'My Papa's Waltz' continued
Beryl Clarke, Contributor

Some of us treat opportunities like sand.

We fill our hands with it, and then let it slip through our

fingers until it is gone.

(Borrowed)

Please do not waste the educational opportunity that you now have, even if you are faced with challenges and difficulties.

Let us now turn our attention to 'My Papa's Waltz'. In the previous lesson, mention was made of the fact that the father had been drinking some strong liquor, it was whiskey, but it was more than just a drink or two. He seemed to have been reeking of alcohol, so much so that narrator/speaker says that the 'breath' was enough to make him 'dizzy'. We do not know whether his father is a habitual drinker (of alcohol), but he appears to have had a substantial amount on this occasion. He was quite likely staggering and this would have encouraged his child to grip him fiercely so that his erratic movements would not dislodge him, as happened with the pans on the shelf.

The next verse includes the information of the mother being unable to remove a frown from her face. Have you decided why this is so? I did suggest earlier that you should find a reason. It is clear that she is not enjoying the interaction between her husband and their son, although the child is having a good time. These point to a difference in perspectives. Do you remember that while the child in 'Ana' was having fun lunging at her father and sometimes scratching him, her father was unhappy and only tolerated her behaviour because of his love for her?

The third verse describes the pair of clumsily moving 'dancers'. The focus is placed on the father's hand and his inability to maintain his balance (you know why). We learn that one knuckle is battered, which raises the question of whether he had been in a fight or if this was the result of hard physical work.

The speaker gives us an impression of their respective positions when he informs us that a buckle scraped his right ear each time his dad missed a step. There is a particular question that students have often asked concerning the buckle. Is it a belt buckle or a buckle on his overalls that scrapes the child's ear?

The speaker must have felt some hurt but it did not cause him to release his tight hold on his father. It is interesting to note that he says that it was his ear that scraped the buckle and not the other way around. It causes one to wonder whether he does not wish any blame to fall on his father.

In the last stanza, the boy is taken to his bed. I hope you noticed that though Dad was beating time on his head, his son did not want to let his father go; another bit of evidence that he was enjoying their 'game'. We need to bear in mind that they would have been dancing to a rhythm held in the man's head. He could have been humming so it is not surprising that he was keeping time by 'beating' on his son's head. Here, also we have evidence that Dad was a manual worker, perhaps a farm hand or a farmer who was involved in the tough work on his land.

It seems obvious that he had not taken time to clean up before spending time to play, thus his palm is caked hard with dirt. Perhaps, when he came home, his son was about to go to bed and he just grasped the opportunity to spend time with him.

Last week I gave you the rhyme scheme for the first quatrain. Let me just confirm the others; you must have worked them out by now.

The rhythmic pattern is iambic trimetre; that is, there are three sets of weak/strong beats in each line.

x / x / x /

The whis/key on /your breath/

Weak/strong; weak/strong; weak/strong.

As we close this week, I want you to know that some critics of this poem believe that its theme is child abuse. Please consider their view carefully.

Have a wonderful week and God bless!