"The Sandy Hole" by Jane Kenyon
The infant's coffin no bigger than a flightbag ....
The young father steps backward from the sandy hole,
eyes wide and dry, his hand over his mouth.
No one dares to come near him, even to touch his sleeve.
The young father steps backward from the sandy hole,
eyes wide and dry, his hand over his mouth.
No one dares to come near him, even to touch his sleeve.
I'm not feeling this poem. I read an angry father and that overwhelms the sadness of the loss of the family.
ReplyDeleteJimbo, I just went to post this poem for this month, Aug 2018 because it was one of the favorites of Frances Mayes in her book The Discovery of Poetry. I wrote comments in the margin after reading:
ReplyDeleteyoung father- accidental death of infant? "eyes wide and dry, his hand over his mouth."
when I fear to comfort someone it is usually because I have no idea how. How to relate, console something which I do not know...
Sandy- sinking, gritty, beach, why not dirt?
Hole- moving downward, dark, noninfinite, stops at the bottom
Where is the mother?
To elaborate more on my comment from 2016, I read the solitude of the father from anger and not sadness. It could just be the surprise of a grieving father and the rest of his family doesn't know how to act, but I see the word "dare" as an indictaor that the father is angry and not sad. Who does he blame? Himself? His country?
DeleteI started listening to this book about North Korea called Nothing to Envy. It referenced the famine, and said how children and old people die first. Then good people die. The people who refuse to steal, break laws, and or behave unethically. Maybe this father is regretting his honor? Maybe if he was a worse person he could have kept his kid alive? Or maybe he is a bad person, and that is why he is the only one left in his family.
This poem's strength is having a strong emotional appeal without answering all the questions, giving us the reader plenty to add between the lines.