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Note
on
Dad
No
one can keep fiction out of portraits.
I must say this, however, that as far as my fragmentary
self-awareness can be sure, the fiction here probably lies more in the
attitude of grudging reverence than in the facts. Certain matters are true:
My father hugged the hod
that tore his ear.
[He had] A horse corpse for shelter
on Dunkirk’s escape beach.
[He] Struck my mother and me.
I hated him.
But
in this last statement I’m entering the fiction zone, too.
‘I hated him’: 3 words in about 200 are too many, too high a
ratio, now. It didn’t
feel like a high percentage when the emotion was intense.
The hitting and the hatred happened, sometimes.
In families, ‘some-times’ can inflate to dirigible-size. The story was common.
I take it that this last part still is.
Miss
him. Talk to his ghost.
Takes
two lives for one life to mature.
I
told the priest to say
he
worked hard. By Christ he
did.
Alan
Marshfield
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