Sunday, May 20, 2018

Kit Kelen #870 - first draft notes for my father's language


870
first draft notes
for my father's language


he shelved it
kept a small red box
Mother of God was in there
is with me now

and then words come back
first shoots a sun brights
even though winter
and we can't know what tree

are all asides he threw
land lost
tribe gone under

how many generations ago?
those ones wished themselves away
and others wished still harder
are wishing to this day

I have the books
no embassy would want them

to me each word's a magic spell

megalapodos
alabacaflika

he gave back a sword from the war
to the war
some jungle took its trophy

I kept the bottle though

my father's language ran through his whole frame
with vengeance, like a will to live
he gave that all away

he was in deep for all the fled
the dead look after each other
dad said Jesus said

makes me custodian of something gone

those words were a journey
all the monument there can be to the lost

the known unknown
a sort of soil
we nothing ever grew

my father's words his mother's once
I never met them there

nonsense I suppose, to begin
they broke out in a fever

ornate and intricate of heart
his eyes are in it and his laugh

and gone somewhere
all of these long since

a chimney sent such words to the sky
will we be well received then?

my father's tongue was trouble
ages in the spite of time

ghost wordless in the dream
advice always in a language spoken

and often see the ache in him

here I am far from his war
from his flight
and look about
sunshone, green with thinking only ever up
with wings and singing come to light

what if he'd died for it, I'd never been?
and what if, for dad, it had been this?
and you know it is too

it's like this with mine one day
someone will guess at the page
draw a blank
to wonder what creature they are
or may be

1 comment:

  1. My father's birthday today. I also miss him.
    Your poem speaks to that.

    ReplyDelete

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