Even If You Weren't My Father
-Camillo Sbarbaro
Father, even if you weren't my father,
were you an utter stranger,
for your own self I'd love you.
Remembering ho you saw, one winter morning,
the first violet on the wall across the way,
and with what joy you shared the revelation;
then, hoising the ladder to your shoulder,
out you went and propped it to the wall.
We, your children, stood watching at the window.
And I remember how, another time,
you chased my little sister through the house
(pigheadedly, she'd done I know not what).
But when she, run to earth, shrieked out in fear,
your heart misgave you,
for you saw yourself hunt down your helpless child.
Relenting then, you took her in your arms
all in terror: caressing her, enclosed in your
embrace as in some shelter from the brute
who'd been, one moment since, yourself.
Father, even were you not my father,
were you some utter stranger,
for your innocence, your artless tender heart,
I would love above all other men
so love you.
Here I am on sitting at my computer on Sunday faced with an assignment. An assignment that seems so meaningless after a day like yesterday. This assignment made me remember what I have to look forward to. This assignment made me forget my heartache from yesterday and believe in now, believe in my father.
Is that what the author was trying to do here? Make the audience feel the love and warmth that our homes and families have to offer?
I read this poem and convinced myself that this is something my older brother would write ten years from now. Sbarbaro's words reminded me of my own childhood. A father walking around the house looking for the culprit of the broken vase, and then seeing his little girl and his heart melting. A surge of anger due to broken pieces but then a rush of love and compassion at the sight of little pigtails with a scared expression.
The narrator almost praises his father because of the way the father treated his daughter. Not all fathers can control their temper, and the narrator acknowledge's this fact in the poem. This simple task that the father does in the poem shows what kind of man he is, which makes the narrator love his father unconditionally. Everything that he describes about his father is just another simple truth that contributes to his feelings towards his father.
Sbarbaro takes a simple fact, such as loving your father for the man he is and not the blood shared, and makes readers relate and reminisce. He allows us to forget the hurt and loss and think of love and safety.
