Ezekiel is a poet of ordinary human situations and common human relationships. He has composed some very fine poems out of common and ordinary characters and situations. Ezekiel has centered his attention most on family relationship-the interaction between the poet and his immediate family – wife, children and parents. All these three categories find adequate place in his confessional poetry. No Indian English poet has written so copiously and so nicely on family relationship as Ezekiel. Family life is the source from which one derives warm humanism and compassion for all. Ezekiel has written dispassionately about the bruises and balm, hurt and healing, rewards and pains of family life. His family poems are pervaded with gentle humour, wit and irony.
Marriage, the most enduring of all human relationships finds a prominent place in his poetry. In "Marriage" he describes the two main stages of marital life. In the first stage the newly married lovers feel ecstasy:
“Lovers, when they marry, faceEternity with touching grace,Complacent at being fatedNever to be separated.”
The ecstasy is short-lived. It vanishes with the honeymoon. Discords begin. Marital peace and joy are disturbed. The poet ironically laughs:
“The bride is always pretty, the groomA lucky man. The darkened roomRoars out the joy of flesh and blood,The use of nakedness is good.”
He frankly confesses:
“.. ..many times we cameApart, we came together. The sameThing over and over again.Then suddenly the mark of CainBegan to show on her and me.”
"His dreams of marital harmony, peace and joy were shattered. In "Case Study" he resigned himself to his fate and thought: "His marriage was the worst mistake of all."
A sharp observer of marital life, Ezekiel knew that the ordinariness and the sameness of experiences always overshadowed the joys of married life. The realistic and anti-romantic attitude towards married life is nicely described in "To A Certain Lady":
“Then, absence and quarrels, indifferenceSucking life teeth upon the flesh,Crude acceptance of the need for one anotherTasteless encounters in the dark, dailyCompanionship with neither love nor hateBy an image are redeemed,By a mode of love expanding to a way of life,In high gentleness and power from the perfect will,Enduring all and coming through at lastFrom a not-this not-that to the final goal.”
The poet reaches the conclusion that husband and wife should try to create harmony, mutual understanding and acceptance for a successful and peaceful marital life. Such a vision strengthens their relationship and inspires them to be of service to each other, the children and the world at large:
“Destroying or creating, moving or standing still,Always we must be lovers,Man and wife at work upon the hardMass of material which is the worldRelated all the time to one another and to life,Not merely keeping house and paying billsAnd being worried when the kids are ill.”
"Jewish Wedding in Bombay" frankly describes what happens on his married day. With a touch of rare humour the poet describes the most poignant aspect of marital disharmony:
“During our first serious marriage quarrel she said why didYou take my virginity from me? I would gladly haveReturned it, but not one of the books I had readinstructed me how.”
"Division", "Tonight", "A Marriage" and "Song to be shouted at" reveal various aspects of marital life. In "Sonnet" Ezekiel rationalises how the warmth of love and intensity of mutual affection gradually vanish:
“At first the beloved merely finds fault,Later comes the slow unresponsive kiss,Between the first encounter and the friends,And the friend no more, the truth is knownThe truth is in the face when morning breaks.”
In “Marriage Poems" the poet comes out of the morass of cynicism about the success of marital life. He explores the glory of sacrificial love that keeps marital bonds intact:
“Between the acts of wedded loveA quieter passion flows,Which keeps the nuptial pattern firm?As passion comes and goesAnd in the soil of wedded loveRears a white rose.”
Ezekiel gives due place and recognition to sexual passion but he highlights the importance of sublime and self-sacrificing love which is the anchor or happiness in married life:
“Earthly love, O earthly love,Be active when you will.But let the quieter passion comeTo every love tillThe nuptial pattern is secure,And I am still.”
Ezekiel's marital poems reveal his constant growth as man and poet. Intolerance gives place to tolerance and acceptance. He has learnt experimentally to accept people and things as they are, growing in wisdom and tolerance.
Besides poems of marital life, Ezekiel draws memorable picture of his parents and children in his poems of domestic life. In the first of his "Poster Poems" he pays homage to his professor father from whom he derived his rationality and intellectuality. His mother is vividly remembered in "Cows", "Night of the Scorpion" and "A Daughter's Illness". "Night of the Scorpion" integrates the family with the community, the superstitious with the rational and the scientific, the concern of the father, the children and the neighbours for the mother stung by the scorpion, and the mother's strong love for her children:
“My mother only said,Thank God the scorpion picked on meand spared my children.”
Ezekiel’s poems on children reveal his pleasant domestic life. In "Case Study" he reveals a cynical attitude towards domestic life and appears to be an indifferent father. He feels himself hampered and condemned in domestic life:
“His marriage was the worst mistake of all.Although he loved his children when they came,He spoilt them too with just that extra doll,or discipline which drove them to the wall,His wife and changing servants did the same—A man is damned in that domestic game.”
He washes out this image in "For Kalpana", "For Elkana" and so on. In these poems he reveals how he and his wife are concerned about their daughter and son Elkana. Ezekiel prays that his children should not emulate his example, as he is "the unfinished man". He prays in "Poster Poems" (XIV):
"Protect my childrenfrom my secret wishto make them overin my image and illusions.Let them moveto the music that they love,dissonant, perhaps, to me."
Ezekiel's family poems are conspicuous for frankness and intimacy, humour and irony. He conceals nothing. There is a confessional note in them and they reveal the growth of his outlook and personality. There is a note of bitterness and, even, cynicism in his early poems on domestic life, but his recent poems are humorous and show him a poet of tolerance, acceptance and adjustment.