Was I nineteen. Was my father sixty
or sixty-one—the age I am now.
It must have been my first car, a Plymouth.
My father never drove, nor my mother.
Only one Armenian family,
as I remember, owned a car back then.
It is evening and I am driving him
to the Veteran’s building for some event
or meeting that he is attending.
We are downtown before I realize that
he is uncertain of the address.
He is used to walking everywhere,
and has become disoriented in my car
(but I don’t realize any of this
at the time). I am being impatient
with him. I don’t like being his chauffeur,
I want to get on with my life, not
be a helpmate in his.
Pull over, he says, reading my thoughts.
Which I do, feeling a little
uneasy, my conscience fighting
with my impatience. But I
pull over. He gets out and quickly
begins his hurried walk—
the walk I will always know
him by, and that I will always remember
when I think of him and think of myself.
He gets out in front of Woolworth’s.
It is dark out, but the street lights
are not on, and I am there, alone
in the semi-darkness,
unable to move, my car stationed at the curb.
And I am there still, watching,
staring at his back as he moves away,
knowing the Veteran’s building
is just three blocks away,
I would call if he could hear me
but he is on his own and alone
as I am
with whatever this is that I am.
--David Kherdian
"His biography of his mother, The Road From Home, the sole survivor of her family of the Armenian Genocide, has been published around the world and has remained in print for 26 years."
See also: http://poetrydispatch.wordpress.com/2008/06/14/david-kherdian-nine-thirty-one-forty/
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10 comments:
His writing is so real, you feel like you are down on Main Street. We can all relate to the impatience of dealing with a parent, then our reaction when we are rebuffed.
What an interesting find. How did you get led to this?
I like it, very interesting and good.
I enjoy his work very much.. some years ago I bought a big bunch of his books from the Racine Heritage Museum.. I've read through them numerous times.. My husband has his students read The Road from Home in his class..
thanks for sharing, I always enjoy reading his work..
Like Why Not, I've known about him for years. He's made appearances in the Racine area a number of times, but I've never seen or met him.
I can't remember which work of his it was (he's done a lot), but there was a wonderful description of old State Street, the area where he grew up. When I was a kid, after Sunday Mass my parents stopped at a Jewish bakery on State St. and we all had hot, fresh bagels, crisp on the outside and doughy on the inside. Yum.
Wow! I had no idea of him... I'm going to have to get hands on some of his works.
Thanks for taking the time to post.
One of my favorites from him ( I think I posted it here some time back) he writes about going back "home".. to his childhood home.. it's quite haunting.. I don't have my books here otherwise I would have posted it..
A search for the author "kherdian" returned 59 hits at the Racine library. It should be easy to get ahold of some of his work.
HELP, I not a poetry kind of person. Is this a poem, or a memory? In simple (ME) terms how do you know? What does 'FORTY" mean? Thank you In advance all of my literary friends.
I'd say it's a poem about a memory.
If nothing else, it's a poem because the author says it is one. When it comes to free verse, and prose poems especially, there is no standard definition that covers it all. Usually, though, if enough people recognize it as poetry, then it is. It's kind of like asking, "What is art?"
"Forty" is the title and number of the poem in Kherdian's book, Letters to My Father, which consists of 60 poems. The title has no special relevance to the poem.
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