Epitaph (for my Father)

Epitaph 

Kim Goldberg

            for Philip Abraham Goldberg (1922-2000)

You showed me how to preserve my

Self in the face of life-long assaults

 

on the non-conforming Self

You showed me by your example

 

by your uncrushable laugh

your belief in a reality the herd

 

could never grasp

You showed me this could be done—

 

the container could, in fact, be sealed

that when everything has been pummelled

 

drugged, shunned, disputed

and electrocuted from the blood

 

and bone and brain, there remains

a tiny seed that no one else can reach

 

And like a Redwood seed, no bigger

than a tomato pip, yet weighing

 

four thousand tons, so does your tiny seed

hold all—for what was taken

 

never mattered in the first place.

All of this you have passed to me

 

by your sheer existence—bent, gutted

but never truly emptied

 

With this gift, this magic

I will now live free for both of us

 

I will evade their traps and tortures

and confinements for both of us

 

My heart will beat

for both of us