"You wouldn't want too reserved a speaker,
that's a cold way to live.
But where I come from, withdrawal is easy to forgive.
When mother was a girl, trouble shattered that country,
the barren lands.
Mother ran to school winter mornings,
with hot potatoes in her hands.
She was like this, foreign, a stranger.
She couldn't hear very well, the world was all far.
Were the others laughing?
She never could tell.
Later, though she was frightened,
she loved like everyone.
A lean man, cruel, took her.
I am his son.
He was called Hawk by the town people,
but was an ordinary man.
He lived by hunting and trapping,
wherever the old slough ran.
Our house was always quiet.
Summers, the windmill creaked, or a board.
I carried wood, never touching anyone.
Winters, the black stove roared.
Forgive me these shadows I cling to good people,
trying to hold quiet in my prologue.
Hawks cling the barons wherever I live.
The world says, dog eat dog."
What I'd like to do is to depend on the poems that are already
written.
That's the reason I just started in by reading one.
And I realized when I came to the end of this,
that I wasn't going to be able to say the last line right,
because I've been instructed by my children
about pronunciation.
And sometimes they say, daddy, say geography.
Or daddy, say dog and then they laugh.