Collected Poems of John Holmes
Holmes, John A., Jr.
2002
To my mother
To my mother
I What roofs and trees of rain tonight Between my house and yours, Of rain and wind, of dark and rain, Of distance, and of worse; | |
Silences in your life and mine, Weather-stains on the walls, Voices we heard and hear no more In the high-ceilinged halls. | |
I've heard some here tonight, Homely and far beyond repair And more than ever lost In this rain-broken air. | |
Here night on a Vermont farm Like the years, the years That gather, fade, and form; There time with you wears. | |
Your cousins and my uncles dead Who never would be old, Those clock-collecting picnickers, And tales told I was told | |
Of carriages to the Navy Yard, Beef and business done, Of sun that made photographs Faded and the faces gone. | |
Uncle Harry and Aunt Mary. The heavy August grapes. That arbor and those vines down, And those hopes. | |
II Then of our age and need no more, But Europe, rain of the world Three thousand miles from here On the spared despoiled, | |
Homeless in time, heart, place, Thinking how to be dead, And always behind their open eyes All they inherited. | |
And the rain fell. My heart shook Like a window in the night, So thin against such dark 1 thought I must put out the light, | |
Put the light out and run away Up the steep stairs to bed, Up miles and miles of past and dark, And bury my head, | |
Hurry the world to bed, to sleep, And sleep the night away, As if to keep, as if I could, Night from being day, | |
Or the day from being bitterly so, Or world under the sun From turning over, turning over, As it has always done. | |
I stood stormed in a dark room, Could not what I must do, Or said in wind and dark I could not, And thought of you. | |
III In pain, your courage cried of pain, With courage yet to spare. So much of both, more than enough For hurt anywhere. | |
On a night like this, when thunder Cracked my childhood sky, I sobbed for the roof, the world. It stood. I did not die. | |
Nor you. You called it the last storm. It would break winter's back. And morning came, and sun, and spring To confound the almanac. | |
IV I remember a picture of you young, In brown furs, not tall, among People I knew when they were old. I thought you always young. | |
Time's mirror in my dark room Gives me back with love The same face from your shadow now That your morning gave. | |
Behind you wander leaves, And fields of sun, my father there, And all the years before I was, Of that old-century air, | |
He young in the high world And all your summers green, You small and smooth and secret Of something seen. | |
V When I married, I caught up On the history of the heart. I stepped into your generation, That welcoming fort, | |
That house you kept house in While I was a child. Now I am in my open door Standing, and growing old. | |
Fond, and kind, and faithful By a habit of the heart, You keep with your own quiet The world from falling apart. | |
But the world runs down, dust Falls, the young become the old. You learned that long ago, And hold all you have held. | |
I am my father, and have a son. Our voices sound the same. Troubles we may not have alone Are spelled in our name. | |
Your face was bone and width your own, But half of yours is mine To stare with at a world not wrong, Not right, hut by design | |
A clearing, a clouding tree of stars That put down roots and grew. I live under its shine and shade, And can what I must do. | |