You've Been Forgiven
You've been forgiven, Dad
For what, you'll surely never know.
The stranger that you were, like different DNA,
I have not been where your heart yearns to be - back there in time,
The only place your soul can rest, without the pain of longing.
You've been forgiven, Dad
For all that wasn't there, between us.
The hurting emptyness of love you didn't need or want.
No bond could ever be, in grief this overwhelming.
For all the cruelty you saw in me, the time we never spent, lost in a family.
Few feelings make it, just trying to survive, the knives go in too deeply.
You've been forgiven, Dad
For coming back to make a life, at least pretending
That it could ever be much more than lasting sorrow.
Behind the stone-cold silence, you turned away for good.
As if this world were yours, as if the pain each moment of existence
Is not seen easily, is not still killing you.
You've been forgiven, Dad
For never even trying to speak the truth within
You showed it endlessly.
A child no longer now, who couldn't comprehend
Why life had to go on - if only misery.
So long ago and for some time, I lived the hate, the bitter emptiness'
While you were mourning, totally
Enveloped in the past, you could not see us dying.
You've been forgiven, Dad
For teaching me the same, how to get through this life
Forgetting all that was - at least I worked at it.
Kept running from myself, a skill we both tried hard to master.
And yet, the disconnect so real, their eyes too often empty, their hearts without a beat.
You've been forgiven, Dad
For Someone pitied me at last, still growing in this change
I am no longer blind to what you hopelessly, are trying to forget,
A spirit wrecked by torture.
They made you lock it up, they made you hide it all,
Beloved silent faces that beckon you to go, where hearts were still united.
You've been forgiven, Dad
And now it's me who asks, too late for any courage or hope except Above,
I see you standing on the steps, how is it that you're crying?
It's I who had the wall within, it's I who left you easily, who didn't care
Enough to overcome the wounds too deeply buried underneath,
The scars that never heal from having had to live, the hell never want to see.
You've been forgiven, Dad
No need for you to have to ask - ever again, for what is yours already,
I never saw the angels that must have walked between us, who guided us to this,
Who quietly revived what had been dead and broken, in me as well as you.
So that it's I, who now is praying, that you will grant me this
For all the years I failed you - can I still be forgiven?
3-11-03
For Dad, of course, in whom the war never ended.
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