My Father's House Has Many Mansions by Michael Hofmann

Found in Selected Poems Michael Hofmann

Who could have said we belonged together,
my father and my self, out walking, our hands held
behind our backs in the way Goethe recommended?

Our heavy glances tipped us forward - the future,
a wedge of pavement with our shoes in it...
In your case, beige, stacked, echoing clogs;

and mine, the internationally scruffy tennis shoes -
seen but not heard - of the protest movement.
My mother shook her head at us from the window.

I was taller and faster but more considerate:
tense, overgrown, there on sufferance, I slowed down
and stooped for you. I wanted to share your life.

Live with you in your half-house in Ljubljana,
your second address: talk and read books;
meet your girlfriends, short-haired, dark, oral;

go shopping with cheap red money in the supermarket;
share the ants in the kitchen, the unfurnished rooms,
the fallible winter plumbing. Family was abasement

and obligation ...the three steps to your door
were three step to heaven.  But there were only visits.
At a party for your students - my initiation! -

I ceremoniously downed a leather glass of slivovica.
But then nothing.  I wanted your mixture of resentment
and pride in me expanded to the offer of equality.

Is the destination of paternity only advice...?
In their ecstasy of growth, the bushes along the drive
scratch  your bodywork, dislocate your wing-mirror.

Every year, the heraldic plum-tree in your garden
surprises you with its small, rotten fruit.