—
In his late teens, my father ran away from home, lying about his age in order to enlist in the South African military during World War II. Photos of the time show him dressed in green-grey khakis, sporting thick, dark curls, a walrus mustache, and smoking a pipe. After being wounded by a piece of shrapnel lodged in one buttock, he spent his recovery in war-torn Italy, where he began to write poems about life, love and war in a little leather-bound notebook.
At the end of the war, my father returned to South Africa to complete medical school in South Africa, where he specialized in psychiatry and began a practice.
We immigrated to the United States in 1962 when I was 14. My father retired 50 years later as Chairman of Psychiatry at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. A distinguished psychiatrist, he authored and co-authored dozens of scholarly articles and books; swam his half mile at the YMCA each evening; and spent weekends working at his desk. During those years, he never read—let alone wrote—a single poem.
When he retired from medicine in his seventies, he considered taking up a musical instrument, but it seemed to him a silly endeavor to start playing scales on a piano at a time when memory and dexterity begin to fade.
He decided to try his hand once again at writing poetry and joined a class at Harvard, where he wrote about the experiences of being a white man, a Jew and a physician in South Africa during apartheid. His poems, written with the wisdom of time and experience, were filled with regret, shame and guilt about having been born in a place where apartheid turned its citizens into oppressed and oppressors.
One evening, his poetry teacher was present when I reminded him of the leather-bound notebooks filled with the poems of his youth. His teacher’s eyes lit up. How many of her students had such a treasure trove dating back fifty years?
At first reluctantly, my father searched his long-forgotten belongings and unearthed a dusty, old tin filled with war mementos and a small, leather-bound notebook with scribbled poems. Newly invigorated, he began mining the old poems, converting the sentiments of a raw, immature young man in the midst of an awful war, into the thoughtful reflections of an aged man, seared by experience and tempered by life and loss.
With new-found passion, he found his voice in those poems. He wrote about his love for his children and theirs for him. About the grandchildren he adored. About his adopted Chinese granddaughter, his “chrysanthemum,” thanking her birth mother for the wonderous gift she gave our family. He wrote about Brewster on Cape Cod, which he loved, noting in one poem that “beauty speaks in whispers in this place.” He wrote about aging and about being old. About the friendships he and my mother established in the retirement community where they moved in old age, and the particular kind of warmth they felt for these new friends, all of whom share a common understanding that their friendships have a short expiration date. He wrote about death. He wrote about being married, wondering whether a lifelong marriage ends when one spouse dies. It was like asking about the sound of one hand clapping. Struggling with God, as he has all his life, he even wrote an entire collection of poems from the perspective of biblical characters, attributing to them human complexities and failings.
He recited whenever and wherever he could. The retirement community named him Poet Laureate. In the corridors, he was greeted with humor as “Mr. Laureate” by other residents as they sailed past one another on their walkers. In 2013, at the book launch for my apartheid-era novel, Bloodlines, my father stood beside me on the podium at the Boston Public Library as he read, with tears in his eyes, several poems about that dark period in South Africa. As a fitting culmination of his poetry career, he was awarded The Robert Penn Warren First Prize in his late eighties.
At ninety he published his third book of poetry, Soliloquy at Ninety.
At ninety-one he stopped writing poetry.
At ninety-two he found it difficult to recite in public. (The light was never good enough to read by.)
At ninety-three he stopped reading poetry even for his own enjoyment.
At ninety-four, he has forgotten the poems he wrote.
Today, when we read to him, or he is encouraged to read his poems, he evaluates their rhyme and meter, their imagery and subject matter, as if for the first time. Often, even if the subject matter seems new to him, the poems evoke the experiences out of which they came.
A decade ago, he wrote a poem to my mother, then his wife of sixty years, exhorting her gently not to grieve too much when he died, to let waves of grief wash over her. The poem had resonance then, but, at nearly 95, with diminished mind and body, it echoes far more loudly.
The writing is over. My father holds on tightly to life, even as it closes in around him. Walking becomes more cumbersome each day. He often loses his words while speaking, although when asked about the origin of a Latinate word, he sometimes finds the answer on the tip of his tongue. Sometimes he wonders aloud why it isn’t easier to just slip away. He declines, closer and closer. His half-life is longer than he would have wished it to be. The poet fades; the poetry endures.
—
Previously published on Facebook.
What’s your take on what you just read? Comment below or write a response and submit to us your own point of view or reaction here at the red box, below, which links to our submissions portal.
◊♦◊
Sign up for our Writing Prompts email to receive writing inspiration in your inbox twice per week.
—
Photo: Pexels