Because Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCD EAEA FGHG AEAE AIAI JAJA KAKA AEAE LMNM| My father and my mother never quarrelled | A |
| They were united in a kind of love | B |
| As daily as the Sydney Morning Herald | A |
| Rather than like the eagle or the dove | B |
| - | |
| I never saw them casually touch | C |
| Or show a moment s joy in one another | D |
| Why should this matter to me now so much | C |
| I think it bore more hardly on my mother | D |
| - | |
| Who had more generous feelings to express | E |
| My father had dammed up his Irish blood | A |
| Against all drinking praying fecklessness | E |
| And stiffened into stone and creaking wood | A |
| - | |
| His lips would make a switching sound as though | F |
| Spontaneous impulse must be kept at bay | G |
| That it was mainly weakness I see now | H |
| But then my feelings curled back in dismay | G |
| - | |
| Small things can pit the memory like a cyst | A |
| Having seen other fathers greet their sons | E |
| I put my childish face up to be kissed | A |
| After an absence The rebuff still stuns | E |
| - | |
| My blood The poor man s curt embarrassment | A |
| At such a delicate proffer of affection | I |
| Cut like a saw But home the lesson went | A |
| My tenderness thenceforth escaped detection | I |
| - | |
| My mother sang Because and Annie Laurie | J |
| White Wings and other songs her voice was sweet | A |
| I never gave enough and I am sorry | J |
| But we were all closed in the same defeat | A |
| - | |
| People do what they can they were good people | K |
| They cared for us and loved us Once they stood | A |
| Tall in my childhood as the school the steeple | K |
| How can I judge without ingratitude | A |
| - | |
| Judgment is simply trying to reject | A |
| A part of what we are because it hurts | E |
| The living cannot call the dead collect | A |
| They won t accept the charge and it reverts | E |
| - | |
| It s my own judgment day that I draw near | L |
| Descending in the past without a clue | M |
| Down to that central deadness the despair | N |
| Older than any hope I ever knew | M |
James Phillip Mcauley
(1)
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