"Yesterday" by W S Merwin (poetry reading)

"Yesterday" is a word more often used in a figurative rather than a literal sense. My three-year-old daughter avoids ambiguity with her own word "lasterday" which means any day from the past.

There are few things that we cherish more than the neologisms of our children, their comic misapprehensions and their astonishing insights. My son when three years old came in from playing outside and said " Hey Dad, there's a great big catalogue in the garage" I thought maybe the postman had left it and said, "I wonder what that's doing there". " Climbing up the wall", he said. My daughter said that she had been given a "smack" at the nursery. Her mother was relieved when the "smack" turned out to be milk, a banana and a biscuit.

I'm old enough to see the story from the father's point of view. There is a branch of psychology called Transactional Analysis. You can get the gist of it here - scroll down to the Parent-Adult-Child, PAC, model:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis

Parents of teenage children are often too immature to learn their place in the scheme of things. Unless they're willing to learn self-discipline, to keep their mouths shut and to understand that they're not the most important people in the world, then they will lose the ability to communicate with their kids in their early teens. Parents who practice self-discipline can stay on good terms with their kids throught their teenage years. Parents who are willing to grow up stand a good chance of forming an adult relationship with their children when they are fully developed.

It's no use telling your kids your war stories and anecdotes from your past - and it's no use saying that you used to be like them. It's simply not true. Almost every atom of your body has been replaced. The idea that your identity is continuous in time is just one of many false beliefs that makes life possible. By the time you've become a parent you've metamorphosed into something else.

Parents and children are not in the same phase of life. Eventually your children will become like you are now - but not until they're as old as you are now. There is no period when you and your children are in the same phase. What usually happens is a role reversal - you become the child and they become the parent.

It is one of the sadder facts-of-life that it is likely that you will never achieve intimacy with your children, be their friend or equal. Only limited, superficial communication will ever be possible. In fact, trying to be their friend and equal is the worst mistake a parent can make.

The system works well enough but it was designed by Successive Approximation so are bound to be flaws. Unrequited parental affection is one of them: as King Lear said "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child". That is the way things are. If you have reason to be proud of your children - that's the reward. Where's the warmth in gratitude, anyway? It glitters as coldly as a diamond.

The Prodigal Son in Modern Life, The Departure and others by James Tissot (1836-1902)
it's well worth browsing other paintings by Tissot here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/gardenofmonet/Tissot#

"Return of Prodigal Son", 1667, by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo,

"The Prodigal Son" sculpture by Leonard Baskin

My friend says I was not a good son
you understand
I say yes I understand

he says I did not go
to see my parents very often you know
and I say yes I know

even when I was living in the same city he says
maybe I would go there once
a month or maybe even less
I say oh yes

he says the last time I went to see my father
I say the last time I saw my father

he says the last time I saw my father
he was asking me about my life
how I was making out and he
went into the next room
to get something to give me

oh I say
feeling again the cold
of my fathers hand the last time

he says and my father turned
in the doorway and saw me
look at my wristwatch and he
said you know I would like you to stay
and talk with me

oh yes I say

but if you are busy he said
I don't want you to feel that you
have to
just because I'm here

I say nothing

he says my father
said maybe
you have important work you are doing
or maybe you should be seeing
somebody I dont want to keep you

I look out the window

my friend is older than I am
he says and I told my father it was so
and I got up and left him then
you know

though there was nowhere I had to go
and nothing I had to do

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• Yesterday
• Merwin
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• child
• relationship

[ArtFart001]

who's doing the actual reading?

[SpokenVerse]

@ArtFart001 Me, Tom O'Bedlam. I read everything in this SpokenVerse channel.

[swantonist]

I am still a teenager and disagree with the statement that most parents will never achieve intimacy with their children, that they will never be our friend...

I don't know WHY i disagree with it.

I rarely talk to my parents first. But we can still joke around. I think it's because we want it. I'd like to be close to them but it's awkward. Why is it awkward? I don't know. We don't talk about serious emotional things.

Sometimes they are intelligent... sometimes they appear stupid beyond belief.

[falitosis]

I wish now that I was an old man around my fathers age, and that I could just be his friend, or that we could be two strangers who'd meet talk for hours and then depart.

[masercot]

I'm callin' my dad...

[LastBankJob]

What if there is no reason to be proud?

[mzim144659]

It hurts to watch. Thank you.

A similar poem of fatherly regret, The Man in the Yard, by Howard Nelson.

[Elfarran32]

Lovely reading. I think you get it just right.

[thissong4you]

I listened yesterday and again today. A beautiful reading, as always. Thank you.

[liz1060]

oh, yes ... my son around 6 yrs would say "my mind tells me" when he meant he had thought about something and, as you say, this is precious to me ... Now, he is in his 40s and I have occasionally achieved more than "limited communication" with him but again, as you say, most of our good relationship is made possible by me keeping my mouth shut -- heh! Good piece and great commentary!