For my Father

From you I reap the harvest of the blood
That beats within me as a wild bird's wing
Will wear away the wind; from you the shell
Carrying inwardly the surging flood
Conched at the ear of life, Like a great bell
From immemorial eaves your echoes ring.

Reverberant upon the muscled will
That moves me. Six long years have parted us
More than the oceans' swell; the incessant tides
Hiding the seasons in bear now no ill
To you above whose dreams the long wave slides
With slow compulsion, ceaseless and amorphous.

Yet there is more between us, Sir, than this
Deft separation at the waters' head,
And what remains is no mere silhouette
Shaped from your thigh and spirit. In the press
Time leaves us less than we would well forget
And much we lose is loss to self and pride.

Some few small details stand within the mind
Shaping our judgments. I remember how
We crossed a bridge in rain and you denied,
With bitter vehemence, the poet's kind
A berth to sleep in, water, thought, or bread,
Placing more worth in hammer, spade and plough.

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This I could understand from you, whose days
Were ladled out in soup-tins, whose sick soul
Was nurtured on the thin tare of the poor.
Yet what we most despise sometimes betrays
Our outer semblances, for in your role
Was poetry in plenty and to spare.

Your stance upon the cross-roads of the years
Was literal and speculative, but grace
Endowed you with a more enduring gift
Than we who have the words to voice our fears;
Texture more subtle worked among the weft
Deep threads of sorrow in your heart and face.

Now I can understand who have ridden the wave
Heart-high with storm, and who have been the sport
Of the cock-fighting sea, from starving solstice
To flooded equinox, from the trades to the brave
West winds of death, who set my prow towards peace,
But wrenched by the waters limp for any port.