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Dad
Dad - Elaine Feinstein
After my mother died when my father came to live with my family - three sons, my husband - it suddenly became apparent how little we still had in common. I didn't behave very well. After he died I was desolate. And this is a poem written, I suppose, about a year after his death.
Dad
Your old hat hurts me, and those black
fat raisins you liked to press into
my palm from your soft heavy hand:
I see you staggering back up the path
with sacks of potatoes from some local farm,
fresh eggs, flowers. Every day I grieve
for your great heart broken and you gone.
You loved to watch the trees. This year
you did not see their Spring.
The sky was freezing over the fen
as on that somewhere secretly appointed day
you beached: cold, white-faced, shivering.
What happened, old bull, my loyal
hoarse-voiced warrior? The hammer
blow that stopped you in your track
and brought you to a hospital monitor
could not destroy your courage
to the end you were
uncowed and unconcerned with pleasing anyone.
I think of you now as once again safely
at my mother’s side, the earth as
chosen as a bed, and feel most sorrow for
all that was gentle in
my childhood buried there
already forfeit, now forever lost.
from Collected Poems and Translations (Carcanet, 2002), copyright © Elaine Feinstein 2002, used by permission of the author and the publisher.