Edwin Brock
Happy Families
Ready for Christmas,
if you make it, in
a white ward between
white sheets, too old
for amputation, so
dying from a black toe
up, suddenly the family
remembers practised faces
and a tiptoe walk,
keeps a ledger of
those who visit and
those who stay away.
I am expected to
be absent, and am:
can no more play this
game whose rules I know
as I know my name:
the words to say, the
gifts to take, the calls
to make to long-lost
kin. Somewhere the mould
must break - it is where
I came in, as cold as
the charity they hate.
Fear fades all other
feelings, and this family
squanders fear: or rather
is cemented by it.
For years its tongues have
talked always to one
about one other:
brother to brother
son against mother
like some war machine
whose propaganda
dissolves allegiances
and makes new pacts.
Ready for Christmas
if you make it, the
rooms are cleaned for
tinsel and glass things,
for a homecoming
a long way from home.
I walk past the House
of Cards, which no doubt
will have a record year:
I wish you well but wish
I could wish you love.
The River Dee runs
by my door: it is
a sad place to live.
Page(s) 32-33
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
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- Lamport Court
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- Monkey Kettle
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- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
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- Quarto
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- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The