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I visit when I can, bring flowers, kick stone.

I never find you there although

on sunny days I think you stop to share

philosophy on the old route up Helm Crag.

Ìý

Your paintings still look fresh. Some books

have gone, the army rucksack, twisted on

Mont Blanc, and all those yellowed copies

of ‘The Listener’ that you stored for years.

Ìý

We still move compost in your battered barrow,

un-dubbined boots are great to plant nasturtiums;

their laces are employed to tie wisteria trellises.

You don’t approve?Ìý You’d have to shout.

Ìý

It’s me now, struggling with the hearing aid.

I feed the stony soil, find new potatoes, then

help grandsons free the sweet green peas

we used to steal from you.Ìý I miss the talk

Ìý

we might have had – the way that argument

lifted the tired mouth, lit up the hooded eyes

caught in the mirror of the mahogany wardrobe

that, on reflection, looked better back in Newcastle.

My father’s cry comes without heart

into the morning Liverpool air:

‘whose rags and bones are ready for the cart?’

Ìý

Kids play football in the park. The mart

is open, but may the buyer beware.

My father’s cry comes without heart

Ìý

out of the Stanley Park. Dark clouds part,

weeping their rain on the unaware.

‘Whose rags and bones are ready...?’ For the cart

Ìý

is idle. Drink-fuelled it will all restart.

Like a loner lost in solitaire,

my father’s cry comes without heart

Ìý

ripping the evening smog. It’s a grotesque art

to shout, to curse, to fight and then declare

whose rags and bones are ready for the cart!

Ìý

His flesh and blood are ready to depart

into the night, without a prayer.

My father’s cry comes. Without heart,

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