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Best Famous September Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous September poems. This is a select list of the best famous September poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous September poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of september poems.

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Written by Anne Sexton | Create an image from this poem

The Double Image

 1.
I am thirty this November.
You are still small, in your fourth year.
We stand watching the yellow leaves go *****, flapping in the winter rain.
falling flat and washed.
And I remember mostly the three autumns you did not live here.
They said I'd never get you back again.
I tell you what you'll never really know: all the medical hypothesis that explained my brain will never be as true as these struck leaves letting go.
I, who chose two times to kill myself, had said your nickname the mewling mouths when you first came; until a fever rattled in your throat and I moved like a pantomine above your head.
Ugly angels spoke to me.
The blame, I heard them say, was mine.
They tattled like green witches in my head, letting doom leak like a broken faucet; as if doom had flooded my belly and filled your bassinet, an old debt I must assume.
Death was simpler than I'd thought.
The day life made you well and whole I let the witches take away my guilty soul.
I pretended I was dead until the white men pumped the poison out, putting me armless and washed through the rigamarole of talking boxes and the electric bed.
I laughed to see the private iron in that hotel.
Today the yellow leaves go *****.
You ask me where they go I say today believed in itself, or else it fell.
Today, my small child, Joyce, love your self's self where it lives.
There is no special God to refer to; or if there is, why did I let you grow in another place.
You did not know my voice when I came back to call.
All the superlatives of tomorrow's white tree and mistletoe will not help you know the holidays you had to miss.
The time I did not love myself, I visited your shoveled walks; you held my glove.
There was new snow after this.
2.
They sent me letters with news of you and I made moccasins that I would never use.
When I grew well enough to tolerate myself, I lived with my mother, the witches said.
But I didn't leave.
I had my portrait done instead.
Part way back from Bedlam I came to my mother's house in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
And this is how I came to catch at her; and this is how I lost her.
I cannot forgive your suicide, my mother said.
And she never could.
She had my portrait done instead.
I lived like an angry guest, like a partly mended thing, an outgrown child.
I remember my mother did her best.
She took me to Boston and had my hair restyled.
Your smile is like your mother's, the artist said.
I didn't seem to care.
I had my portrait done instead.
There was a church where I grew up with its white cupboards where they locked us up, row by row, like puritans or shipmates singing together.
My father passed the plate.
Too late to be forgiven now, the witches said.
I wasn't exactly forgiven.
They had my portrait done instead.
3.
All that summer sprinklers arched over the seaside grass.
We talked of drought while the salt-parched field grew sweet again.
To help time pass I tried to mow the lawn and in the morning I had my portrait done, holding my smile in place, till it grew formal.
Once I mailed you a picture of a rabbit and a postcard of Motif number one, as if it were normal to be a mother and be gone.
They hung my portrait in the chill north light, matching me to keep me well.
Only my mother grew ill.
She turned from me, as if death were catching, as if death transferred, as if my dying had eaten inside of her.
That August you were two, by I timed my days with doubt.
On the first of September she looked at me and said I gave her cancer.
They carved her sweet hills out and still I couldn't answer.
4.
That winter she came part way back from her sterile suite of doctors, the seasick cruise of the X-ray, the cells' arithmetic gone wild.
Surgery incomplete, the fat arm, the prognosis poor, I heard them say.
During the sea blizzards she had here own portrait painted.
A cave of mirror placed on the south wall; matching smile, matching contour.
And you resembled me; unacquainted with my face, you wore it.
But you were mine after all.
I wintered in Boston, childless bride, nothing sweet to spare with witches at my side.
I missed your babyhood, tried a second suicide, tried the sealed hotel a second year.
On April Fool you fooled me.
We laughed and this was good.
5.
I checked out for the last time on the first of May; graduate of the mental cases, with my analysts's okay, my complete book of rhymes, my typewriter and my suitcases.
All that summer I learned life back into my own seven rooms, visited the swan boats, the market, answered the phone, served cocktails as a wife should, made love among my petticoats and August tan.
And you came each weekend.
But I lie.
You seldom came.
I just pretended you, small piglet, butterfly girl with jelly bean cheeks, disobedient three, my splendid stranger.
And I had to learn why I would rather die than love, how your innocence would hurt and how I gather guilt like a young intern his symptons, his certain evidence.
That October day we went to Gloucester the red hills reminded me of the dry red fur fox coat I played in as a child; stock still like a bear or a tent, like a great cave laughing or a red fur fox.
We drove past the hatchery, the hut that sells bait, past Pigeon Cove, past the Yacht Club, past Squall's Hill, to the house that waits still, on the top of the sea, and two portraits hung on the opposite walls.
6.
In north light, my smile is held in place, the shadow marks my bone.
What could I have been dreaming as I sat there, all of me waiting in the eyes, the zone of the smile, the young face, the foxes' snare.
In south light, her smile is held in place, her cheeks wilting like a dry orchid; my mocking mirror, my overthrown love, my first image.
She eyes me from that face that stony head of death I had outgrown.
The artist caught us at the turning; we smiled in our canvas home before we chose our foreknown separate ways.
The dry redfur fox coat was made for burning.
I rot on the wall, my own Dorian Gray.
And this was the cave of the mirror, that double woman who stares at herself, as if she were petrified in time -- two ladies sitting in umber chairs.
You kissed your grandmother and she cried.
7.
I could not get you back except for weekends.
You came each time, clutching the picture of a rabbit that I had sent you.
For the last time I unpack your things.
We touch from habit.
The first visit you asked my name.
Now you will stay for good.
I will forget how we bumped away from each other like marionettes on strings.
It wasn't the same as love, letting weekends contain us.
You scrape your knee.
You learn my name, wobbling up the sidewalk, calling and crying.
You can call me mother and I remember my mother again, somewhere in greater Boston, dying.
I remember we named you Joyce so we could call you Joy.
You came like an awkward guest that first time, all wrapped and moist and strange at my heavy breast.
I needed you.
I didn't want a boy, only a girl, a small milky mouse of a girl, already loved, already loud in the house of herself.
We named you Joy.
I, who was never quite sure about being a girl, needed another life, another image to remind me.
And this was my worst guilt; you could not cure or soothe it.
I made you to find me.


Written by Elizabeth Bishop | Create an image from this poem

Sestina

 September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother sits in the kitchen with the child beside the Little Marvel Stove, reading the jokes from the almanac, laughing and talking to hide her tears.
She thinks that her equinoctial tears and the rain that beats on the roof of the house were both foretold by the almanac, but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child, It's time for tea now; but the child is watching the teakettle's small hard tears dance like mad on the hot black stove, the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother hangs up the clever almanac on its string.
Birdlike, the almanac hovers half open above the child, hovers above the old grandmother and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.
It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house and a winding pathway.
Then the child puts in a man with buttons like tears and shows it proudly to the grandmother.
But secretly, while the grandmother busies herself about the stove, the little moons fall down like tears from between the pages of the almanac into the flower bed the child has carefully placed in the front of the house.
Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove and the child draws another inscrutable house.
Written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Create an image from this poem

The Poets Calendar

 January

Janus am I; oldest of potentates; 
Forward I look, and backward, and below 
I count, as god of avenues and gates, 
The years that through my portals come and go.
I block the roads, and drift the fields with snow; I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen fen; My frosts congeal the rivers in their flow, My fires light up the hearths and hearts of men.
February I am lustration, and the sea is mine! I wash the sands and headlands with my tide; My brow is crowned with branches of the pine; Before my chariot-wheels the fishes glide.
By me all things unclean are purified, By me the souls of men washed white again; E'en the unlovely tombs of those who died Without a dirge, I cleanse from every stain.
March I Martius am! Once first, and now the third! To lead the Year was my appointed place; A mortal dispossessed me by a word, And set there Janus with the double face.
Hence I make war on all the human race; I shake the cities with my hurricanes; I flood the rivers and their banks efface, And drown the farms and hamlets with my rains.
April I open wide the portals of the Spring To welcome the procession of the flowers, With their gay banners, and the birds that sing Their song of songs from their aerial towers.
I soften with my sunshine and my showers The heart of earth; with thoughts of love I glide Into the hearts of men; and with the Hours Upon the Bull with wreathed horns I ride.
May Hark! The sea-faring wild-fowl loud proclaim My coming, and the swarming of the bees.
These are my heralds, and behold! my name Is written in blossoms on the hawthorn-trees.
I tell the mariner when to sail the seas; I waft o'er all the land from far away The breath and bloom of the Hesperides, My birthplace.
I am Maia.
I am May.
June Mine is the Month of Roses; yes, and mine The Month of Marriages! All pleasant sights And scents, the fragrance of the blossoming vine, The foliage of the valleys and the heights.
Mine are the longest days, the loveliest nights; The mower's scythe makes music to my ear; I am the mother of all dear delights; I am the fairest daughter of the year.
July My emblem is the Lion, and I breathe The breath of Libyan deserts o'er the land; My sickle as a sabre I unsheathe, And bent before me the pale harvests stand.
The lakes and rivers shrink at my command, And there is thirst and fever in the air; The sky is changed to brass, the earth to sand; I am the Emperor whose name I bear.
August The Emperor Octavian, called the August, I being his favorite, bestowed his name Upon me, and I hold it still in trust, In memory of him and of his fame.
I am the Virgin, and my vestal flame Burns less intensely than the Lion's rage; Sheaves are my only garlands, and I claim The golden Harvests as my heritage.
September I bear the Scales, where hang in equipoise The night and day; and whenunto my lips I put my trumpet, with its stress and noise Fly the white clouds like tattered sails of ships; The tree-tops lash the air with sounding whips; Southward the clamorous sea-fowl wing their flight; The hedges are all red with haws and hips, The Hunter's Moon reigns empress of the night.
October My ornaments are fruits; my garments leaves, Woven like cloth of gold, and crimson dyed; I do no boast the harvesting of sheaves, O'er orchards and o'er vineyards I preside.
Though on the frigid Scorpion I ride, The dreamy air is full, and overflows With tender memories of the summer-tide, And mingled voices of the doves and crows.
November The Centaur, Sagittarius, am I, Born of Ixion's and the cloud's embrace; With sounding hoofs across the earth I fly, A steed Thessalian with a human face.
Sharp winds the arrows are with which I chase The leaves, half dead already with affright; I shroud myself in gloom; and to the race Of mortals bring nor comfort nor delight.
December Riding upon the Goat, with snow-white hair, I come, the last of all.
This crown of mine Is of the holly; in my hand I bear The thyrsus, tipped with fragrant cones of pine.
I celebrate the birth of the Divine, And the return of the Saturnian reign;-- My songs are carols sung at every shrine, Proclaiming "Peace on earth, good will to men.
"
Written by Allen Ginsberg | Create an image from this poem

September On Jessore Road

 Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to **** but sand channel ruts

Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go

One Million aunts are dying for bread
One Million uncles lamenting the dead
Grandfather millions homeless and sad
Grandmother millions silently mad

Millions of daughters walk in the mud
Millions of children wash in the flood
A Million girls vomit & groan
Millions of families hopeless alone

Millions of souls nineteenseventyone
homeless on Jessore road under grey sun
A million are dead, the million who can
Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan

Taxi September along Jessore Road
Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load
past watery fields thru rain flood ruts
Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts

Wet processions Families walk
Stunted boys big heads don't talk
Look bony skulls & silent round eyes
Starving black angels in human disguise

Mother squats weeping & points to her sons
Standing thin legged like elderly nuns
small bodied hands to their mouths in prayer
Five months small food since they settled there

on one floor mat with small empty pot
Father lifts up his hands at their lot
Tears come to their mother's eye
Pain makes mother Maya cry

Two children together in palmroof shade
Stare at me no word is said
Rice ration, lentils one time a week
Milk powder for warweary infants meek

No vegetable money or work for the man
Rice lasts four days eat while they can
Then children starve three days in a row
and vomit their next food unless they eat slow.
On Jessore road Mother wept at my knees Bengali tongue cried mister Please Identity card torn up on the floor Husband still waits at the camp office door Baby at play I was washing the flood Now they won't give us any more food The pieces are here in my celluloid purse Innocent baby play our death curse Two policemen surrounded by thousands of boys Crowded waiting their daily bread joys Carry big whistles & long bamboo sticks to whack them in line They play hungry tricks Breaking the line and jumping in front Into the circle sneaks one skinny runt Two brothers dance forward on the mud stage Teh gaurds blow their whistles & chase them in rage Why are these infants massed in this place Laughing in play & pushing for space Why do they wait here so cheerful & dread Why this is the House where they give children bread The man in the bread door Cries & comes out Thousands of boys and girls Take up his shout Is it joy? is it prayer? "No more bread today" Thousands of Children at once scream "Hooray!" Run home to tents where elders await Messenger children with bread from the state No bread more today! & and no place to squat Painful baby, sick **** he has got.
Malnutrition skulls thousands for months Dysentery drains bowels all at once Nurse shows disease card Enterostrep Suspension is wanting or else chlorostrep Refugee camps in hospital shacks Newborn lay naked on mother's thin laps Monkeysized week old Rheumatic babe eye Gastoenteritis Blood Poison thousands must die September Jessore Road rickshaw 50,000 souls in one camp I saw Rows of bamboo huts in the flood Open drains, & wet families waiting for food Border trucks flooded, food cant get past, American Angel machine please come fast! Where is Ambassador Bunker today? Are his Helios machinegunning children at play? Where are the helicopters of U.
S.
AID? Smuggling dope in Bangkok's green shade.
Where is America's Air Force of Light? Bombing North Laos all day and all night? Where are the President's Armies of Gold? Billionaire Navies merciful Bold? Bringing us medicine food and relief? Napalming North Viet Nam and causing more grief? Where are our tears? Who weeps for the pain? Where can these families go in the rain? Jessore Road's children close their big eyes Where will we sleep when Our Father dies? Whom shall we pray to for rice and for care? Who can bring bread to this **** flood foul'd lair? Millions of children alone in the rain! Millions of children weeping in pain! Ring O ye tongues of the world for their woe Ring out ye voices for Love we don't know Ring out ye bells of electrical pain Ring in the conscious of America brain How many children are we who are lost Whose are these daughters we see turn to ghost? What are our souls that we have lost care? Ring out ye musics and weep if you dare-- Cries in the mud by the thatch'd house sand drain Sleeps in huge pipes in the wet ****-field rain waits by the pump well, Woe to the world! whose children still starve in their mother's arms curled.
Is this what I did to myself in the past? What shall I do Sunil Poet I asked? Move on and leave them without any coins? What should I care for the love of my loins? What should we care for our cities and cars? What shall we buy with our Food Stamps on Mars? How many millions sit down in New York & sup this night's table on bone & roast pork? How many millions of beer cans are tossed in Oceans of Mother? How much does She cost? Cigar gasolines and asphalt car dreams Stinking the world and dimming star beams-- Finish the war in your breast with a sigh Come tast the tears in your own Human eye Pity us millions of phantoms you see Starved in Samsara on planet TV How many millions of children die more before our Good Mothers perceive the Great Lord? How many good fathers pay tax to rebuild Armed forces that boast the children they've killed? How many souls walk through Maya in pain How many babes in illusory pain? How many families hollow eyed lost? How many grandmothers turning to ghost? How many loves who never get bread? How many Aunts with holes in their head? How many sisters skulls on the ground? How many grandfathers make no more sound? How many fathers in woe How many sons nowhere to go? How many daughters nothing to eat? How many uncles with swollen sick feet? Millions of babies in pain Millions of mothers in rain Millions of brothers in woe Millions of children nowhere to go New York, November 14-16, 1971
Written by Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden | Create an image from this poem

September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.


Written by Hilaire Belloc | Create an image from this poem

September

 1 The golden-rod is yellow; 
2 The corn is turning brown;
3 The trees in apple orchards
4 With fruit are bending down.
5 The gentian's bluest fringes 6 Are curling in the sun; 7 In dusty pods the milkweed 8 Its hidden silk has spun.
9 The sedges flaunt their harvest, 10 In every meadow nook; 11 And asters by the brook-side 12 Make asters in the brook, 13 From dewy lanes at morning 14 The grapes' sweet odors rise; 15 At noon the roads all flutter 16 With yellow butterflies.
17 By all these lovely tokens 18 September days are here, 19 With summer's best of weather, 20 And autumn's best of cheer.
21 But none of all this beauty 22 Which floods the earth and air 23 Is unto me the secret 24 Which makes September fair.
25 'T is a thing which I remember; 26 To name it thrills me yet: 27 One day of one September 28 I never can forget.
Written by John Greenleaf Whittier | Create an image from this poem

The Pumpkin

 Oh, greenly and fair in the lands of the sun,
The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run,
And the rock and the tree and the cottage enfold,
With broad leaves all greenness and blossoms all gold,
Like that which o'er Nineveh's prophet once grew,
While he waited to know that his warning was true,
And longed for the storm-cloud, and listened in vain
For the rush of the whirlwind and red fire-rain.
On the banks of the Xenil the dark Spanish maiden Comes up with the fruit of the tangled vine laden; And the Creole of Cuba laughs out to behold Through orange-leaves shining the broad spheres of gold; Yet with dearer delight from his home in the North, On the fields of his harvest the Yankee looks forth, Where crook-necks are coiling and yellow fruit shines, And the sun of September melts down on his vines.
Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West, From North and from South comes the pilgrim and guest; When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board The old broken links of affection restored; When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more, And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before; What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye, What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie? Oh, fruit loved of boyhood! the old days recalling, When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling! When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin, Glaring out through the dark with a candle within! When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune, Our chair a broad pumpkin, -- our lantern the moon, Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team! Then thanks for thy present! none sweeter or better E'er smoked from an oven or circled a platter! Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine, Brighter eyes never watched o'er its baking, than thine! And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express, Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less, That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below, And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow, And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie!
Written by Geoffrey Hill | Create an image from this poem

September Song

 born 19.
6.
32 - deported 24.
9.
42 Undesirable you may have been, untouchable you were not.
Not forgotten or passed over at the proper time.
As estimated, you died.
Things marched, sufficient, to that end.
Just so much Zyklon and leather, patented terror, so many routine cries.
(I have made an elegy for myself it is true) September fattens on vines.
Roses flake from the wall.
The smoke of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.
This is plenty.
This is more than enough.
Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

A Ballad of Burial

 ("Saint Proxed's ever was the Church for peace")
If down here I chance to die,
 Solemnly I beg you take
All that is left of "I"
 To the Hills for old sake's sake,
Pack me very thoroughly
 In the ice that used to slake
Pegs I drank when I was dry --
 This observe for old sake's sake.
To the railway station hie, There a single ticket take For Umballa -- goods-train -- I Shall not mind delay or shake.
I shall rest contentedly Spite of clamor coolies make; Thus in state and dignity Send me up for old sake's sake.
Next the sleepy Babu wake, Book a Kalka van "for four.
" Few, I think, will care to make Journeys with me any more As they used to do of yore.
I shall need a "special" break -- Thing I never took before -- Get me one for old sake's sake.
After that -- arrangements make.
No hotel will take me in, And a bullock's back would break 'Neath the teak and leaden skin Tonga ropes are frail and thin, Or, did I a back-seat take, In a tonga I might spin, -- Do your best for old sake's sake.
After that -- your work is done.
Recollect a Padre must Mourn the dear departed one -- Throw the ashes and the dust.
Don't go down at once.
I trust You will find excuse to "snake Three days' casual on the bust.
" Get your fun for old sake's sake.
I could never stand the Plains.
Think of blazing June and May Think of those September rains Yearly till the Judgment Day! I should never rest in peace, I should sweat and lie awake.
Rail me then, on my decease, To the Hills for old sake's sake.
Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

INCOMPATABILITIES

 For Brenda Williams



La lune diminue; divin septembre.
Divine September the moon wanes.
Pierre Jean Jouve Themes for poems and the detritus of dreams coalesce: This is one September I shall not forget.
The grammar-school caretaker always had the boards re-blacked And the floors waxed, but I never shone.
The stripes of the red and black blazer Were prison-grey.
You could never see things that way: Your home had broken windows to the street.
You had the mortification of lice in your hair While I had the choice of Brylcreem or orange pomade.
Four children, an alcoholic father and An Irish immigrant mother.
Failure’s metaphor.
I did not make it like Alan Bennett, Who still sends funny postcards About our Leeds childhood.
Of your’s, you could never speak And found my nostalgia Wholly inappropriate.
Forgetting your glasses for the eleven plus, No money for the uniform for the pass at thirteen.
It wasn’t - as I imagined - shame that kept you from telling But fear of the consequences for your mother Had you sobbed the night’s terrors Of your father’s drunken homecomings, Your mother sat with the door open In all weathers while you, the oldest, Waited with her, perhaps Something might have been done.
He never missed a day’s work digging graves, Boasting he could do a six-footer Single-handed in two hours flat.
That hackneyed phrase ‘He drank all his wages’ Doesn’t convey his nightly rages The flow of obscenities about menstruation While the three younger ones were in bed And you waited with your mother To walk the streets of Seacroft.
“Your father murdered your mother” As Auntie Margaret said, Should a witness Need indicting.
Your mother’s growing cancer went diagnosed, but unremarked Until the final days She was too busy auxiliary nursing Or working in the Lakeside Caf?.
It was her wages that put bread and jam And baked beans into your stomachs.
Her final hospitalisation Was the arena for your father’s last rage Her fare interfering with the night’s drinking; He fought in the Burma Campaign but won no medals.
Some kind of psychiatric discharge- ‘paranoia’ Lurked in his papers.
The madness went undiagnosed Until his sixtieth birthday.
You never let me meet him Even after our divorce.
In the end you took me on a visit with the children.
A neat flat with photographs of grandchildren, Stacks of wood for the stove, washing hung precisely In the kitchen, a Sunday suit in the wardrobe.
An unwrinkling of smiles, the hard handshake Of work-roughened hands.
One night he smashed up the tidy flat.
The TV screen was powder The clock ticked on the neat lawn ‘Murder in Seacroft Hospital’ Emblazoned on the kitchen wall.
I went with you and your sister in her car to Roundhay Wing.
Your sister had to leave for work or sleep You had to back to meet the children from school.
For Ward 42 it wasn’t an especially difficult admission.
My first lesson: I shut one set of firedoors while the charge nurse Bolted the other but after five minutes his revolt Was over and he signed the paper.
The nurse on nights had a sociology degree And an interest in borderline schizophrenia.
After lightsout we chatted about Kohut and Kernberg And Melanie Klein.
Your father was occasionally truculent, Barricading himself in on one home leave.
Nothing out of the way For a case of that kind.
The old ladies on the estate sighed, Single men were very scarce.
Always a gentleman, tipping His cap to the ladies.
There seems to be objections in the family to poetry Or at least to the kind that actually speaks And fails to lie down quietly on command.
Yours seems to have set mine alight- I must get something right.