Let me consider your emergence
From the milieu of our youth:
We have played all the afternoon, grown hungry.
No meal has been prepared, where have you been?
Toward sun's decline we see you down the path,
And run to meet you, and perhaps you smile,
Or take us in your arms. Perhaps again
You look at us, say nothing, are absorbed,
Or chide us for our dirty frocks or faces.
Of running wild without our meals
You do not speak.
Then in the house, seized with a sudden joy,
After removing gloves and hat, you run,
As with a winged descending flight, and cry,
Half song, half exclamation,
Seize one of us,
Crush one of us with mad embraces, bite
Ears of us in a rapture of affection.
"You shall have supper," then you say.
The stove lids rattle, wood's poked in the fire,
The kettle steams, pots boil, by seven o'clock
We sit down to a meal of hodge-podge stuff.
I understand now how your youth and spirits
Fought back the drabness of the village,
And wonder not you spent the afternoons
With such bright company as Eugenia Turner -
And I forgive you hunger, loneliness.
But when we asked you where you'd been,
Complained of loneliness and hunger, spoke of children
Who lived in order, sat down thrice a day
To cream and porridge, bread and meat.
We think to corner you - alas for us!
Your anger flashes swords! Reasons pour out
Like anvil sparks to justify your way:
"Your father's always gone - you selfish children,
You'd have me in the house from morn till night."
You put us in the wrong - our cause is routed.
We turn to bed unsatisfied in mind,
You've overwhelmed us, not convinced us.
Our sense of wrong defeat breeds resolution
To whip you out when minds grow strong.
Up in the moon-lit room without a light,
(The lamps have not been filled,)
We crawl in unmade beds.
We leave you pouring over paper backs.
We peek above your shoulder.
It is "The Lady in White" you read.
Next morning you are dead for sleep,
You've sat up more than half the night.
We have been playing hours when you arise,
It's nine o'clock when breakfast's served at last,
When school days come I'm always late to school.
Shy, hungry children scuffle at your door,
Eye through the crack, maybe, at nine o'clock,
Find father has returned during the night.
You are all happiness, his idlest word
Provokes your laughter.
He shows us rolls of precious money earned;
He's given you a silk dress, money too
For suits and shoes for us - all is forgiven.
You run about the house,
As with a winged descending flight and cry
Half song, half exclamation.
We're sick so much. But then no human soul
Could be more sweet when one of us is sick.
We run to colds, have measles, mumps, our throats
Are weak, the doctor says. If rooms were warmer,
And clothes were warmer, food more regular,
And sleep more regular, it might be different.
Then there's the well. You fear the water.
He laughs at you, we children drink the water,
Though it tastes bitter, shows white particles:
It may be shreds of rats drowned in the well.
The village has no drainage, blights and mildews
Get in our throats. I spend a certain spring
Bent over, yellow, coughing blood at times,
Sick to somnambulistic sense of things.
You blame him for the well, that's just one thing.
You seem to differ about everything -
You seem to hate each other - when you quarrel
We cry, take sides, sometimes are whipped
For taking sides.
Our broken school days lose us clues,
Some lesson has been missed, the final meaning
And wholeness of the grammar are disturbed -
That shall not be made up in all our life.
The children, save a few, are not our friends,
Some taunt us with your quarrels.
We learn great secrets scrawled in signs or words
Of foulness on the fences. So it is
An American village, in a great Republic,
Where men are free, where therefore goodness, wisdom
Must have their way!
We reach the budding age.
Sweet aches are in our breasts:
Is it spring, or God, or music, is it you?
I am all tenderness for you at times,
Then hate myself for feeling so, my flesh
Crawls by an instinct from you. You repel me
Sometimes with an insidious smile, a look.
What are these phantasies I have? They breed
Strange hatred for you, even while I feel
My soul's home is with you, must be with you
To find my soul's rest. ...
I must go back a little. At ten years
I play with Paula.
I plait her crowns of flowers, carry her books,
Defend her, watch her, choose her in the games.
You overhear us under the oak tree
Calling her doll our child. You catch my coat
And draw me in the house.
When I resist you whip me cruelly.
To think of whipping me at such time,
And mix the shame of smarting legs and back
With love of Paula!
So I lose Paula.
I am a man at last.
I now can master what you are and see
What you have been. You cannot rout me now,
Or put me in the wrong. Out of old wounds,
Remembrance of your baffling days,
I take great strength and show you
Where you have been untruthful, where a hater,
Where narrow, bitter, growing in on self,
Where you neglected us,
Where you heaped fast destruction on our father -
For now I know that you devoured his soul,
And that no soul that you could not devour
Could have its peace with you.
You've dwindled to a quiet word like this:
"You are unfilial." Which means at last
That I have conquered you, at least it means
That you could not devour me.
Yet am I blind to you? Let me confess
You are the world's whole cycle in yourself:
You can be summer rich and luminous;
You can be autumn, mellow, mystical;
You can be winter with a cheerful hearth;
You can be March, bitter, bright and hard,
Pouring sharp sleet, and showering cutting hail;
You can be April of the flying cloud,
And intermittent sun and musical air.
I am not you while being you,
While finding in myself so much of you.
It tears my other self, which is not you.
My tragedy is this: I do not love you.
Your tragedy is this: my other self
Which triumphs over you, you hate at heart.
Your solace is you have no faith in me.
All quiet now, no March days with you now,
Only the soft coals slumbering in your face,
I saw you totter over a ravine!
Your eyes averted, watching steps,
A light of resignation on your brow.
Your thin-spun hair all gray, blown by the wind
Which swayed the blossomed cherry trees,
Bent last year's reeds,
Shook early dandelions, and tossed a bird
That left a branch with song -
I saw you totter over a ravine!
What were you at the start?
What soul dissatisfaction, sense of wrong,
Of being thwarted, stung you?
What was your shrinking of the flesh;
What fear of being soiled, misunderstood,
What wrath for loneliness which constant hope
Saw turned to fine companionship;
What in your marriage, what in seeing me,
The fruit of marriage, recreated traits
Of face or spirit which you loathed;
What in your father and your mother,
And in the chromosomes from which you grew,
By what mitosis could result at last
In you, in issues of such moment,
In our dissevered beings,
In what the world will take from me
In children, in events?
All quiet now, no March days with you now,
Only the soft coals slumbering in your face,
I saw you totter over a ravine,
And back of you the Furies!