This poem is about his daughter.
At her Junior High School graduation,
she sings alone
in front of the lot of us--
her voice soprano, surprising,
almost a woman's. It is
the Our Father in French,
the new language
making her strange, out there,
fully fledged and
ready for anything. Sitting
together -- her separated
mother and father -- we can
hear the racket of traffic
shaking the main streets
of Jersey City as she sings
Deliver us from evil,
and I wonder can she see me
in the dark here, years
from belief, on the edge
of tears. It doesn't matter. She
doesn't miss a beat, keeps
in time, in tune, while into
our common silence I whisper,
Sing, love, sing your heart out!
from Relations: New and Selected Poems, 1998
Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn.
