Homage to My Father

Homage to my father
Originally uploaded by Lynn Park

Daddy would have been ninety-nine today. He died in 1978, almost half my life ago. He is still my shining star and my bete noire, “a man of such grace and gift as to beggar the telling of it.”

He was capable of great tenderness and fearsome rage. My last words to him, before he was killed, were “Go to hell.” Six months after his murder I revisited a former psychiatrist, to tell the story of my grief one more time.

“There’s something wrong here,” he said. “For this much time having passed, your grief is too raw, too extreme. I think you’re trying to separate the Good Daddy and the Bad Daddy. I promise you that if you let them come together, you’ll wind up with more of the Good Daddy.”

Dr. Mathews was right, more right than I knew then. I still adore my Daddy—and I haven’t been free not to tell the good stories, not to sing the songs of praise. Finally there’s room for in my heart for the darker songs too. Happy Birthday, Daddy. It’s all right.

TWELFTH POEM AFTER RUMI

Bury the Old King. Let his bones
give to the land what he could not,
what he would not
in his hatred and his fear
of the gentle blooming life
that would not obey his will,
that was unable of itself not to grow.

For this he cursed the land
and for this we bury his bones
as the only mercy we can ask for him,
as the only mercy he can at last give.

Note: The photograph "Homage to my father" can be found in my photostream at Flickr.com.