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CONVERSATION WITH MY DYING FATHER
Wasted arms, feeble knees,
eighty years old, hair thin and white,
cheek bonier than I’d remembered,
head bowed on his neck,
eyes open now and then he listened,
I read my father Wordsworth’s
Intimations of Immortality Ode.
‘Trailing clouds of glory do we come
from God who is our home.’
‘That’s beautiful,’ he said, ‘but it is not true.

When I was a boy,’ he continued, ‘we had
a house on Boyd Street Newark New Jersey.
The backyard was a big empty lot full of bushes
and whole grass. I always wondered
what was behind those trees.
When I grew older, I walked around the block
and found out what was back there, it was
a glue factory.’