While reminding myself of this poem by Robert Bly this morning, I came across the notes I'd made below it. I thought they might be enough of interest to add to this blog.
FINDING THE FATHER by Robert Bly
My friend, this body offers to carry us for nothing ˗ as the ocean carries logs.
So on some days the body wails with its great energy;
it smashes up the boulders,
lifting small crabs, that flow around the sides.
Someone knocks on the door.
We do not have time to dress.
He wants us to go with him through the blowing and rainy streets,
to the dark house.
We will go there, the body says,
and there find the father whom we have never met,
who wandered out in a snowstorm the night we were born,
and who then lost his memory,
and has lived since longing for his child,
whom he saw only once...
while he worked as a shoemaker,
as a cattle herder in Australia,
as a restaurant cook who painted at night.
When you light the lamp you will see him.
he sits there behind the door....
the eyebrows so heavy,
the forehead so light....
lonely in his whole body,
waiting for you.
Some reflections on this intriguing poem.
Being someone who grew up without a father (after the first three years of my life) this poem has always resonated with me, though it’s hard to put my finger on quite why.
that, it’s unusual to have the sense that it’s the body carrying the soul/spirit, and even making a major decision: we will go there, the body says. Many philosophers would claim that it’s the soul or spirit that animates the otherwise lumpish body.
It’s as if the body is being proactive (the anonymous knocker at the door only suggests going; it’s the body that says ‘we will.’ And there’s a final reference to the body ˗ not that of the main ‘body’ but that of the father. It’s like there’s some final connection made, though plainly there’s some way to go after all these years!
So what is the first stanza about? Is the body’s wailing and smashing indicative of some crisis in the spirit, or is it the body itself trying to arouse the spirit to action, to reconnect with the lost father?
Then there is the anonymous knocker. This could be interpreted in a variety of ways: some might see it as the voice of the Holy Spirit, arousing the writer into action, an action that he doesn’t appear to have considered before. There’s perhaps even a link with the picture of Jesus knocking at the door in the Book of Revelation: behold, I stand and knock. There may be other explanations. Whoever it is that’s knocking, he’s insistent: he doesn’t let the writer even have time to dress. This call for action is absolute: do it now, or perhaps this chance will be lost.
And the journey will take the writer through the blowing and rainy streets ˗ this isn’t a daytime journey (at least in my understanding); this is a journey taken in the dark, in inclement weather, for a dark destination. It’s a journey down into the psyche to find something that’s been lost and can only be restored by the writer taking a step. As we see, the father has never managed to do this for himself.
So the writer goes, and is told about the father ˗ whether it’s by the body or the anonymous other doesn’t matter. The writer is given understanding about why his father hasn’t been present, and what happened to him and where he’s been.
Except that things in the poem are unlikely to be as literal as they might appear. On the surface this could be the literal truth; in reality it’s more likely to be a picture of the father’s spiritual/psychological state. What do we learn, or what can we discern.
This father may have always been physically present (even in spite of the various ‘jobs’). But he’s never been present as himself, he’s never given himself to his son. I write son because Bly is a male poet; I guess it could just as easily apply to a daughter.
We’re told several things about this father: we have never met him. He’s never shown his true self to his child. (Note that Bly uses the first person plural throughout; he may be talking about the body and the spirit, or it may be an inclusive ‘we’.) The father wandered out into a snowstorm the night we were born. The writer has just journeyed through a blowing and rainy night, but the father went into something much more severe. Where the writer has to run out dressed in his nightclothes, perhaps, and might catch a cold at the worst (!), the father wandered into something that could have killed him. The snowstorm seems to me to signify a blanking out in his mind of what’s just happened: the birth of his child. This father has allowed his selfishness to overtake the new person he has given life to, and he has cut him out of his mind.
No wonder the next line is about the father losing his memory. In a sense he’s not just lost his memory, he’s lost his mind. He’s done something that is un-fatherly, he’s effectively rejected his child. This is a heightened picture of the ‘absent father’, the one who puts the bread and butter on the table but never puts his arms around his child, the one who pays the bills, but never pays his dues.
But maybe the father isn’t all bad: he has lived since longing for his child whom he saw only once. But what’s stopped him coming back? What’s stopped him being present? Plainly the longing was never enough to change his attitude ˗ or at least not until now.
The last three lines of this stanza also imply that this man has provided. We could assume that he’s lived on his own, far away from his family (we hear nothing of the mother), or we could assume that he’s faithfully worked at whatever he could put his hand to. But something was always missing.
And so we come back to the writer: when you light the lamp you will see him. This is no literal lamp; this is illumination that has to happen for things to change. The writer himself has to make a breakthrough, because without it, there will be no reconnection. But at least once the lamp is lit, the writer will see the father, in every sense.
The father still remains in hiding: he sits there behind the door, and has obviously been sitting in the dark as well, if a lamp needs to be lit. The lamp lightens the room, and Bly gives a wonderful couple of lines that sharply show what the writer might see by the lamplight: the heavy eyebrows, the bright forehead.
And then the man himself, lonely in his whole body, waiting for you.
There has to be forgiveness here, I think. The father has spent his life being absent, not giving of himself except in the most material sense. And this is an altogether different body to the one we met at the beginning with its energy and smashing. This is a pitiful body that’s wrecked itself by its refusal to connect. Though the poem ends at this point, it ends in hope in my eyes. The writer has made the decision to follow his instincts, to change things, to bring something vitally important to pass.
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