Stabat Mater

Stabat Mater

My mother called my father ‘Mr Hunt’
For the first few years of married life.
I learned this from a book she had inscribed:
‘To dear Mr Hunt, from his loving wife.’

She was embarrassed when I asked her why
But later on explained how hard it had been
To call him any other name at first, when he –
Her father’s elder – made her seem so small.

Now in a different way, still like a girl,
She calls my father every other sort of name;
And guiding him as he roams old age
Sometimes turns to me as if it were a game…

That once I stand up straight, I too must learn
To walk away and know there’s no return.

-          Sam Hunt

The poem begins with Sam stumbling onto the formality in the relationship that had exited between his parent’s earlier. The words “I learned” show that he did not remember from his childhood nor did anyone tell him but that he discovered. Also, that this decorum of formality was followed during the initial years of their marriage only. The word “inscribed” shows an indelible mark that has been left behind. That she did not address him by his first name is more apparent than her calling him “Mr. Hunt”.

Is the poet meaning to say something when he rhymes “wife” with “life” is the question that comes to reader’s mind while reading.

For the mother it is embarrassing to explain to the child that the sheer age difference between them stopped her from calling him by “any other name”.  Here too, what comes across is not that the husband made her feel small but that she felt humbled in his presence and that his stature was so high that she felt “small”. The poet focuses on the age difference by using dashes twice once before and after “her father’s elder”. The author’s indirect use of enjambment in the line “hard it had been” conjures the image of a tough taskmaster that they husband may have been in the past only to contrast to merely the inability of addressing him otherwise. The contrast of thought between “hard” and “simple” comes through to the reader.

The “girl” in the mother remains. Earlier she was a girl because she was much younger. She is a girl even now for she endears him with ever “sort of name”. The first line carries a separated oxymoron in “different” and “like” to show the similarity and contrast in the mother. A focused read of the poem reveals the authors deliberate use of “name” and “game” to rhyme, again like puns have been intended to be separated.  The game of names comes alive in this rhyme scheme. The reader is subtly guided to the change of game. The father needs “guidance” and is now dependent on the mother. The image gradually dawns on the reader.

The first read of the last lines may seem to lead to death but perhaps it is about no return to being young only growing up and becoming old.

The poem is about knowing that there is “no return” to youth and the endearments life carries with itself. The unsaid comes through more than the said. “Once I stand up straight”, for example, seems to be not so much about being independent as about the transition from dependent to independent and not being able to go back.

Sam’s theme remains the family, yet finality of death does not seem to be the end of life, no return to youth does. Clearly, he was intrigued and perhaps proud of the age difference between his parents.

“Stabat Mater” refers to mother Mary, however here is sorrowful not for her son but the father of the son.