The Irish Cliffs of Moher
by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
Who is my father in this world,
in this house,
At the spirit’s base?
My father’s father,
his father’s father, his —
Shadows like winds
Go back to a parent before thought,
before speech,
At the head of the past.
They go to the cliffs of Moher
rising out of the mist,
Above the real,
Rising out of present time
and place, above
The wet, green grass.
This is not landscape,
full of the somnambulations
Of poetry
And the sea. This is my father
or, maybe,
It is as he was,
A likeness, one of
the race of fathers: earth
And sea and air.
(Collected Poems, 501-02)