My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.
In the span of one hundred words Kunitz manages to take the reader through an entire lifetime of a child without a father: more specifically with the sentence “She locked his name / in her deepest cabinet / and would not let him out, / though I could hear him thumping.” The reader gets an image of Kunitz as a young boy, never having known the man that was his father, with a mother that refused to talk about him. The line “though I could hear him thumping.” gives a note of finality on the subject; although his mother wanted nothing more than to bury the memory of his father, Kunitz could not. Like an itch that would not go away and that he could not scratch without her help, he could get no instantaneous relief from forgetting the word; father.
In the next sentence “When I came down from the attic / with the pastel portrait in my hand / of a long-lipped stranger / with a brave moustache / and deep brown level eyes, / she ripped it into shreds / without a single word / and slapped me hard.” Kunitz uses generic descriptive words in an excellent way, I believe to showcase that though they were features one could find on any man on the street, they were all he had left of his father, and his mother slapped him for finding it. The harshness of his mother’s slap, and his vivid recalling of the incident in the line “In my sixty fourth year / I can feel my cheek / still burning.” allows the reader to come full circle with the knowledge that he is, in a sense, still the same young boy without a father; the issue is still unresolved. The writing is subtle in that it does not dramatize the situation- it is merely stating the facts of this man’s life.