I loved this small poem by the American poet Louise Glück. Called Departure. it shows us the briefest glimpse of a complex story without explaining what that story is. Yet the emotions, though evoked with indirection and subtlety, are clear. The combination of said and unsaid, present and absent, is often what gives poetry its resonance, and so it is here.
Departure
Louise Glück
My father is standing on a railway platform.
Tears pool in his eyes, as though the face
glimmering in the window were the face of someone
he was once. But the other has forgotten;
as my father watches, he turns away,
drawing the shade over his face,
goes back to his reading.
And already in its deep groove
the train is waiting with its breath of ashes.
The poem is reprinted from the poet's book The House on Marshland, originally published by the Ecco Press in 1975. (The always interesting Ecco is now an imprint of HarperCollins.) The book is now, sadly, out of print, though copies can likely be found at your library or bought on used-book sites like http://www.alibris.com/.
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