Birdsong

We are pursued by the dying birdsong of our fathers.
Ghost-grey and balding, bearded since pubescence,
their melody is blank recognition on the bus
past the schoolboy memorial: joyriding around a curve,



now with altar, the son-less father a builder,
an eagle spreading blue 'cross his back, who
inscribes the scene with fresh flowers each day;
bravado of night obscuring any elegy:

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The worn-out sorrow of a Yorkshire reticence,
forced to hide in the pub – a fight he laughs through -
the mistresses waiting for their convict husbands
to reinstate themselves. And all will be forgiven.

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Push the button, you told me ten minutes from home,
the pneumatic gulp of the doors. Leaning against the wall,
phlegmatic, out with workmates you said,
sucked in air and looked anywhere but my face.

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Advised me to shag as many girls as possible,
before moving away and vomiting
the booze and the guilt beside a dead cat,
curling up into the shadows of the dry-stone wall.

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Blushing like the virgin I am, this tune follows
me down a street without dead cats or vomit.
Lit up with something other than memory,
I walk towards a house in the rectangle of night.