Grandfather

Each day I see men
dri­ving their cars like
the dead. Tear­ing down the
high­way, some­times I dream
I am my grand­fa­ther
in the 2nd World War.
He sweats on Leyte
and shoots at the Nips,
as if he is his grand­fa­ther
forced into the fens
but still killing Sax­ons.
A smooth-tongued Welsh­man
who wish­es he knew
his grand­fa­ther-
exiled from Italy for know­ing
that even Rome burns.
While light­ing his pitch torch
my twice great grand­fa­ther
was think­ing of his grand­fa­ther
knap­ping stone knives
in what is now Africa.
A not-quite man whose grand­fa­ther
grins over his shoul­der
and is called Death.

3 thoughts on “Grandfather”

  1. yeah i had some tough times with word choice in here. ‘pre­tend­ing’ might be a bit too child­ish… i won­der what oth­er word i could use… any ideas?

    i’ve heard a few Sun Kil Moon songs, you should check out Red House Painters too, its the same dude. real mel­low.

  2. i like this, i think it’s among the bet­ter things you’ve writ­ten. i like the lay­ers upon lay­ers thing, and there is a dark­ness to the piece that is rich and nuanced. i am won­der­ing if “pre­tend­ing” might not be the per­fect word, but maybe that’s exact­ly the word you want to use. to me, that word sounds play­ful and option­al, while the poem itself sug­gests to me that there is lit­tle option here. to some small extent, your poem reminds me of a song from the sun kil moon album that is avail­able here: http://www.neumu.net/gramophone/songs/sun_kil_moon/glenn_tipton.mp3
    i’ve been lis­ten­ing to it over the last few days and the con­nec­tion i am speak­ing of is sim­ply one about gen­er­a­tions and doing as your father did, that sort of thing.

  3. i think what i was look­ing for, in place of “pre­tend­ing” is some con­struc­tion that basi­cal­ly means “being” — some­thing more direct. looks like you changed it to “as if he is” which i think is clos­er to what i was pic­tur­ing. as for red house painters, yeah, i’m aware of that. i sort of got close to being into them (him) a cou­ple of years ago, it’s real­ly kind of up my alley, but some­how it just nev­er worked 100% for me. i think i am going to buy the sun kil moon album, as i have a hunch i will like it a lot. it’s the same guy and a very sim­i­lar type of sound, but for some rea­son it seems as though maybe his choic­es are more in line with what i’m look­ing for this time around. he’s def­i­nite­ly a tal­ent either way.

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