The Analyst's Lament

by M. PHILIP STERN

How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood
When deep introspection presents them to view!
How joyous the paths in the deep-tangled wild wood
Of symbols, repressions my infancy knew!

The orchard, the meadow, the wide-spreading pond
(A substitute earth-mother of whom I was fond),
The bridge where I stood and the rock that I threw
(At the waterfall father, and the sibling all new).
The symbols are clear, the meanings all jell
Except for a bucket that hung in the well.

The well-water bubbled (for boyhood purity)
To wash off the dirt on my face (insecurity),,
And the dream of the river, the mill wheel awhiri,
fold me I knew Pa had wanted a girl.
The patterned rejection was easy to tell
But what was that bucket that hung in the well?

The day I was whipped, dramatic, traumatic,
Is why all my symptoms are psychosomatic —
Yes, marked by resistance and written in dream,
The things of my childhood are more than they seem
. . . Except for that one thing, that last citadel,
That slippery bucket that hung in the well.

Now far removed from the loved habitation
I see my regressions and projected hell
When fancy reverts to my father’s frustration
And brings on the symptoms I know oh so well.

But what is that bucket, that old oaken bucket,
That iron-bound bucket, that moss-covered bucket
That hung there, that hung there, that hung in the well?