By Today, entering the house from the garden,
I turned, involuntarily, to look back,
but saw nothing more than what is always there,
small rooms of eclectic evergreens – olive,
camellia, rhododendron, bay –
and, for some reason, I thought of my father
dead for almost as long as I have lived.
I have shuffled what I know of him
like a pack of cards in a game of patience
for a lifetime – would he approve, be proud,
that twenty six year old secular Jew
from North West London, a personable
young man by all accounts, whose friends were artists?
As I grew old enough to be his father,
and then his grandfather, I began
to think of him less and less with longing,
but always as my loss, and my mother’s,
when she lived, and his family’s – and my loss
had as much to do with a heritage lost
in that pack of cards as with lost love.
Today, I thought, for the first time, of what
he had lost – of all those years never known,
of all the sweetness of being alive –
and hoped, as he lay dying from sepsis
four thousand miles from those he loved,
he became too delirious to see
what he would never know.
KaddishNorth West Londonsecular Jewsepsis
Catherine Reynolds
August 27, 2021This is such a personal poem of loss, David. Loss of a father, a husband and friend to others. Loss of acknowledgement and feelings of being loved and valued. But, as you say, the loss of a life not yet fully lived, perhaps even not imagined. His death, many miles from home, distant from friends and family, is a tragic experience of things unrequited.
Sizwe Vilakazi
August 27, 2021Well augmented sense of loss
Ian Craine
August 28, 2021Moving, very moving
Ashen Venema
August 30, 2021As our world is grieving, our losses come to the fore.
You express yours so poignantly …
…I have shuffled what I know of him
like a pack of cards in a game of patience
for a lifetime – would he approve, be proud…
A line from Clarice Lispector comes to mind, from ‘A Breath of Life.’
… ‘Long live the dead because we live in them.’ …
Jane Barth
August 30, 2021‘of all the sweetness of being alive …’ This line cut into me and made me aware of how we waste that sweetness. We are so careless.
John Huddart
August 31, 2021It is the first verse which supplies the sense your father’s being still there. Gardens being the places of growth and the repositories of continuity, year in, year out. No wonder we are slaves to them. Fine poem.
arthur kemelman
September 1, 2021Just a few words to compliment you on – A Sort of Kaddish. I liked it very much. The way you handled the motifs of presence/non-presence, longing and loss and memories like playing cards created a very powerful and touching poem.
Las Finix
September 17, 2021What he had found –
for all those years premeditated
for being alive is not only in flesh
but in essence
he lay dying in sepsis
to be a witness-
And in delusion
became our history
That what is always there presents us
of who was and is – always there.
Alan Horne
October 4, 2021It’s all been said in the preceding comments, but this is a great poem.