What My Father Believed

Man of his age, he believed in the things

built by men, the miracles of rockets and bombs,

of dams and foundries, the mind-killing

efficiency of assembly lines. And now the boredom

and blankness with which these students respond

to the tale of my father’s loss of faith sadden me,

as times before I have saddened myself. Around

the middle of his life, I baited him wildly,

hung in my room the poster of Malcolm X,

whose lips were stilled around a word

that might have been freedom, or fight, or fuck.

I remember the first time I heard

my father say it. We had argued and I thought

I’d won. It was the same awful subject,

the war. I see now it was never how he had fought,

but his countrymen. He said we should never expect

to love war, but to know sometimes there was no way

around it, and I laughed and said ‘Just stop.’

In his eyes I saw what he couldn’t say,

though right as I was, I could not

have predicted what he muttered. The rage that made

him flush and stutter and sweat was gone,

and only a fool of twenty couldn’t see the blade

of pain he suffered, and suffered all along.

What should I say to him today, when the truth

I was so eager to embrace is constantly told,

when the plainness of it rankles like a bad tooth

in our mouths and the students scold

us both and naïve and thoughtless. What of Custer?

they ask. What of racism? slavery? the inexorable theft

of ever acre of native land? And I can muster

no answer they’ll accept, but am left