Love Poetry

[nhboy]

Love Poetry: John Clarke: For a Father

With the exact length and pace of his father’s stride
The son walks,
Echoes and intonations of his father’s speech
Are heard when he talks.

Once when the table was tall and the chair a wood
He absorbed his father’s smile
And carefully copied the way that he stood.

He grew into exile slowly
With pride and remorse,
In some way better than his begetters,
In others worse.

And now having chosen, with strangers,
Half glad of his choice
He smiles with his father’s hesitant smile
And speaks with his voice.

Listen here.

 

[Railroad]

For my Dad - by Railroad, 10/19/13

I thought the world of my dear Dad
When he was happy, I was glad
When he was angry, I was sad
But the way he beat me made me mad

And as the years went slipping by
The giant shrank before my eyes
Too sad to smile, too mad to cry
It was none too soon we said goodbye

And everything that was of him
I tried to hide, I tried to dim
A million layers still too thin
I ran from rightness, clung to sin

And when he died and left me naught
I was angry still at every thought
Of what his angered blows had brought
A heart of ice and fury hot

This is the legacy that he left
His children broken, lost, bereft
Of joy which other parents left
While we were hidden in the cleft

And so I speak and walk alone
In words and steps learned on my own
The crimes for which he won't atone
Are seeds of weeds which he has sown