Poet and Infant, Once
                                 a photograph in a biography of Robert Lowell       

     Head to head, on an unannouncing carpet,
     the two of them, an unlikely match.
     He's forty, his hair coal-dark and curly, 
     a dashing profile, though his face is shadowed.
     Her head has the round, bald promise of infancy,
     full of the accomplishment of upright looking,
     eyes wide, in full and eager possession.
     For the moment, just on the level.

     It's a common enough scene: father and daughter.
     But where's the self-laceration that made him? 
     Does she  have this framed on a wall, 
     seeing only the pride on his face?
     As though that erased the dark years, 
     as though fathering were healable, now.


     John Hildebidle
 	

     
     *          *          *
        

     about the poem:

     "It's oddly related more to Ireland than to Boston. We turned out
     to have a wondrous neighbor in Galway, who was among other things 
     a book collector with a special interest in American poetry. He 
     loaned me a biography of Lowell, and included therein was the photo, 
     by Judy Dater, that the poem arises from."



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