They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:
My father, twenty-five, in the same suit
Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack
Still two years old and trembling at his feet.
My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress
The speaker of the poem is the son, obviously. But notice the verb tense. The narrative being described is taking in the present as if it is happening as it is being spoken. Something is clearly off how could a child of a couple that young describe a scene with such sophistication? The present tense creates the feeling of immediacy as if event are being described as they unfold. The seeming impossibility of this, however, also creates a lends it a strange otherworldly texture. Something is not right in this story, but what?
They beckon to me from the other bank.
I hear them call, ‘See where the stream-path is!
Crossing is not as hard as you might think.’
The intervening stanzas separating this from the first are stylized. They paint a portrait of a picnic in process, but in language that replicates the description of the father in the opening stanza. The details are precise and vivid, but also oddly off. The are a little too perfect. And though written in present tense—the active tense—the result comes off more a posed still photograph than a moving image. Actually, less like a still photograph than living recreation of a still life painting: a tableaux vivant. The parents are real enough, they are human and obviously not robots or something from science fiction, but at the same time they seem not entirely normal. This not quite normal quality reaches a peak with their motioning for the son to cross the stream. The precision of description suddenly disappears: who is the telling him that it’s not hard to cross the stream? Or, even stranger, are they both saying it simultaneously?
I had not thought that it would be like this.
The poem comes to an end on a note of ambiguity, although the details provided combined with the title certainly give a strong clue as to what “it” is. And the question of what “it” would be like is one that has haunted writers since writing began. One conventional perspective is that “it” is a idyllic place paved with streets of gold, where honey is plentiful and bees don’t sting. This version seems better than some, that’s for sure.
