could not: the root of necessity, and choice. The stage was labelled “Insight”. The actors there had no faces, I cannot remember the patterns of their actions, but simply by watching, I knew that beneath my feet the fixed stars governing my life had begun to fall, and melt ... —Then your face appeared, laughing at the simplicity of my wish. VI Almost every day I take out the letter you wrote me in Paris. ... Why? It was written the year before you married Shirley; Myrtle, your girlfriend, was an ally of mine because she “took care of you,” but you always made it clear she was too dumpy and crude to marry ... In some ways “elegant,” with a pencil-thin, neatly clipped moustache, chiselled, Roman nose, you were a millionaire and always pretended you couldn’t afford to go to Europe ... When I was a child, you didn’t seem to care if I existed. Bakersfield, Calif July 9, 1961 Dear Pinon, Sorry I haven’t wrote to you sooner but glad to hear that you are well and enjoying Paris. I got your fathers day wire in the hospital where I put in about twelve days but I am very well now. I quit the ciggeretts but went through ten days of hell quitting and my back had been giving me hell. It had been very hot here but the last few days has been very nice. Emily just got out of the hospital yesterday. She had her feet worked on. I guess she will tell you about it. Glad to hear you are learning some French. We are just about through with potatoes. Crop was very good but no price at all which made it a poor year. Cattle are cheap too. It look like a bad year for all farmer’s. I don’t know anything else to tell you. Take care of your self and enjoy it. Maybe you will never have another chance for another trip. I don’t think I’ll ever get the chance to go, so if you run into a extra special gal between 28 & 35 send her over here to me as all I know over here don’t amount to mutch. Well I guess I’ll close now as I am going over to see Emily. Hoping to hear from you right away. This address is 4019 Eton St. be sure and get it straight. Myrtle would like to know how much that watch amounts to. Let us know Will close now and write soon. Love ‘Shank’ P.S. Excuse this writing as its about 30 years since I wrote a letter. VII How can I say this? I think my psychiatrist likes me: he knows the most terrible things I’ve done, every stupidity, inadequacy, awkwardness, ignorance, the mad girl I screwed because she once again and again teased and rejected me, and whose psychic incompetence I grimly greeted as an occasion for revenge; he greets my voice with an interest, and regard, and affection, which seem to signal I’m worth love; —you finally forgave me for being your son, and in the nasty shambles of your life, in which you had less and less occasion for pride, you were proud of me, the first Bidart who ever got a B.A.; Harvard, despite your distrust, was the crown;—but the way you eyed me: the bewilderment, unease: the somehow always tentative, suspended judgment ... —however much you tried (and, clearly, you did try) you could not remake your taste, and like me: could not remake yourself, to give me the grace needed to look in a mirror, as I often can now, with some equanimity ... VIII When did I begin to substitute insight, for prayer? ... —You believed in neither: but said, “My life is over,” after you had married Shirley, twenty-five years younger, with three small children, the youngest six months old; she was unfaithful within two months, the marriage was simply annulled ... A diabetic, you didn’t take your insulin when you drank, and almost managed to die many times ... You punished Ruth when she went to Los Angeles for a weekend, by beginning to drink; she would return home either to find you in the hospital, or in a coma on the floor ... The exacerbation of this seeming necessity for connection—; you and mother taught me there’s little that’s redemptive or useful in natural affections ... I must unlearn; I must believe you were merely a man with a character, and a past—; you wore them, unexamined, like a nimbus of furies round your greying, awesome head ... IX What should I have done? In 1963, you wanted to borrow ten thousand dollars from me, so that we could buy cattle together, under the name “Bidart and Son,”— most of your money was tied up in the increasingly noxious “Bidart Brothers,” run by your brother, Johnny ... I said no, that I wanted to use the money for graduate school; but I thought if you went on a binge, and as had happened before, simply threw it away ... The Bidarts agreed you were not to be trusted; you accepted my answer, with an air of inevitability I was shocked at ... I didn’t want to see your self-disgust; —somehow, your self-congratulation had eroded more deeply, much more deeply, than even I had wished,— but for years, how I had wished! ... I have a friend who says that he has never felt a conflict between something deeply wished or desired, and what he thought was “moral” ... Father, such innocence surely is a kind of Eden—; but, somehow, I can’t regret that we are banished from that company—; in the awareness, the history of our contradictions and violence, insofar as I am “moral” at all, is the beginning of my moral being. X When I began this poem, to see myself as a piece of history, having a past which shapes, and informs, and thus inevitably limits— at first this seemed sufficient, the beginning of freedom ... The way to approach freedom was to acknowledge necessity:— I sensed I had to become not merely a speaker, the “eye,” but a character ... And you had to become a character: with a past, with a set of internal contradictions and necessities which if I could once define, would at least begin to release us from each other ... But, of course, no such knowledge is possible;— as I touch your photographs, they stare back at me with the dazzling, impenetrable, glitter of mere life ... You stand smiling, at the end of the twenties, in a suit, and hat, cane and spats, with a collie at your feet, happy to be handsome, dashing, elegant:— and though I cannot connect this image with the end of your life, with the defensive gnarled would-be cowboy,— you seem happy at that fact, happy to be surprising; unknowable; unpossessable ... You say it’s what you always understood by freedom. 1968-69.

My father had several times expressed a fear of being buried alive. I insisted that the doctor should do whatever was necessary. The doctor asked me to leave the room. When I came back, he was able to assure me that Renoir was dead! jean renoir It is not 1937 for long. A clump of ash trees and a walk Down the the boathouse: inside linen is tacked up In a long blank mural; the children sit on the wings Of the dry dock, and then, over the water in a circle Of rowboats, the aunts and uncles wait while At their center the projectionist, Jean Renoir, On a cedar raft, casts silhouettes of rabbits, birds, And turtles for the sleepy children. Corks Come out of old bottles, it is a few minutes past sunset And, now, a swimmer beside the raft looks Into the boathouse to the linens:at last, it is 1915! A bird screams over the lake, two bats Flitter back and forth through the beam of the lamp, Interrupting the images, the grand illusion, cast over Water the the acceptance of white tablecloths On the darkening shore of the lake. A torch is lit For its kerosene smoke is repugnant to the swarming insects. This film and its prisoners exist between extreme borders, Not music and algebra but A war and, then, yet another war. . . But we begin with the captured officers digging A tunnel that will soon be outside the garden wall. The Boches observe the Frenchmen working With their hoes as from the trousers of a boy Dirt from the tunnel secretly spills onto horse manure! The prisoners dream of crossing a meadow filled With snow, in the moonlight it is jade-green snow While Germans with rifles on a hill Are unable to kill them, for they have escaped Into Switzerland with its feather-brushed trees And patina of copper rooftops along a hillside village. Isn’t this the ending of the film? No! I’m sorry but There is a single blossom On the geranium, and when it falls, Captain de Boeldieu Dies, discovering his afterlife along a November road— He does not know that two men are hiding in the marsh Beside him; nevertheless, it is at this moment that the film Suffers its true conclusion. The two men hiding In the marsh will escape across the border, only To be returned to the continuing war. This is why there Is no importance to your version of the story. And there Will be another war. And more horror for the geranium! So, to pass the time, the imprisoned soldiers receive A steamer trunk filled with women’s clothing, They will all perform in a revue: a chorus Of boys and men, rouge and talcum, black stockings, Garters, the tonneau dresses, false breasts and Large paper carnations riding up like epaulets On their broad shoulders. These poignant inversions Are not ridiculous: the third boy from the right Has delicate milky thighs, these women are not ridiculous Until they begin to stiffen into men as they sing, In this comedy, their national anthem! The Russian Prisoners have been given a trunk, also, from their Mysterious Czarina; the men open it expecting vodka And sausages. The box is filled with straw And books on cooking, painting, and algebra. In disgust They burn these books—kiss good-bye the frontier Of algebra and the desire for wedding tripe! Now, these officers who are escape artists are moved As an elite corps and north to Wintersborn. Later, They are taken to a damp limestone castle From which no one will escape. The Commandant Is the stoic aristocrat, Rauffenstein, his head is in A brace like a white egg in a silver teaspoon. I mean no disrespect, but the balding Rauffenstein is An abject picture of suffering. His villa has but one Flower, a tall laden geranium. Rauffenstein and the other aristocrat, Boeldieu, Are friends. Both would know that to clear a monocle One uses spirits of vinegar. They stand confirmed In manner beside a squirrel cage. Rauffenstein feels Superior to the other two principals, the rich Jew, Rosenthal, and the charming emotional Marechal. These two hide in the marsh while Boeldieu dies Of a bullet wound. Only a king may kill a king! And Rauffenstein did it with his pistol; taking aim But missing the leg; he severed in three places Boeldieu’s intestine! The Captain is given a room in the turret that holds The flowering geranium. Now comes the oratio obliqua Of the marksman, Rauffenstein; the disfigured Commandant Is sincerely saddened At having killed the noble Captain. But before The shooting and escape we sensed the Captain’s Sacrifice was not sacrifice, or suicide, but The grand escape—a country road into another landscape. . . There are bells tolling down in the village. Rosenthal and Marechal with ropes have dropped Past the castle’s battlements to the ground. They run away across snowy farmland. Marechal’s teeth Are stained from chewing licorice-flavored tobacco. Rosenthal and Marechal are extremes who have Strong feelings for each other. They are befriended By a German widow, Ulsa, and her daughter, Lotte; Ulsa sleeps with the tall handsome Jew. He promises To return for her when the war is over. He Will lose both his legs at Mégéglise. This is not known within the story, but he’ll bleed To death beside a little bridge. He lived his illusion In the Orient of Delacroix, his servants were Syrians And Negroes. He loved the little ivory spoons that Chinese women in the open markets use to bathe And freshen the exotic tiny fish they sell out Of huge clay bowls. . . In the boathouse the children sleep, while Jean’s Oldest cousin, drunken, falls out of a rowboat. The lone swimmer has joined Renior on the raft. The film now reveals the first diversion As all of the prisoners of the fortress begin playing Several hundred wooden flutes, the noise is like women Crying over the fresh mounds at Verdun. This diversion Is not illusion And as the Boches collect the flutes, the drunken cousin Tries to join Renior on the raft. Boeldieu flees To the heights of the castle, the second diversion! We hear:Halt! Halt! Halt! A gunshot, and chowder with blood falls from Boeldieu’s Opened stomach all the way down to the courtyard. There are small fish bones in the viscera on the cobbled Courtyard floor. Scissors cut the blue blossom From the geranium. Boeldieu will die. . . dead, He awakens on a country road where, now a peasant, He walks a white horse under the looming, bare trees. Rosenthal and Marechal are watching As they hide in the dead marsh flowers of An early November. They are alive. They do not Recognize their friend. Renoir’s cousin, asking for More wine, climbing onto the raft, spills Everything, and the projector with its crude lamp Sinks slowly to the bottom of the lake— Its dusky lighted windows like a bathysphere Lost off a cable that frayed, whoever is alive Inside the iron bell is experiencing An eternal falling through water without the promise Of a bottom. . . it’s 1937, the children Asleep in the boathouse are being aroused, they wake To a bat caught in the wall of linen, they think it’s Their uncle still casting images of animals for them. . .

On a hill overlooking the Rock River my father’s pear tree shimmers, in perfect peace, covered with hundreds of ripe pears with pert tops, plump bottoms, and long curved leaves. Until the green-haloed tree rose up and sang hello, I had forgotten. . . He planted it twelve years ago, when he was seventy-three, so that in September he could stroll down with the sound of the crickets rising and falling around him, and stand, naked to the waist, slightly bent, sucking juice from a ripe pear.

No one was faster than my father on the football field. No one could keep him from crossing the line. Then touching down again. Coaches were watching the way he moved, his easy stride, his long arms reaching up, snatching the ball from its soft pockets of air. My father dreamed football dreams, and woke up to a scholarship at Ohio State University. Grown now living the big-city life in Columbus just sixty miles from Nelsonville and from there Interstate 70 could get you on your way west to Chicago Interstate 77 could take you south but my father said no colored Buckeye in his right mind would ever want to go there. From Columbus, my father said, you could go just about anywhere

Remember after work you grabbed our skateboard, crouched like a surfer, wingtips over the edge; wheels clacketing down the pocked macadam, you veered almost straight into the neighbor's hedge? We ran after you laughing, shouting, Wait! Or that August night you swept us to the fair? The tallest person boarding the Ferris wheel, you rocked our car right when we hit the apex above the winking midway, to make us squeal. Next we raced you to the games, shouting, Wait! At your funeral, relatives and neighbors, shaking our hands, said, "So young to have died!" But we've dreamt you're just skating streets away, striding the fairgrounds toward a wilder ride. And we're still straggling behind, shouting,Wait—!

Mid-May, centipedes looped over netting at the well's mouth. Girls grew frisky in summer frocks, lilies spotted with blood. You were bound to meteorology, Science of fickle clouds, ferocious winds. The day you turned twenty-six fighter planes cut a storm, Fissured air baring the heart's intricate meshwork Of want and need— Springs of cirrus out of which sap and shoot you raised me. Crossing Chand Bibi Road, Named after the princess who rode with hawks, Slept with a gold sword under her pillow, Raced on polo fields, You saw a man lift a child, her chest burnt with oil, Her small thighs bruised. He bore her through latticed hallways Into Lady Dufferin's hospital. How could you pierce the acumen of empire, Mesh of deceprion through which soldiers crawled, Trees slashed with petrol, Grille work of light in a partitioned land? When you turned away, Your blue black hair was crowned with smoke— You knelt on a stone. On your bent head The monsoons poured.

Did your father come home after fighting through the week at work? Did the sweat change to salt in his ears? Was that bitter white grain the only music he’d hear? Is this why you were quiet when other poets sang of the black man’s beauty? Is this why you choked on the tonsil of Negro Duty? Were there as many offices for pain as love? Should a black man never be shy? Was your father a mountain twenty shovels couldn’t bury? Was he a train leaving a lone column of smoke? Was he a black magnolia singing at your feet? Was he a blackjack smashed against your throat?

I remember watching my father stop halfway up the driveway because my tricycle was blocking the way to the garage, and how he solved the problem by picking up the tricycle by the handlebars and smashing it through the windshield of our brand new family station wagon, his face red with scotch, his black tie and jacket flapping with effort, the tricycle making its way a little farther with each blow into the roomy interior of the latest model as the safety glass relented, the tricycle and the windshield both praiseworthy in their toughness, the struggle between them somehow making perfect sense in midday on our quiet suburban street, the windshield the anvil, the trike the hammer, the marriage the forge, and failure glowing in the heat, beaten and tempered, slowly taking shape.