My Son, My Executioner (Donald Hall)

I didn't know before I saw his profile that Donald Hall is a modern writer. While the themes in this poem are modern-sounding, they seem so timeless and universal that it could have been written in any age.

I have never had a child, so I can't appreciate this poem directly, but I can still infer the truth that it expresses. To have a child is to start your line in perpetuity. True. But it also must conjure thoughts of mortality. A child, so defenseless, probably kick-started Donald Hall's thoughts that led to this poem--this realization that 1.) the parents' lives are biologically non-important once they have created life and 2.) that they are now more like their own parents than they were a few hours before and must therefore be that much closer to their own old age.

I think it's kind of wonderful that this poem about a just-born baby can have this dark quality to it. And while I get why the son is called an executioner (it automatically puts the reader in the proper frame of mind), I don't really see the son as being active in ending his father's life. I don't have a better term in mind, but it's my one eh? moment.

Favorite line: "We/...observe enduring life in you/and start to die together."

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