Parents

Parents by William Meredith

What it must be like to be an angel

or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner.

The last time we go to bed good,

they are there, lying about darkness.

They dandle us once too often,

these friends who become our enemies.

Suddenly one day, their juniors

are as old as we yearn to be.

They get wrinkles where it is better

smooth, odd coughs, and smells.

It is grotesque how they go on

loving us, we go on loving them

The effrontery, barely imaginable,

of having caused us.  And of how.

Their lives: surely

we can do better than that.

This goes on for a long time.  Everything

they do is wrong, and the worst thing,

they all do it, is to die,

taking with them the last explanation,

how we came out of the wet sea

or wherever they got us from,

taking the last link

of that chain with them.

Father, mother, we cry, wrinkling,

to our uncomprehending children and grandchildren.

I think there's a lot of interesting language in this poem that really stood out to me. One thing in particular is the description of parents' love for their children and the children's continued love for their parents as "grotesque." I wonder if he actually felt this way. I don't think he does. I think that the strange language Meredith uses such as "grotesque" and "the effrontery, barely imaginable/of having caused us" combined with some positive images and descriptions clue the reader into the fact that Meredith, like most people, have a relationship with their parents based on both love and hate. That sounds incredible cliche but it feels to me like that is what Meredith is trying to portray in this poem.