Farming Family, 1912

The cruelty of the men when they’re alone,

The women’s tiredness and resignation,

Do not get multiplied, as you’d expect,

When the extended families collect,

One day a year, to get their pictures taken.

It’s not that any of their faces soften,

Nor that there’s any obvious affection

Between the farmer’s mother and his son;

And only an idealist could see

In this brief cutting from the family tree

A symbol of the strength of rootedness—

Three generations dwelling in one place—

Knowing how soon the root will lose its branch,

Cut down and hacked to pieces in a trench.

The only explanation that makes sense

For the illusion of resilience

That lights their eyes and makes them look at home

Is that with every added generation

Buried potentialities appear:

The son who poses strumming his guitar

Refutes his father’s brandished Iron Cross

No more convincingly than his bare face

Proves that his father’s beard is obsolete;

Denying one another, they complete

Their likeness to the contradictory

God who commanded us to multiply

So He could manifest, in every birth,

Another of His attributes on earth.