From Elegies For My Father

The effect you had on me was the effect
you could not help having.

Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father

Alone in Murwillumbah

Going to Mass
at the Church of the Sacred Heart,
I pray for my father
who died three weeks ago today—
so far from here, but still
in my heart: the Polish immigrant
who lies buried under
dying flowers in Rookwood’s graveyard.

Revisiting the old haunts
of twenty six years ago
where I taught in this green valley
and daily became homesick
like a lost child—
I take photos of Mt Warning,
the Tweed River
and various streets: as if to remind
myself later, in Sydney, that I was actually here.

To fill the hours
of late afternoon, I go
to the Regent and see
Farewell My Concubine—
drawn by what I remember
as being favourable reviews.

Something inside me reacts
to the violence, to scenes
of death and pain—
something I can’t put my finger on
but find myself weeping for
in the dark: grateful
for the peace my father
had brought into my life.

Walking home,
the old contours
of roads and hills return—
familiar though grown smaller:
Riverview Street,
Wollumbin, Byangum Road.
Darkness blots out
the shape of Mt Warning
from which I’ve always got my bearings.
“It’s all right, Dad,” I whisper.
“Stay with me.
I know exactly where I’m going.”

Polish Soil

The soil I sprinkled
on my father’s coffin
was brought back from Poland
five years earlier—
from the grave of his parents
in Raciborow, the little village
west of Warsaw, where
he was born in 1905.

Such a fine powder fell
from my hand it felt
like windblown sand—and not
the heavy dark soil
that I scooped from under green shadows
on the other side of the world.

For five or six years the soil
existed in a sealed plastic bag
and my father never once
made reference to me
about its purpose.
Five years of living
turned black grains into grey dust.

It made little sound
on the coffin at the bottom of the grave
and the priest blessed
its journey with holy water—
as if to farewell it
to the same destination
that my father had set out for
and where his parents were waiting.

First Potatoes

Three months after my father died
the first potatoes have appeared
in his garden—small leaves sprouting
from beneath the dark soil
my son dug and prepared
just as his grandfather had been doing
for more than forty years.

All his life my father planted
potatoes—first in Poland,
then in slave labour in Germany
where he was a prisoner for five years;
finally in Australia,
in his own garden that he loved
and would show to visitors
who stood amazed
at all the hard work he put in.

Keeping the garden and living
off it, he put as much
faith into his work each year
as perhaps, today, I put
into words:
          knowing how proud I feel
                                         to be writing
about my son digging
and preparing his garden for planting—
as if he was laying claim to an inheritance
promised to him at birth.