Father’s Old Blue Cardigan
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Born in Toronto, Canada, Anne Carson (1950—) is a classics scholar as well as a poet. A translator of the Greek poetess Sappho, she has
. . . MORE »By Anne Carson
Now it hangs on the back of the kitchen chair
where I always sit, as it did
on the back of the kitchen chair where he always sat.
I put it on whenever I come in,
as he did, stamping
the snow from his boots.
I put it on and sit in the dark.
He would not have done this.
Coldness comes paring down from the moonbone in the sky.
His laws were a secret.
But I remember the moment at which I knew
he was going mad inside his laws.
He was standing at the turn of the driveway when I arrived.
He had on the blue cardigan with the buttons done up all the way to the top.
Not only because it was a hot July afternoon
but the look on his face—
as a small child who has been dressed by some aunt early in the morning
for a long trip
on cold trains and windy platforms
will sit very straight at the edge of his seat
while the shadows like long fingers
over the haystacks that sweep past
keep shocking him
because he is riding backwards.
Anne Carson, “Father’s Old Blue Cardigan” from Men in the Off Hours. Copyright © 1991 by Anne Carson. Reprinted with the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.