To my Father Poem by Ashok Vajpeyi

Now when nothing remains between us
except some sadness and regret
and we've forgotten
your anger, your failures
your apprehensions about me,
we can see that
while prestige may be easy to come by
dignity in life only comes with great difficulty.
Life is a miser with dignity
and we've both had delusions of possessing it.

We were able to forget
no insult, whether from gods or devils,
even though such forgetting is natural, even necessary
to get through the struggles of life.
Why did we find
insult more memorable than failure,
perhaps it is a familial failing,
the self-respect of a farmer's son,
the self-deception of a small-town poet.
It's thirty-five years since you left
and I am older now
than you were then.

You never had the time to understand me
and I was always trying to test you:
now when nothing remains between us except some sadness and regret,
if you saw how weary I am you'd feel
that in my wilfulness, in my unwillingness to let an insult pass
I have only emulated you:
the truly sad thing is not
that so many years passed in misunderstanding
but that
in the end I've turned out to be a pale imitation of you
which neither you nor I
ever suspected
or desired.