To My Father, Worried By Cancer

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How may I, lifting how many

tiresome years, look at you now,

now at night after sixty years,

my father? You are quiet,

quiet and sober, reluctant

as a withered daffodil

to think your young bloom sorrowing.

You would believe me glad

if you could. In my mind

there are so many tiresome briars

and if I should burn them down,

you would be left in the centre of all their vanished fires,

father of mine, standing as you were.

But I will weep – if you prefer.

I am your son (you have your father still).

I am lost to know what to do

but to go on down the hill

with my father in me and you, my father, there –

but believe me, if you can, this son of yours

is part-you, as you were, in your twenty-sixth year.

(from “The Light Of Day, Vol. 1” – to be published later this year)