Attic Revelation
Minerva, anguished goddess of tormented years?
Before my darkened altar of my soul's quiescent solitude
twined my childish hand around the dusty magic
of the puissant knight.
But sharing treasure leads, I learned too late,
to slapping atavistic violence.
Grabbed from my trembling hands into her own,
resuscitated memories unflinched her eyes.
My aging face even today replays
the inarticulate response, and reddens still
from the unreconcilable and suicidal past.
The Picture
She was as saddened as a boatless winter lake
when all of it had taken place.
The darkened attic of that ancient house
was where I played alone and where I found
that dusty, cobwebbed oil-painted portrait.
Maybe not the pirate's chest of gold
I had longed to find up there
in that mysterious upper room--my secret playground,
but something nonetheless distinctly magical,
this painted figure of a handsome man
with his old-fashioned mustache and brown eyes.
As swift as Hermes and excited as a frog in rain
I brought it down to show my mom
who at the time was in the kitchen
singing to herself and baking
those thick choclate brownies that I used to love.
But nothing could prepare me
for the dreadful nightmare of that moment
when she saw what I had carried down.
She grabbed it from my trembling hands
and tore it up and slapped me
as hard as the slap of water must have crossed
the doomed Titanic's broken hull.
Astonished (I was innocent at twelve)
it's hardly a surprise that I didn't understand
that picture was a portrait of my dad
who had killed himself some three months
before I had been born. How as I to know
that I had done something wrong?
I cried myself to sleep that night
and even now I still remember that sad time.
The Portrait
My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
When I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
Though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
And slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.
--Stanley Kunitz
From the first poem to the last poem, I can see the transformation from nothing to something. In the first two poems I didn’t understand what was going on. All I can sense was pain and despair but in the last poem I can see the author was targeting her father she never knew. So I went back to the first two poems and I took the idea from the last poem and place a father figure in the two poems and It kind of made sense.
First poem:"My aging face even today replays"
Last poem: "In my sixty-fourth year"
Both talked about age.
Second poem: " that picture was a portrait of my dad"
Last poem: "My mother never forgave my father"
Both talk about a father
Second poem: "who had killed himself some three months"
Last poem: "for killing himself,"
Both talked about the death of a father
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