Jim Burns
The Benefits
My late father-in-law,
like many men of his generation,
had seen a thing or two.
Behind German lines in 1940,
a village square, the defiant ones
tied up and bayoneted.
A view from a weaving truck
as a Stuka divebombed it down
into a mess of screaming men.
The dreary beaches at Dunkirk,
the drab lines of tired khaki,
the grey ships standing offshore.
That Stuka left him partially deaf,
enough to cut him out of the everyday,
to escape bickering and complaints,
though, curiously, I often noticed
that asked quietly in a noisy pub,
he heard me, and stated his choice.
Now, in rooms of the ambitious,
with the demanding, or the shrill,
and among the politically vicious,
I begin to understand the benefits
of having seen a thing or two,
and of an occasional deafness.
Page(s) 35
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