Ashley Faulkner
His Grand-Daughter
His grand-daughter the new pride, how she reminded him
of the way things were when thoughts were lucid and clean:
the falling off his knee, the babbling at invisible shapes,
the fact that if she were left alone she would pull knives
from drawers and press bright dials on the gas cooker.
When the telephone rang he let her wander, but always
to the edge of his vision, no more: like she had once done,
removing her woollen grey jumper and slacks, muttering
close to the staircase and safe. He must have fallen asleep,
or at least caught himself making a noise: for when he jolted
her feet were laid out and her spine bent over the coal bucket,
something wrong with the turn of her elbows. Now his son
trusted him, the funeral tidies away, mother’s brain restored
in a suitable heaven--and so she walked, three years of age,
dipped her fingers into the coal bucket and sniffed hard,
frowning as he held the receiver and listened to a cut line.
Page(s) 150
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