-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Michael Hofmann, My Father at Fifty, International Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 33, Issue 6, December 2004, Page 1193, https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyh286
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
Your mysterious economy blows the buttons
off your shirts, and permits overdrafts
at several foreign banks. – It must cost the earth.
Once I thought of you virtually as a savage,
atavistic, well-aligned, without frailties.
A man of strong appetites, governed by instinct.
You never cleaned your teeth, but they were perfect anyway
from a diet of undercooked meat; you gnawed the bones;
anything sweet you considered frivolous.
Your marvellous, singled-minded régime, kept up
for years, of getting up at four or five,
and writing a few pages ‘on an empty stomach’,
before exposing yourself to words – whether
on the radio, in books or newspapers,
or just your own from the day before …
Things are different now. Your male discriminations
– meat and work – have lost their edge.
Your teeth are filled, an omnivorous sign.
Wherever you are, there is a barrage of noise:
your difficult breathing, or the blaring radio –
as thoughtless and necessary as breathing.
You have gone to seed like Third World dictators,
fat heads of state suffering horribly
from Western diseases whose name is Legion …
