quiet dignity, though his flushed face and hard-focused eyes gave away his anger. Perhaps because of
this?
Or
that?
How should I know? Of
course
you should know, co-father would shout.
Polystom had been witness to so many of these arguments that they ceased to alarm him. As he grew older he accepted it as simply the way his two fathers related to one another. On the rare occasion when he did think about it, he may have wondered why these two men, who were supposed to be in love, gave one another so much distress; but it wasn’t for him to say. They had made some secret pact with misery to spend their lives fighting, he assumed.
And yet they had lived together for many years, and it was only when they were both dead that Polystom realised they had been happy. That his quiet father had found a delight in the turmoil and passion of his partner; and thatboisterous co-father had found strength in the calmness of his. As he presided over the funeral of his co-father, his second family funeral in four weeks, he finally understood, or thought he did, that the outward trappings of a relationship hold no more truth to internal health than the plainness of a person’s face is an index to the beauty of their soul. At the funeral he read a poem from Phanicles, his father’s favourite poet. His co-father had not relished poetry, but somehow Polystom felt that a poem was an appropriate gesture at a funeral. Poetry adorned the ceremony, he felt; and so he read something from Phanicles:
the mountain silent after my lover’s gone
and ash like velvet on the hearthstone
and the comet with its great wind-sock of light
and ash like velvet, white
and shamrock, violet, hidden in the hedgebank by the stream
and the fire now slowly silting down
.
Polystom chose that poem because of the delicious sense of sadness it brought to his mind. It wasn’t specifically a funereal poem, although there seemed to Polystom to be something obliquely elegiac about the lines. But as he finished the final line he looked down from the funeral dais to see the bored, or even disgusted, faces of his co-father’s relatives. This shocked him, and with a potent sense of inner revelation he realised that just as he had seen his co-father’s blustery aggression as a flaw, a vulgarity, something to be disregarded before you could feel love for the man – just so, exactly, there were many people in the Stewardship who saw his own and his father’s quiet love for poetry in exactly the same way. For them it was a weakness, a blot on character, a distraction from the life of doing and overcoming that properly defined a man. In the pulpit Polystom had a nebulous sense of understanding of what the world must look like to his co-father’s kin; the wayit must have appeared to his co-father when alive. Polystom and his boy, the two of them hidden away in this foppish nothingness, burying their minds in this nonsense, blind to the world around them. Unmanning themselves with this mental decay called
poetry
, not pushing themselves into manly assertion. There were things to do! Leadership meant stepping out in front of the crowd, not hiding amongst the trees. It was a sort of sickness, a self indulgence, the very opposite of a self-discipline. Polystom looked down on the curled lips of his co-father’s brothers and cousins, and felt a needle of shame. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps it was a contemptible occupation for a man. Certainly it was inappropriate to read poetry at the funeral of his poetry-hating co-father. It was wrong because unmanly.
And with this realisation, Polystom felt a deeper awe at the strength of the bond that had tied his co-father to his father. That had kept the furious spirit of his co-father living in this house for nearly twenty years, cloistered away from the burly flurry of Stahlstadt where great men made great decisions, and shaped the destiny of the whole Stewardship of Worlds.
The two of them, father and co-father, had sometimes visited
this?
Or
that?
How should I know? Of
course
you should know, co-father would shout.
Polystom had been witness to so many of these arguments that they ceased to alarm him. As he grew older he accepted it as simply the way his two fathers related to one another. On the rare occasion when he did think about it, he may have wondered why these two men, who were supposed to be in love, gave one another so much distress; but it wasn’t for him to say. They had made some secret pact with misery to spend their lives fighting, he assumed.
And yet they had lived together for many years, and it was only when they were both dead that Polystom realised they had been happy. That his quiet father had found a delight in the turmoil and passion of his partner; and thatboisterous co-father had found strength in the calmness of his. As he presided over the funeral of his co-father, his second family funeral in four weeks, he finally understood, or thought he did, that the outward trappings of a relationship hold no more truth to internal health than the plainness of a person’s face is an index to the beauty of their soul. At the funeral he read a poem from Phanicles, his father’s favourite poet. His co-father had not relished poetry, but somehow Polystom felt that a poem was an appropriate gesture at a funeral. Poetry adorned the ceremony, he felt; and so he read something from Phanicles:
the mountain silent after my lover’s gone
and ash like velvet on the hearthstone
and the comet with its great wind-sock of light
and ash like velvet, white
and shamrock, violet, hidden in the hedgebank by the stream
and the fire now slowly silting down
.
Polystom chose that poem because of the delicious sense of sadness it brought to his mind. It wasn’t specifically a funereal poem, although there seemed to Polystom to be something obliquely elegiac about the lines. But as he finished the final line he looked down from the funeral dais to see the bored, or even disgusted, faces of his co-father’s relatives. This shocked him, and with a potent sense of inner revelation he realised that just as he had seen his co-father’s blustery aggression as a flaw, a vulgarity, something to be disregarded before you could feel love for the man – just so, exactly, there were many people in the Stewardship who saw his own and his father’s quiet love for poetry in exactly the same way. For them it was a weakness, a blot on character, a distraction from the life of doing and overcoming that properly defined a man. In the pulpit Polystom had a nebulous sense of understanding of what the world must look like to his co-father’s kin; the wayit must have appeared to his co-father when alive. Polystom and his boy, the two of them hidden away in this foppish nothingness, burying their minds in this nonsense, blind to the world around them. Unmanning themselves with this mental decay called
poetry
, not pushing themselves into manly assertion. There were things to do! Leadership meant stepping out in front of the crowd, not hiding amongst the trees. It was a sort of sickness, a self indulgence, the very opposite of a self-discipline. Polystom looked down on the curled lips of his co-father’s brothers and cousins, and felt a needle of shame. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps it was a contemptible occupation for a man. Certainly it was inappropriate to read poetry at the funeral of his poetry-hating co-father. It was wrong because unmanly.
And with this realisation, Polystom felt a deeper awe at the strength of the bond that had tied his co-father to his father. That had kept the furious spirit of his co-father living in this house for nearly twenty years, cloistered away from the burly flurry of Stahlstadt where great men made great decisions, and shaped the destiny of the whole Stewardship of Worlds.
The two of them, father and co-father, had sometimes visited
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