Stanza-wise Explanation

The poem is written in four six-line stanzas, spoken throughout in the father's voice.

Stanza 1

"I do not understand this child / Though we have lived together now / In the same house for years." The father opens with a painful admission: despite years of living together, he knows nothing of his son. He therefore tries to 'build up a relationship' by going back to memories of the boy 'when small' — but the closeness of those early years has been lost.

Stanza 2

"Yet have I killed / The seed I spent or sown it where / The land is his and none of mine?" The father questions himself and shares the blame. Has he destroyed the love he once nurtured, or did he plant it in ground that has always been the son's own and never his? They now 'speak like strangers,' with 'no sign / Of understanding in the air.' Though the child was 'built to my design' — shaped by the father — the father still cannot share in the things his son now loves.

Stanza 3

"Silence surrounds us." The gap between them has hardened into silence. The father wishes his son were prodigal — that he would return to 'his father's house, the home he knew,' rather than go off to 'make and move his world' on his own. If the son came back, the father says he 'would forgive him too,' hoping to shape 'from sorrow a new love.' The stanza reveals the father's tender longing beneath his helplessness.

Stanza 4 …