Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
~~ Dylan Thomas (1914-1954) from Collected Poems, 1952
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the European Union]
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time——
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,
The voices just can’t worm through.
If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
~~ Sylvia Plath (1932-1963}, 1962 from Ariel, and other poems, 1965 [Poem is in the public domain in Canada]
The many sow, but only the chosen reap;
Happy the wretched host if Day be brief,
That with the cool oblivion of sleep
A dawnless Night may soothe the smart of grief.
If from the soil our sweat enriches sprout
One meagre blossom for our hands to cull,
Accustomed indigence provokes a shout
Of praise that life becomes so bountiful.
Now ushered regally into your own,
Look where you will, as far as eye can see,
Your little seeds are to a fullness grown,
And golden fruit is ripe on every tree.
Yours is no fairy gift, no heritage
Without travail, to which weak wills aspire;
This is a merited and grief-earned wage
From One Who holds His servants worth their hire.
So has the shyest of your dreams come true,
Built not of sand, but of the solid rock,
Impregnable to all that may accrue
Of elemental rage: storm, stress, and shock.
~~ Countee Cullen (1903-1946) from Copper Sun, 1927
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream — and not make dreams your master; If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!
~~
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
from Rewards and Fairies, 1910
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]
A father sees a son nearing manhood.
What shall he tell that son?
'Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.'
And this might stand him for the storms
and serve him for humdrum and monotony
and guide him amid sudden betrayals
and tighten him for slack moments.
'Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy.'
And this too might serve him.
Brutes have been gentled where lashes failed.
The growth of a frail flower in a path up
has sometimes shattered and split a rock.
A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting.
Without rich wanting nothing arrives.
Tell him too much money has killed men
And left them dead years before burial:
The quest of lucre beyond a few easy needs
Has twisted good enough men
Sometimes into dry thwarted worms.
Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted.
Tell him to be a fool every so often
and to have no shame over having been a fool
yet learning something out of every folly
hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies
thus arriving at intimate understanding
of a world numbering many fools.
Tell him to be alone often and get at himself
and above all tell himself no lies about himself
whatever the white lies and protective fronts
he may use amongst other people.
Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is a born natural.
Then he may understand Shakespeare
and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
Michael Faraday and free imaginations
bringing changes into a world resenting change.
He will be lonely enough
to have time for the work
he knows as his own.
~~ Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) from The People, Yes, 1936 [Poem is in the public domain in Canada]
Spring, you are welcome, for you are the friend of
Fathers of all little girlies and chaps.
Spring, you are welcome, for you mean the end of
Bundling them up in their cold-weather wraps.
Breathes there a parent of masculine gender,
One whose young hopeful is seven or less,
Who never has cursed the designer and vender
Of juvenile-out-of-doors-winter-time dress?
Leggings and overcoat, rubbers that squeeze on,
Mittens and sweater a trifle too small;
Not in the lot is one thing you can ease on,
One that's affixed with no trouble at all.
Spring, you are welcome, thrice welcome to father;
Not for your flowers and birds, I'm afraid,
As much as your promised relief from the bother
Of bundling the kid for the daily parade.
~~ Ring Lardner (1885-1933) from Bib Ballads, 1915
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]
Only a dad, with a tired face,
Coming home from the daily race,
Bringing little of gold or fame,
To show how well he has played the game,
But glad in his heart that his own rejoice
To see him come, and to hear his voice.
Only a dad, with a brood of four,
One of ten million men or more.
Plodding along in the daily strife,
Bearing the whips and the scorns of life,
With never a whimper of pain or hate,
For the sake of those who at home await.
Only a dad, neither rich nor proud,
Merely one of the surging crowd
Toiling, striving from day to day,
Facing whatever may come his way,
Silent, whenever the harsh condemn,
And bearing it all for the love of them.
Only a dad, but he gives his all
To smooth the way for his children small,
Doing, with courage stern and grim,
The deeds that his father did for him.
This is the line that for him I pen,
Only a dad, but the best of men.
~~ Edgar Guest (1881-1959) from A Heap o' Livin', 1916
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
A boy and his dad on a fishing-trip —
There is a glorious fellowship!
Father and son and the open sky
And the white clouds lazily drifting by,
And the laughing stream as it runs along
With the clicking reel like a martial song,
And the father teaching the youngster gay
How to land a fish in the sportsman’s way.
I fancy I hear them talking there
In an open boat, and the speech is fair.
And the boy is learning the ways of men
From the finest man in his youthful ken.
Kings, to the youngster, cannot compare
With the gentle father who’s with him there.
And the greatest mind of the human race
Not for one minute could take his place.
Which is happier, man or boy?
The soul of the father is steeped in joy,
For he’s finding out, to his heart’s delight,
That his son is fit for the future fight.
He is learning the glorious depths of him,
And the thoughts he thinks and his every whim;
And he shall discover, when night comes on,
How close he has grown to his little son.
A boy and his dad on a fishing-trip —
Builders of life’s companionship!
Oh, I envy them, as I see them there
Under the sky in the open air,
For out of the old, old long-ago
Come the summer days that I used to know,
When I learned life’s truths from my father’s lips
As I shared the joy of his fishing-trips.
~~ Edgar Guest (1881-1959) from All That Matters, 1922
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
In the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
I went to show you how to make it stay,
If that was your idea, against the breeze,
And, if you asked me, even help pretend
To make it root again and grow afresh.
But ’twas no make-believe with you to-day,
Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover.
’Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasting flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their sight
And too much world at once — could means be found.
The way the nest-full every time we stirred
Stood up to us as to a mother-bird
Whose coming home has been too long deferred,
Made me ask would the mother-bird return
And care for them in such a change of scene
And might our meddling make her more afraid.
That was a thing we could not wait to learn.
We saw the risk we took in doing good,
But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it; so built the screen
You had begun, and gave them back their shade.
All this to prove we cared. Why is there then
No more to tell? We turned to other things.
I haven’t any memory — have you? —
Of ever coming to the place again
To see if the birds lived the first night through,
And so at last to learn to use their wings.
~~ Robert Frost (1874-1963) from Mountain Interval, 1920
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
He never made a fortune, or a noise
In the world where men are seeking after fame;
But he had a healthy brood of girls and boys
Who loved the very ground on which he trod.
They thought him just little short of God;
Oh you should have heard the way they said his name –
‘Father.’
There seemed to be a loving little prayer
In their voices, even when they called him ‘Dad.’
Though the man was never heard of anywhere,
As a hero, yet somehow understood
He was doing well his part and making good;
And you knew it, by the way his children had
Of saying ‘Father.’
He gave them neither eminence nor wealth,
But he gave them blood untainted with a vice,
And opulence of undiluted health.
He was honest, and unpurchable and kind;
He was clean in heart, and body, and in mind.
So he made them heirs to riches without price –
This father.
He never preached or scolded; and the rod –
Well, he used it as a turning pole in play.
But he showed the tender sympathy of God.
To his children in their troubles, and their joys.
He was always chum and comrade with his boys,
And his daughters – oh, you ought to hear them say
‘Father.’
Now I think of all achievements ‘tis the least
To perpetuate the species; it is done
By the insect and the serpent, and the beast.
But the man who keeps his body, and his thought,
Worth bestowing on an offspring love-begot,
Then the highest earthly glory he has won,
When in pride a grown-up daughter or a son
Says ‘That’s Father.’
~~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) fromPoems of Experiance, 1910
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]
The poet comes home
and his three-year-old son runs at him
with a monster-mask of his own construction.
The poet considers whether he should
congratulate his child or run like hell.
The poet walks into the kitchen
to witness his daughter fall from the high-chair
onto the wooden floor
and for the next hour there is no conversation.
The poet realises his mistake,
makes an excuse and leaves.
This mask the poet purchased earlier
appeared to contain a skull:
you put it inside your head and it made you.
The poet cries out aloud, it made you cry
something on the news.
The poet’s son leaps up, he wants
to cook everything, it should be
given as many seconds as can be numbered.
The poet thinks if we were actors
we might be really bad ones, yesterday
he fluffed so many lines he felt like
a thistle pouring whiteness across his family.
Somewhere she is in a poem
rubbing her eyes. It’s hardly even morning yet.
It will be hours before she starts looking for the poet.
The poet writes a poem in which the narrator
steps out and congresses with ropes of rainwater.
He claims he made a new sun yesterday
that casts no shadow. You can
swim in it and not burn. He calls it
language, and it has never set.
The first thing the poet forgets is his skin.
Softly but continuously language is describing
to the poet why it should go on, but the more
it talks the fewer words it has left.
The poet listens to the pages emptying
and is followed by a verb of motion.
His cat has been missing for several decades now.
The road he did not take negates the poem.
It is so bright and open,
an inviting street-lit yellow cupped forever
in the palm of his mind.
The poet laughs and cuddles in his sleep
a razor blade and a tin of flowers.
~~ Giles Goodland London, U.K.
From the website:
RECONFIGURATIONS: A Journal for Poetics & Poetry / Literature & Culture, ISSN: 1938-3592, Volume 1 (2007): Contingency https://reconfigurations.blogspot.com/
[Copyright: RECONFIGURATIONS publishes under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License - Some rights reserved]
tomorrow is another father's day
clouds rumble in the distance
a year ago we drove through torrents
as (my wife will attest) i verbally castrated
the deniers of global warming
we skid-visited a series of shuttered
restaurants and finally
fixed our meal, cave style, at home
two days later, it was discovered
600 people had died
a nearby mountainside had collapsed
it was a place we had visited
a few months earlier
where we talked with the artisans
and failed to notice
half of them wore
the colors of ghosts
in the fields overhead
were tiers of rice and tea
and girls so newly pregnant
they still did not know
which boy they'd marry
now under thirty meters of earth
a morbid anniversary
of unceremonious elopements
rushed by death
forgive the meaninglessness
of words
directing my prayer
candle
i'm standing over my father
in the hospital
he's stopped breathing
i'm holding his neck
and shoulder
and i've been rubbing them
because he always liked that
and it's the best i can do
while i'm waiting for him to die
waiting for his next breath
and it comes
and another
and then
i'm waiting for his next breath again
and i count
one thousand and one
one thousand and two
one thousand and three
like he taught me
standing in our garage
watching a thunderstorm
on the gulf coast of texas
sometime
when i was maybe six
he taught me to count
between the lightning flash and the thunder
taught me to figure out
how far away it was
~~ ray heinrich Texas, U.S.A.
[Some rights reserved under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivs-U.S. 3.0 (BY-NC-ND-3.0) License]
The piano player plays a French number
Right out of an old black and white French movie
The dancers of my daughter's junior ballet
Pirouette right on cue
While I sit, writing,
In a plastic chair against the wall.
The mothers in the lobby listen to the music,
Intently watching their daughters
Like a tabby watches a sparrow hop.
The teacher yells instruction to keep time.
When I look up, in contemplation,
Mothers smile at me,
I smile back at them.
I used to like this part of town,
Old Torrance.
Pawn shops, dingy hotel rooms, liquor stores,
Vacuum repair, Mexican restaurants,
Locksmiths, used record stores, dark bars.
The town is in its fourth or fifth reincarnation
Having died off many times before
Only to be brought back to life by
Shedding off the Pussycat Theater
And exchanging it with Senior Living Condos
As it waits on the next benevolence of death.
I used to sit in an Irish bar around the corner
For the hour and a half it took
While she danced,
Drinking Guinness with a fatherly devotion
Watching stupid soccer matches between countries
That got mowed down
75 years ago.
But I've stopped drinking for now
And so I wait and try to write
In the front lobby of the Ballet School
But now this room smells sour
Like milk gone bad or maybe it's sweat
Or maybe it's just me.
The accompanist plays another French number
The teacher blares out more instruction
As the music rises and falls.
Now it's my turn . . .
I start to write, furiously,
Trying to keep up to the music.
I try to write a barroom story
But it's hopeless
For there's no art in saloons
The barstool is not an easel
And there's no balance to the stagger of a drunk
No beauty to a woman's dumbstruck melancholic face
No interplay of light and shadows there
Nothing sublime
To the perfect pour of a bartender
Or the mad mad broken-up lovers
Who have just leapt gracefully
Over the edge of their despair and into the streets,
Back to the four walls of loneliness
They call home.
I look up from my pages
Just as my little swan
Leaps and turns,
Her face a rictus of concentration.
She practices at grace,
Practices at the defiance of gravity,
Practices at control and poise,
While I would no more practice at my failures
Than a snake would practice his slither.
And now the music fades on the old spinet piano
And my baby
With a flourish of arms
And the point of her leg
Finishes her dance.
I could write
For a thousand years
And never
Capture
In words
The balance of her beauty.
~~ Michael G. Munoz October 2010 California, U.S.A.
[All rights reserved by the author - Used with permission]
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