In those days when my father was still big,
dangerous tools in the bulging pockets
of his jacket, in his suits the odours
of teased-out twine and lead,
behind his eyes the incomprehensible world
of a man, gas-fitter, first class,
said mother, in those days how different
my feelings were, when he would shut the doors
on her and me.

Now he is dead and I am suddenly as old as he,
it turns out to my surprise that he too had
decay built into him. In his diary I see
appointments with persons unknown, on his wall
calendars with gas-pipe labyrinths,
on the mantelpiece the portrait of a woman
in Paris, his woman, the incomprehensible
world of a man.

Looking into the little hand-basin of porcelain
dating from the ’thirties, with its silly pair of lions,
Johnson Brothers Ltd, high up in the dead-still
house the shuffle of mother’s slippers,
Jesus Christ, father, here come the tears
for now and for then – they flow together
into the lead of the swan-neck pipe,
no longer separable from the drops that come
from the little copper tap marked “cold”.