"For The Word Is Flesh"
O ruined father dead, long sweetly rotten Under the dial, the time-dissolving urn, Beware a second perishing, forgotten, Heap fallen leaves of memory to burn On the slippery rock, the black eroding heart, Before the wedged frost splits it clean apart.
The nude hand drops no sacramental flower Of blood among the tough upthrusting weeds. Senior, in this commemorative hour, What shall the quick commemorate, what deeds Ephemeral, what dazzling words that flare Like rockets from the mouth to burst in air?
Of hypochondriacs that gnawed their seasons In search of proofs, Lessius found twenty-two Fine arguments, Tolet gave sixty reasons Why souls survive. And what are they to you? And, father, what to me, who cannot blur The mirrored brain with fantasies of Er,
Remembering such factual spikes as pierce The supplicating palms, and by the sea Remembering the eyes, I hear the fierce Wild cry of Jesus on the holy tree, Yet have of you no syllable to keep, Only the deep rock crumbling in the deep.
Observe the wisdom of the Florentine Who, feeling death upon him, scribbled fast to make revision of a deathbed scene, Gloating that he was accurate at last. Let sons learn from their lipless fathers how Man enters hell without a golden bough. |
"The Portrait" My mother never forgave my father for killing himself, especially at such an awkward time and in a public park, that spring when I was waiting to be born. She locked his name in her deepest cabinet and would not let him out, though I could hear him thumping. When I came down from the attic with the pastel portrait in my hand of a long-lipped stranger with a brave moustache and deep brown level eyes, she ripped it into shreds without a single word and slapped me hard. In my sixty-fourth year I can feel my cheek still burning.
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