Alfred Todd
Alfred Todd Is Dead
That's how they worded it, back then -
the telegram. Hardly poetry.
How would you describe the metre?
Two totters and a tumble?
A five-round burst of machine-gun fire
(with the usual corpse at the end)?
Not that it mattered, then.
I was too young, and it too personal,
for critical appraisal.
All I could think of was him:
proud, in his suit, with his son,
in the sun, in the garden
of the drying-out / psychiatric clinic.
I, the living evidence
to convince them of the truth
of all the rest.
That he'd had a wife, who died too young;
had sailed the seas; had had a son;
played cricket for his team, and sung his songs
in bars, in ports around the world.
This was just a spell in dry-dock,
cleaning up for some new voyage, he said.
And so it proved.
And Alfred Todd is dead.
the telegram. Hardly poetry.
How would you describe the metre?
Two totters and a tumble?
A five-round burst of machine-gun fire
(with the usual corpse at the end)?
Not that it mattered, then.
I was too young, and it too personal,
for critical appraisal.
All I could think of was him:
proud, in his suit, with his son,
in the sun, in the garden
of the drying-out / psychiatric clinic.
I, the living evidence
to convince them of the truth
of all the rest.
That he'd had a wife, who died too young;
had sailed the seas; had had a son;
played cricket for his team, and sung his songs
in bars, in ports around the world.
This was just a spell in dry-dock,
cleaning up for some new voyage, he said.
And so it proved.
And Alfred Todd is dead.
Page(s) 6
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