My Father Would Not Show Us

• "My father’s face / five days dead / is organised for me to see."

  • The speaker’s detachment in this moment is palpable, as the phrase “organised for me to see” highlights the sense that the body is being arranged by others, almost as if it is not a personal or intimate experience
  • The use of five days dead emphasizes that the father’s death is not fresh, but a prolonged and perhaps difficult reality
  • he speaker might feel uncomfortable, as they are not just seeing their father in his natural state but as part of a ritual, a performance, where the body is arranged for the living rather than the dead
  • There is a sense of distance between the speaker and the deceased
• "The borrowed coffin gleams unnaturally;"

  • The word borrowed introduces a sense of impermanence, as though the coffin is not the final resting place for the father, highlighting the speaker’s reluctance to accept his death
  • It’s as if the father isn’t truly gone and the speaker cannot fully come to terms with the finality of death
  • The description of the coffin gleaming unnaturally evokes discomfort
  • The word unnaturally suggests that death, which is meant to bring closure, instead feels odd and wrong in this context
• "Half-expected this inverted face"

  • The use of half-expected shows that the speaker had some level of anticipation about what their father’s body might look like, but it was still jarring
  • The word inverted reinforces that the father’s death has completely altered the perception of him
  • His appearance in death is inverted, meaning it doesn’t fit the image the speaker had of him when alive
  • Death changes the familiar, and the speaker seems unable to reconcile this change, seeing their father’s face as something unnatural and unfamiliar
• "This is the last time I am allowed / to remember my childhood as it might have been"

  • The speaker reflects on how the father’s death signifies the end of an era in their life
  • The phrase 'the last time I am allowed' hints at a loss of agency in the grieving process, as if the speaker is being forced into this painful reality
  • The phrase 'remember my childhood as it might have been' indicates that death has irrevocably altered the speaker's memories of the past
  • The speaker seems to feel that the death of the father not only marks the end of a life, but also changes how they will remember their own youth
• Free Verse Structure

  • The poem is written in free verse, meaning it doesn't follow a set rhyme scheme or meter
  • This choice reflects the emotional complexity of grief and the irregularity of the speaker's thoughts and feelings
  • Grief is unpredictable, and free verse mirrors that chaos and emotional turbulence
  • The lack of a fixed form also signifies the inability to control the process of mourning, as the speaker's thoughts flow without constraint
• Use of Stanzas

  • The poem is divided into five stanzas, each with varying lengths
  • The shorter stanzas contribute to a fragmented sense of time, reflecting the speaker’s inability to process the events surrounding the father's death in one smooth narrative
  • The speaker's recollections seem to come in pieces, each stanza highlighting a specific moment or emotion associated with the father’s passing
• Final Line and Closure

  • The poem ends with a quiet, still line: “face to the wall, he lay.” The simple yet final nature of this line gives a sense of closure, but it's also stark and unresolved
  • The last words suggest that the father’s death is complete, and there is no more room for further action or reflection
  • However, the absence of a definitive conclusion on the speaker’s emotional state leaves the reader with a sense of lingering grief, as the process of mourning is never truly finished
• • The figure of the father in the poem is complex—he is distant, emotionally unavailable, and, in his final moments, seemingly unwilling or unable to allow his children the closure they seek
  • This could be a reflection of how men, particularly in patriarchal societies, are often expected to hide their emotions and adopt a façade of stoicism
  • In the context of apartheid, the trauma experienced by individuals, especially those who lived through the hardships and brutality of the system, would have made emotional expression even more difficult
• • The poem was written in the context of post-apartheid South Africa, during a period when the country was undergoing significant social and political transformation
  • Apartheid, the system of institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination, officially ended in 1994 with the election of Nelson Mandela, but the emotional and psychological scars left by this system persisted long after its legal end
  • De Kok’s poetry often reflects the trauma caused by apartheid and the way it shaped individual and collective identities
• • A key theme in this poem is loss, not just in the literal sense of the father’s death, but in the emotional and psychological distance between the speaker and their father
  • The title itself speaks to the speaker’s frustration and the sense of abandonment—they are not allowed to truly understand or witness their father’s death, perhaps because he himself hid his emotions, unable to show vulnerability even at the end of his life
  • This is particularly poignant in the context of apartheid, where many people were forced to suppress their emotions and feelings as a means of survival in a harsh, unjust system