Untitled Document

After My Parents by David Hockney

Mother wanted this portrait
( 'something for that wall')
she put on her blue dress to try and please him.
But...oh what a surprise when he lets her down
rejects her suggestion of 'a couple of armchairs' and
insists instead that we're seated on these bloody deck chairs.

Its not right at our age to feel uncomfortable,
laid out like specimens, hunters' trophies.
But that's his thing, his reason for re-living
we're exhibit A & B in his case against the world.

He always was at odds
grasping the other end of everything.
Even now as he paints us
he is really more interested in the tulips,
in the labile light reflected in the mirror.

He does this to irritate me, he wants me to glower.
But I have the power: the polaroid prints.
Childhood's a noun for my generation.

So I never was the father he wanted me to be. But see
I'm a moth not a butterfly, content in tweed colours
a challenge to his palette, full of brilliant haciendas.

I will not confront him. I've learned retreat,
the Way of Newspaper.

I will not confront him or
even pass comment.
I hid every breakfast
when he was a boy.

I don't see why I can't hide now.

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