Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Tuesday, October 15th, 2024.

Today's poem comes from Donald Hall, and it's called My Son, My Executioner.

But I promise no parents were harmed in the making of this poem.

I'll read it once, offer a few remarks, and read it once more.

My son, my executioner. My son, my executioner, I take you in my arms, quiet and small and

just a stir, and whom my body warms. Sweet death, small sun, our instrument of immortality,

your cries and hungers document our bodily decay. We, 25 and 22, who seemed to live forever,

observe enduring life in you, and start to die together.

As I read it, there is a surprising amount of tenderness in this little poem, though Hall

pulls it off with a tremendous amount of subtlety. Although the opening line might give us a sense of foreboding, the love of

father for son is clear and there is not only figurative but literal warmth, even in the opening

stanza, as he lifts the small child close to himself so that father's body warms son's body as he marvels at the quiet

smallness of this child. And even in the final lines, this observation, this realization that

husband and wife, mother and father, begin to die together, ends in togetherness. There is this new bond between them

that isn't possible in youth. He says, we 25 and 22, who seemed to live forever, observe enduring

life in you and start to die together.

But that observation is obviously a faulty one who seemed to live forever, but no one is going to live forever, though a 25 and 22-year-olds can't really grasp that, perhaps.

And it seems to be this revelation of mortality that draws them closer together.

It is a bond that you share and they're starting to do their dying together because they have seen an enduring life in their child.

And this life is a blending, it is a mixture of their own lives.

And to see that tangible in the world, the sign and fruit and outpouring of your own two loves

...