Poem- "My Papa's Waltz"

"My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke


The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

There are two (at least) different connotations to this poem. One is that a father and son are dancing (horribly) around their kitchen, much to the mother's chagrin. The second is that the father is actually drunk and beating his son, again, much to the mother's chagrin.

When I first read this poem, I took the positive road and believed that the first scenario was true. The father, off from a hard day's work, had a little drink and decided to dance around the kitchen with his son, missing a few steps and stumbling all over the place. However, the second second scenario is, unfortunately, what I believe the poem is about now. The father is so drunk that a small boy (his son?) could get dizzy on the fumes of his breath. The mother was looking on, afraid to stop what the father was doing because there was always the chance that he would turn on her next. The father "beat time on [the son's] head, and then walked him off to bed, with the boy "still clinging to [his] shirt." Even though the boy may have just been beaten by his father, he still loves him and forgives him just as easily.

I really like this poem because it is really open to many different perceptions. It could be a pleasant family charade, or it could be some horrid event that scars the child for life, or it could mean something completely different. Not only are the perceptions different, they are polar opposite, which is something really difficult to do when writing a poem. Though I'd like to believe that the first scenario is what's happening, I can't hep but to be more convinced of the second. What do you think?