Toward the Gulf | Page 9

afternoon, grown hungry.?No meal has been prepared, where have you been??Toward sun's decline we see you down the path,?And run to meet you, and perhaps you smile,?Or take us in your arms. Perhaps again?You look at us, say nothing, are absorbed,?Or chide us for our dirty frocks or faces.?Of running wild without our meals?You do not speak.
Then in the house, seized with a sudden joy,?After removing gloves and hat, you run,?As with a winged descending flight, and cry,?Half song, half exclamation,?Seize one of us,?Crush one of us with mad embraces, bite?Ears of us in a rapture of affection.?"You shall have supper," then you say.?The stove lids rattle, wood's poked in the fire,?The kettle steams, pots boil, by seven o'clock?We sit down to a meal of hodge-podge stuff.?I understand now how your youth and spirits?Fought back the drabness of the village,?And wonder not you spent the afternoons?With such bright company as Eugenia Turner--?And I forgive you hunger, loneliness.
But when we asked you where you'd been,?Complained of loneliness and hunger, spoke of children?Who lived in order, sat down thrice a day?To cream and porridge, bread and meat.?We think to corner you--alas for us!?Your anger flashes swords! Reasons pour out?Like anvil sparks to justify your way:?"Your father's always gone--you selfish children,?You'd have me in the house from morn till night."?You put us in the wrong--our cause is routed.?We turn to bed unsatisfied in mind,?You've overwhelmed us, not convinced us.?Our sense of wrong defeat breeds resolution?To whip you out when minds grow strong.
Up in the moon-lit room without a light,?(The lamps have not been filled,)?We crawl in unmade beds.?We leave you pouring over paper backs.?We peek above your shoulder.?It is "The Lady in White" you read.?Next morning you are dead for sleep,?You've sat up more than half the night.?We have been playing hours when you arise,?It's nine o'clock when breakfast's served at last,?When school days come I'm always late to school.
Shy, hungry children scuffle at your door,?Eye through the crack, maybe, at nine o'clock,?Find father has returned during the night.?You are all happiness, his idlest word?Provokes your laughter.?He shows us rolls of precious money earned;?He's given you a silk dress, money too?For suits and shoes for us--all is forgiven.?You run about the house,?As with a winged descending flight and cry?Half song, half exclamation.
We're sick so much. But then no human soul?Could be more sweet when one of us is sick.?We run to colds, have measles, mumps, our throats?Are weak, the doctor says. If rooms were warmer,?And clothes were warmer, food more regular,?And sleep more regular, it might be different.?Then there's the well. You fear the water.?He laughs at you, we children drink the water,?Though it tastes bitter, shows white particles:?It may be shreds of rats drowned in the well.?The village has no drainage, blights and mildews?Get in our throats. I spend a certain spring?Bent over, yellow, coughing blood at times,?Sick to somnambulistic sense of things.?You blame him for the well, that's just one thing.?You seem to differ about everything--?You seem to hate each other--when you quarrel?We cry, take sides, sometimes are whipped?For taking sides.
Our broken school days lose us clues,?Some lesson has been missed, the final meaning?And wholeness of the grammar are disturbed--?That shall not be made up in all our life.?The children, save a few, are not our friends,?Some taunt us with your quarrels.?We learn great secrets scrawled in signs or words?Of foulness on the fences. So it is?An American village, in a great Republic,?Where men are free, where therefore goodness, wisdom?Must have their way!
We reach the budding age.?Sweet aches are in our breasts:?Is it spring, or God, or music, is it you??I am all tenderness for you at times,?Then hate myself for feeling so, my flesh?Crawls by an instinct from you. You repel me?Sometimes with an insidious smile, a look.?What are these phantasies I have? They breed?Strange hatred for you, even while I feel?My soul's home is with you, must be with you?To find my soul's rest. ...
I must go back a little. At ten years?I play with Paula.?I plait her crowns of flowers, carry her books,?Defend her, watch her, choose her in the games.?You overhear us under the oak tree?Calling her doll our child. You catch my coat?And draw me in the house.?When I resist you whip me cruelly.?To think of whipping me at such time,?And mix the shame of smarting legs and back?With love of Paula!?So I lose Paula.
I am a man at last.?I now can master what you are and see?What you have been. You cannot rout me now,?Or put me in the wrong. Out of old wounds,?Remembrance of your baffling days,?I take great strength and show you?Where you have been untruthful, where a hater,?Where narrow, bitter, growing in on self,?Where you neglected us,?Where you heaped fast destruction on our father--?For now I know that you devoured his soul,?And