Classic Poem

Once he asked me:
How is it that these return after a few years
with titles and white collars
and slimly built ...?
And when I answered him tersely
he shouted at me:
But you read night and day
night and day.

I said to my father one day:
There are many who enter history
as a whore enters the bed.
There are even more who exit history
as a whore leaves the bed.

But he did not understand.

Between one day and the next
he would sit in his usual corner
shaving with old implements he acquired — perhaps before I was born.
And when he died
and I carried him with these two hands
and buried him under the earth
where my mother calmly knelt as though addressing one alive
I returned to find him in the house
in front of his small mirror
shaving, still shaving
with his old implements
his implements he acquired before I was born.