ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Sequence Between Father and Son
by Craig Morgan Teicher

“…but it is the world,
father, that I do not understand.”
-W.S. Merwin

1

And you were the one to explain it.
If only
      you had so much as put forward

a theory, even something as unsupportable
as this:
      It is the place

where everything happens, where rock
turns to water but ends as rock,

where everything happens again.

—Everything happened again and again,
and again you said
            nothing about it.

2

If time is space
and home is where your heart

is hung, then you live
            with your family
forever in a little house

as far from freedom as from
the sun,
      and a son

is the lens
      through which fathers see
the sons of their sons

when they look for themselves,
—in which sons seek themselves and find

their fathers’ fathers. And a son
can only judge his worth

by what he lets pass through him.
Generations
      have been saved

or damned by a smudge.

3

As hard as it has been for you,
you never warned me

it would be hard,
        never said
it’s organized in one way and disorganized

in another. Whatever it gives
it takes away, but whatever it takes

it gives away too.
        Should I tell my son
these things are and aren’t true?

4

Or maybe you did say something
and I forgot
      or thought you were talking

about something else, and maybe
you were and thought you were saying

what I had to hear. And maybe
I couldn’t help

but ignore it
      as it passed through me
and on to my son.

Perhaps all I have
is your father’s wisdom, which

was passed to me through you. Was he wise?
Would you know? Not if
        my theory is true.

But who can say?
      A father separates everyone.
Who can tell me what to tell my son?