80
My father was to me ‘the murderer’,
until I met him when I was twenty.
Then I saw he was just a youngster
and that the gift I have he gave to me.
In his face he had my blue-eyed stare,
a sweet and sly smile in his misery.
He went about the world a wanderer;
more than one woman loved and fed him freely.
He was cheery and laid-back; my mother
felt the weight of all life’s burdens.
He slipped out of her hand like a football.
She warned me: ‘Don’t be like your father.’
I later understood in my own person:
they were two races in an ancient quarrel.