A blinding revelation of thought

Struck me,

Almost like one not accustomed to thinking;

For at infrequent times

Our understandings are opened wide:

 

—I am not myself.

 

Over the years I have striven

To make a personality I could call Me.

I've developed certain qualities,

Certain traits,

Created a character;

And then, to lend a stamp of distinctiveness,

I've added a few idiosyncrasies.

 

For twenty-two years I have thus worked,

Only to find today,

That what I've done has been done before.

But the discovery is a glad one

And only heightens the sense of accomplishment;

Because what I am

Is what my father was before me.

 

People have asked

Why I don't wear a wristwatch:

I've answered,

With a secret satisfaction at being different,

That they bother me.

I see now it was because Dad

Said the same thing before me,

And never wore one

Until his children gave him one

As a gift.

 

I would rather stand

At the outside of a crowd

Than to be the center of it;

—A character trait of my own?

No, but that of my father before me.

 

 

 

I stay home

In preference to going abroad.

Is it not strange

To learn that my father

Must likewise be dragged from his castle?

 

I love the quiet life of the farm,

And truth,

And children,

And treating my neighbors well;

I abhor thinking of clothes;

I like to sit and think;

I dislike doctors and pills;

—All because of my father before me.

 

Is he a dictator

To have made my life

So much his own?

Oh, no!

For I followed him willingly,

If not unconsciously;

And how grateful I am

That his path

Was a good one to follow,

For I would likely

Have followed him regardless—

Such is the burden of fathers.

 

And now I know

I even chose the girl I did

Because of the one my father chose

 

Before me.

 

 

1 August 1969