To my Father
It was tough that I was born during the war:
my sister's death had already scouredyou raw.
It's hard to credit your love's muffled spark,
so damped down by this atmosphere of death,
could find its way through an unlikely crack
to favour me with unexpected breath.
And it made less sense as I grew older,
in the wake of ahot war that grew colder;
plant a blitzkrieg, harvest gulags - hard work
so young, to grope after patterns in that murk.
Impassive, you endured both war and grief,
sharing small comfort with your timid wife:
dying, you wept to leave my mum alone
and showed me what, till then, I'd never known.
Pete Hulme Text O July 2012