The Daughter
I wish I had another chance
with my father, had played
a different role
in the drama of my childhood.
Questions unanswered haunt,
but questions never asked fester.
His city unreels in grainy black and white:
clop of a milkman’s horse,
that tenement reek, hunger.
What was it like for him, a child, swimming
in a strange new language, trying not to drown?
Did that produce his silences,
his angers? But what produced my tears
behind closed doors, my rudeness,
my refusals? I lived a simpler life,
though life to me seemed dull, not simple.
Old sorrows play out
in waking or sleeping dreams.
Hamlet had his ghost. I only have
a silent grave, too far away to visit.
6AM
The moon is still there–
flat, round disk
in the pale sky,
mere ghost of itself
as workmen climb
out of the dark
subway, step
by step, blind
to the ghosts
of workmen past
in their blue coveralls,
their cloth caps. Now
the sun climbs
into its own tasks
of light,
though the moon
is still there, no brighter
than a shadow.
Like my own ghosts
who shine
in my dreams all night
and stay with me
all day, even
in their absence.
