Today, you were to hand in the questions for the poem "Sisters," by P.K. Page.
I then handed out the poem "1956: The Ambition of the Eldest Son." you are to have it actively read for tomorrow's class.
I am pasting it below for those who were not here
1956: The Ambition of the Eldest Son
Running the horses,
my shirt flicking behind me like wings
when the land made room for me
I did not see my ambition then,
how it turned my head to peer down the road.
I dreamt car instead of animal
and trusted non of the women
home-grown by the same tall teachers
(it would have been lilke marrying
my sister, I needed distant flesh, not
the mouths that held old words about me), and walking down the lane
nothing reached out to hold:
I saw green drown or burn or
knocked to the ground, as the dead are
laid out, punctured and dry.
I embraced the road instead, my father's
not-speaking as if he knows
we must ride as the mother says
into the cities, into the houses
keep wordless between the white lines
steadying the self as we pound home
toward the bright children sprawled before
gadgets, in the rec room I am building
under the ground, out of love, I stay
ahead of longing: which is a wasted field
nothing to plow under
a narrow field where the hot animals
must stand day after day
waiting for the gate to come open.
Dale Zieroth
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