For you are like their parent
who is never pleased
and they are like your parent
who cannot stay angry
For you are like a child
For age after age
they conceive you
and despite the pain of birth
they bring you forth
For they call you perfect
though your hands are missing
and though your heart does not beat
they give you a name
For they remember you
For they hold you blameless
in their sorrow
though they were surely happiest
before you arrived
For your identical twin
they name Silence
and when they feed Silence
he grows
For they love Silence
as they would have loved you
even more perhaps
as old age comes
and they forget
the sound of your cry
and where the exact spot was
they spread your ashes
and how those ashes
tasted
when the wind blew them
into their mouths
Father in their dreams
they worry still
perhaps it is you
who lives among them
and not Silence
after all
mistakes happen
after all
how would anyone know
and the midwives
forgive them
forgive them
were only human
Source: Poetry (July/August 2008).
MORE FROM THIS ISSUE
This poem originally appeared in the July/August 2008 issue of Poetry magazine
Poet, editor and teacher Philip Memmer is the author of four books of poems: The Storehouses of the Snow: Psalms, Parables and Dreams (2012); Lucifer: A Hagiography (2009), which was awarded the 2008 Idaho Prize for Poetry from Lost Horse Press; Threat of Pleasure (2008), winner of the Adirondack Literary Award for Poetry; and Sweetheart, Baby, Darling (2004).
Memmer’s work is centered in an agnostic search for meaning, and . . .
Continue reading this biography
