In memory of my father, Daniel Graham (1875-1951)

1

Ready to Fly

His body is dust.

His laugh, his shout,
his love, his fatherhood
are not well known.

The famous too
are dust
but they are known.

Words, poems, eurekas,
questions never before asked
left their still-living minds, found
nesting-places, brought forth young.

We talk of them
repeat their words
We see them
far away but clear.

How can the skies be full
of common folk?
How can their words,
love, strength and wisdom
bring forth young?

I have the words.

He has found
a nesting-place in me.
The young
are ready to fly.

 

 

 

 

2

Domain

This man went out to work
in the early light. The drystone walls
were written in his hand, the tight
barbed fences finished in his style.
He knew the patient art of topiary:
made smooth a half-mile-long
dishevelled hawthorn hedge, and sculpted
a lamb, a squirrel, and a hen and chickens.
He mowed the verges, cleared
the leisure-paths of weeds. The estate

was an exhibition of his art. It was the property
of a money-man: a totter-up of rents, a master
of dusty miners. Meadows, paddocks, copses
of delicate trembling silver birches were

his realty, and my father’s piece of Earth.

 

 

3

Frontier

My father stood quiet one day
on the little bridge across the Annick,
watching, watching the flow: white dances
around futile rocks, the cool procession
towards the sea. Then, ‘You see that sign?’

he said. I’d seen it many times:
the STRICTLY PRIVATE, nailed to a tree.
Eyes smiling, ‘If a trout,’ he said,
swims under the bridge this way,
he’s a private trout. But if he goes
that way, he’s free. Better off than us’.

I thought. ‘There’s another one down there.
It says NO FISHING. So over here he’s safe’.

‘That’s true’, he said, and we turned away.

 

 

 

4

Sunday

He read the Bible, listened
to the Morning Service and the News,
forbidding the ungodly Hit Parade.
He observed the day of rest, except
for gardening: he may have prayed
and got forgiveness from the Maker
of all living things. The News

was from a hell they called Korea.
While he listened and shook his head, I went
off to my room and read the ungodly Beano,
or down the riverbank to my cave. Korea

was a spectre. Then after tea,
down to the Mission Hall to hear
about another Hell, where poor goats
ended up, and Heaven where it was always

Sunday. Long, stern Sunday. Six days
my father worked, and talked, and laughed
at radio comedy, and I loved him.

5

Spud Gun

My mother finally surrendered,
bought me a spud-gun – for the sake of peace.

On the bus, I fondled it. It turned
into a Smith and Wesson. Home at last

I headed for the ammunition store
next to the kitchen, helped myself

to a spud, and went on a spree.
Took aim at a blackbird, missed.

A butterfly, and missed. So I took on
all the outlaws, desperados, bandits,

brigands, hoodlums, pirates,
who were in the garden at the time

and who thoughtfully stood still.
Happy and murderous, I did not see

my father at the gate. His face
was not cloudy. He held out

his hand, and raised his eyebrows,
and I laid down my arms.

‘How many have you killed?’
‘Oh, lots.They were all bad men.’

He hunkered down to my humble rank.
‘There are no bad men.

Men do bad things. See that
bad man just over there?’ – he pointed

to a floribunda rose in bloom
– ‘a little light that was in his head

went out. He’s dark inside. Did he
kill a man?’ I shrugged. ‘He couldn’t see

it was his brother. He must learn
to light his little lamp again.

Do you understand?’ I didn’t.
I nodded. ‘Time you had a bike’.

He buried my heater
somewhere in the woods.

May be there still, for all I care.

 

6

Elegy

‘Finish the hay today’, was the boss’s
peremptory command. ‘Expecting rain tomorrow’.
I don’t recall him ambling, strolling. Admirer
of Mussolini, he always strutted. Now

he strutted off to his affairs. Ripe hay
to feed his handsome horses, fast over fields
and graceful over gates and hedges. Steady,
quiet, sedate while the rowdy hounds
busied themselves with the fox. Tall hay

to be scythed and bundled, loaded, carried,
back and forth a mile each way. Rain tomorrow,
fill the store today: so back and forth old pony,
along the rutted road by the riverside,
up the winding rutted hill, and stiffly
down to the stables, back and forth till dusk.

The sun near setting, the valley in shadow,
old Bridget stopped on the rutted hill.
My father’s urge was gentle; faithfully
she won another yard or two, and stopped again.
We stood down, man and boy, and led her
gently to the summit, paused, caressed her.

‘This is too hard’, I said. ‘Aye, son’, he said.
‘He’s killing horse and man’. I was called home

from school one day soon after. I knew at once.
My father too had stopped. His sun had set.

7

Far away but clear

The young eagles have fledged: a species
of brave and kind moments is not extinct.

His love, his laugh, his stoicism, have left
the safe eyrie of my mortal memory

and can be seen, far away but clear,
climbing the tenuous air of the world.