Poems/short about passing on characteristics/features/likeness from parent to sibling

raindog.promo

Hello,

If anyone could help it would be much appreciated.
I'm looking for any poetry that concerns passing on characteristics/features/likeness from parent to sibling which I'd like to quote for a piece of artwork.

So far my searching has revealed nothing. If anyone knows of any works concerning this topic it would be much appreciated if you could let me know the name and author so I can search them out.

Thank you.

pickarooney

First thing that came to mind was this.

Pulp - A Little Soul wrote:

Hey Man,
how come you treat your woman so bad?
That's not the way you do it. No, no, no..
you shouldn't do it like that.
I could show you how to do it right.
I used to practice every night on my wife now she's gone. Yeah, she's gone.

You see your mother and me
we never got along that way you see.
I'd love to help you but everybody's telling me you look like me
but please don't turn out like me.
You look like me
but you're not like me I know.
I had one, two, three, four shots of happiness.
I look like a big man but I've only got a little soul.
I only got a little soul.

Yeah, I wish I could be an example.
Wish I could say I stood up for you and
fought for what was right. But I never did.
I just wore my trenchcoat and stayed out every single night.
You think I'm joking? Well, try me. Yeah, try me. Yeah come on, try me tonight.
I did what was wrong though I knew what was right.
I've got no wisdom that I want to pass on. Just don't hang 'round here, no,
I'm telling you son. You don't wanna know me.
Oh, that's just what everybody's telling me.

& everybody's telling me you look like me but please don't turn into me.
You look like me but you're not like me I hope.
I have run away from the one thing that I ever made.
Now I only wish that I could show you - wish I could show a little soul.
Wish I could show a little soul.

Arlecchina

This is almost certainly not what you had in mind because it's depressing as hell, but Larkin's most famous poem This Be The Verse immediately sprung to mind.

They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

I won't quote the rest of it here, because — expletives!

Oryx

Philip Larkins This Be The Verse is probably the most well known one for me. Maybe a bit raw for your purposes.

They **** you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were ****ed up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Edit: expletives? Thats what the swear filter is for!

Arlecchina

Oryx wrote: »

Edit: expletives? Thats what the swear filter is for!

What can I say? I'm a sensitive, overly-cautious flower.

raindog.promo

Thanks for the replies. I should probably go into context on what I want to do.

I have photos of my mother, sister and her daughters. They each look like one another, same eyes, same smile. My youngest nephew can't tell who is who when you show him the photographs. I've photoshopped the faces into one picture and was thinking of putting a verse about family likeness or heredity beneath it, then framing it.

Unfortunately all/most of the poetry I've seen, the poet seems to be annoyed/bitter at the family resemblence or the tone of the poetry is quite bleak.

The only one I found which kind of has the spirit of what I'm looking for is:

I saw a duck the other day
It had the feet of my Aunt Faye.
Then it walked, was heading South.
It waddled like my Uncle Ralph.

And when it turned, I must propose,
Its bill was formed like Aunt Jane's nose.
I thought, "Oh, no! It's just my luck,
Someday I'll look just like a duck."

I sobbed to Mom about my fears,
And she said, "Honey, dry your tears.
You look like me, so walk with pride.
Those folks are all from Daddy's side."

http://kcbx.net/~tellswor/geanpoem.htm

Although I'm lookng for something a bit better.

I'm starting to think maybe an excerpt from a short story may be a better option.

diddlybit

Would either of these be suitable?

Mother and Child- Louise Glück

We’re all dreamers; we don’t know who we are.
Some machine made us; machine of the world, the constricting family.
Then back to the world, polished by soft whips.
We dream; we don’t remember.
Machine of the family: dark fur, forests of the mother’s body.
Machine of the mother: white city inside her.
And before that: earth and water.
Moss between rocks, pieces of leaves and grass.
And before, cells in a great darkness.
And before that, the veiled world.
This is why you were born: to silence me.
Cells of my mother and father, it is your turn
to be pivotal, to be the masterpiece.
I improvised; I never remembered.
Now it’s your turn to be driven;
you’re the one who demands to know:
Why do I suffer? Why am I ignorant?
Cells in a great darkness. Some machine made us;
it is your turn to address it, to go back asking
what am I for? What am I for?

All My Pretty Ones- Anne Sexton

Father, this year's jink rides us apart
where you followed our mother to her cold slumber;
a second shock boiling its stone to your heart,
leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber
you from the residence you could not afford:
a gold key, your half of a woolen mill,
twenty suits from Dunne's, an English Ford,
the love and legal verbiage of another will,
boxes of pictures of people I do not know.
I touch their cardboard faces. They must go.

But the eyes, as thick as wood in this album,
hold me. I stop here, where a small boy
waits in a ruffled dress for someone to come...
for this soldier who holds his bugle like a toy
or for this velvet lady who cannot smile.
Is this your father's father, this Commodore
in a mailman suit? My father, time meanwhile
has made it unimportant who you are looking for.
I'll never know what these faces are all about.
I lock them into their book and throw them out.

This is the yellow scrapbook that you began
the year I was born; as crackling now and wrinkly
as tobacco leaves: clippings where Hoover outran
the Democrats, wiggling his dry finger at me
and Prohibition; news where the Hindenburg went
down and recent years where you went flush
on war. This year, solvent but sick, you meant
to marry that pretty widow in a one-month rush.
But before you had that second chance, I cried
on your fat shoulder. Three days later you died.

These are the snapshots of marriage, stopped in places.
Side by side at the rail toward Nassau now;
here, with the winner's cup at the speedboat races,
here, in tails at the Cotillion, you take a bow,


here, by our kennel of dogs with their pink eyes,
running like show-bred pigs in their chain-link pen;
here, at the horseshow where my sister wins a prize;
Now I fold you down, my drunkard, my navigator,
my first lost keeper, to love or look at later.


I hold a five-year diary that my mother kept
for three years, telling all she does not say
of your alcoholic tendency. You overslept,
she writes. My God, father, each Christmas Day
with your blood, will I drink down your glass
of wine? The diary of your hurly-burly years
goes to my shelf to wait for my age to pass.
Only in this hoarded span will love persevere.
Whether you are pretty or not, I outlive you,
bend down my strange face to yours and forgive you.

Wantobe

Or that Irish proverb- Briseann an duchais tri shuile an chait.