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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO MY MOTHER by AUSTIN PHILIPS

First Line: MOTHER, WHO, MONTHS BEFORE MY BIRTH
Last Line: IN LIFE, THOSE FIRST FEW, FAIR YEARS ... YOUR SON FORGIVES THE REST!
Subject(s): FORGIVENESS; MOTHERS & SONS; CLEMENCY;
MOTHER, who, months before my birth,
Played me Beethoven and Mozart,
And so, e'er I set foot on Earth,
Artless, affianced me to Art:
Mother, whose youth
And tender ruth
Were of such beauty that he knew the best
In life, those first few, fair years ... your son forgives the rest.

Forgives. But not forgets. How can
One, who in childhood loved you so,
Put out of mind such treachery? Man
Is not compact of ice and snow!
Still with me stay
The will, the way
With which, self-mutilant, you abandoned me,
Obedient to my father's frantic jealousy.

With which—self-suspect and afraid
Lest, for one second, you should seem
Unfaithful and a renegade
'Gainst marriage-vows—you sought extreme
Lengths, in your haste
To prove you chaste
In mind and soul and, for the future, free
From any taint of spiritual adultery.

Yes, it was then that—cramped, enslaved,
Crushed and inhibited by him,
Who dominated, ramped and raved—
You, in your turn, grew harsh and grim,
And, masochist,
Took hateful twist,
And, yourself hurt, sweet sadist, came to see
A half escape from Hell in hurting @3me.@1

Thus, when the little boy of four
Was falsely charged with touching fire,
You, punitive, prepared to pour
The water, boiling, bubbling, dire,
Within a bowl,
And thus took toll,
And held his tiny fingers fast therein
Till blisters, like balloons, burst upwards from the skin.

Habit is ten times Nature, too!
The more he crushed, the more you sought
Revenge on me. Your troubles grew
In number. Years, impartial, brought
Into the home
Those woes which come
From stipend all too narrow for its need,
And quiver over-filled through feckless want of heed.

So fell it that to set aside
And make a scapegoat of your son,
Softened your suffering, saved your pride,
Helped you to keep communion
With your harsh lord,
Whose lightest word,
Least thought, and most intensive tyranny,
Found you, all times, his slave ... from misplaced loyalty.

Nor scholarship, nor hard-won prize,
Nor prowess in the way of game,
Could win me merit in your eyes ...
So that an outcast I became:
On Summer's day
It was your way
To lock me in my room from morning hour
Till night; when your lord returned ... to flog with frenzied pow'r.

Brother and sisters saw, of course,
(Who blames them wrongs them cruelly!)
The first-born as the stalking-horse
For every rub their family
Encountered, and,
United Band,
Exclaimed with faith and fervour: "All our woes
Will end, and Eden bloom, when once our brother goes?"

I went. @3Did@1 Eden bloom? Or were
Things, in substantial way, the same?
I learned, long after, that Black Care
Lingered, when he who had the blame
Had long since left,
And worked—bereft
Of Friendship, Kindness, Culture, Sun and Light—
At sorting letters all the unhappy, live-long night.

For in a household wherein one
Is neurasthenic—and where, too,
@3That@1 one is master, likewise—none
Escapes; since each must undergo,
Without surcease,
The same disease ...
Strangers to any inward peace, at best,
Their heritage is Fear, Excitement and Unrest.

Mother, I leave those twenty years,
Or so, which passed before I found
My real self, through blood and tears
And battle, whose results astound
Me and my friends—
For, till life ends,
I shall not cease to mark and marvel how,
Stunted in youth, I have come to stand straight and upright now.

Mother, I will not seek to say,
In detail, how, two decades through,
You failed me, and in every way—
In kindness, counsel, love—how you
Showed but reproof
In my behoof,
And, in all matters, great and small, endlong,
Held others @3must@1 be right, your son be always wrong.

Nor how, those years I lived alone,
Broken on war-work, like to die,
Watching my markets, hardly-won,
Peel from me ruthlessly; while I,
In poverty,
Held colloquy
With Plato, Christ, A-Kempis and the great,
The Universal Minds ... you left me to my fate.

But this I tell. When a true friend
Helped me to leave my hovel, at last,
When I found fortune once more mend,
I had the long-hoped-for chance to send
A book to you.
This was @3Who's Who,@1
Which held your despised son's name. What irony!
You wrote and said: "How useful such a work will be!"

As the French say: "The Dead command!"
Because of him you dared not praise:
Your tyrant's all-prevailing hand,
Coffin'd and cold, still ruled your ways.
His jealousy,
Transcendently,
Bade you regard your son's hard-won success
As something which insulted, made his father less.

But, though I saw you only once
In those last twenty years you lived,
That once was ample to announce
How, at my sight, there leaped, revived—
Swiftly self-crushed,
And harshly hushed,
As shameful spiritual adultery—
Your old, your initial, deep maternal love for me.

Others were with you. Hostile, they—
The Serfs, themselves, of that dead hand—
So was it that I went away,
Obedient to my soul's command
Not to compete.
Only defeat,
Bleeding of pow'r, lost force is theirs who seek,
Against such impossible odds, to make strong the perverse and weak.

But love was there. And pride. Not vain
My uphill fight, my anguished hour,
My solitude, my broken chain,
My storm, my stress, the dark, the dour
Determined way
I had trod each day
For decades, pressing on perpetually,
To prove your so-slandered son as good a man as he.

Mother, if all things work for good,
As some aver, in final end,
Perhaps your treatment of me stood
My best inspirer, my first friend:
Surely I drew
From seeing you
Fine, and yet foolish, in your loyalty,
An unforgettable lesson in fidelity?

So, then, although you, lifelong, failed
Me, save in childhood, at the first,
What you denied me has prevailed,
Has triumphed and withstood the worst ...
So, then, (although
I once cried to you—
As Christ, Himself, exclaimed indignantly
At Cana—@3"Woman, what have I to do with thee?"@1),

Mother, who, months before my birth,
Played me Beethoven and Mozart,
And thus, e'er I set foot on Earth,
Artless, affianced me to Art:
Mother, whose youth
And tender ruth
Were of such beauty that he knew the best
In life, those first few, fair years ... your son forgives the rest!



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