My dad a runner when I was 9 not easy!!
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Max Richards
Sent: 19 October 2010 23:49
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: snap: sparing the rod
Sparing the Rod
O the old Aussie husband and father
brought up in the good old ways
was a gentleman to be respected
on the street, at work, at pub,
church, sport, racecourse, club,
among Masons maybe.
At home often he was otherwise,
part also of the old ways -
a man to be feared
at home, with family,
master of property, money,
women and children.
'Street angel, home devil' -
that's the phrase they had,
those women, for such men.
So they went to their graves,
many of them, publicly grieved,
privately dreaded still.
And their sons knowing how
arriving home grim
Dad had punished them
'to make them men', half-knew
their turn for fathering
would come with their strengthening
right hand itching to pass it on
or maybe flinching, unmanly
tears might come,
some other way of being a man.
Not just in Australia, you say?*
and not just in the past?
maybe down to the present day.
* 'One of my early cinema-going memories is of Trevor Howard playing Mr
Morel in 'Sons and Lovers' [1960]. Two minutes into his first scene, a
squeal of delight and dismay came from a girl just behind me. "Eee! He's
just like me dad!"'- John Needham, 'The Departure Lounge' (Carcanet 1999),
p.142
Also Mario Vargas Llosa, 'Fish in the Water', early chapters on his violent
dad.
Max Richards
(my NZ dad was remote but gentle, my fathering a little better, I think)
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