My Dad's Poetry!

Haven't blogged much at all these holidays, but I have been having fun.

Currently in Innisfail with Baby Jane and playing Cyclone Denise with her furniture.  Can't help myself.  Anything I find ugly MUST be done-over.  She says she welcomes it but I think she's merely been tolerant and indulgent.

Anyway, in my downtime, I've been going through Jane's old books and discovered - well, since I always knew this, the word is actually "rediscovered" - that Jane has spent a lifetime gathering up little bits of family writings and putting them into an anthology, and I've rediscovered ever so many poems I wrote as a child ... none of which are worth recording here ...

... however our dad's poetry is a different story.  Gosh, he was so very good, although, like his still-lifes, paintings and portraits, he didn't do it often.  And I must say that some of his poetry is definitely significant and definitely worth recording in lots of places; particularly those he wrote as a very old man and could feel the dementia coming on:  THOSE are definitely worth putting out there because there is a definite gap in that market, however those aren't in this book and I'll have to ask Jane to hunt them down for me.

In the meantime, let me choose one of dad's old poems at random, one from ... mmmm, when he was a young medical student in Ireland?

OK, eyes shut: let's go:

Old Bill

by Denis Murphy c 1933

Old Bill Kelly slipped into the bar

Unnoticed, unwelcomed, unknown,

Too old and too odd to drink with by far,

So he slips to the end where the sandwiches are,

And I saw he tippled alone.

His frock-coat seemed green and its nap is no more

And his hat is far past its best

And he wore the peaked collar our grandfathers wore

And the black ribbon-tie that was legal of yore,

And his coat buttoned up to his chest.

For a moment or more when he first came in

I thought my eyes or my wits were astray

For a picture - a page out of Dickens - he brought

Of an old legal firm from the Chancery Court

And the wine vaults over the way.

And I watch as he lifts up his Guiness tonight

And dream that the bar lights grow dim

As the Shades of the friends of those Other Days light

And the girls who were bright in our Grandfathers' sight

Lifted shadowy glasses to him.

I opened the door as the old man went out

With a short, shuffling step and bowed head

And he sighed but I felt as I returned to my stout

A sense of respect (borne of Guiness no doubt)

For the life that was 60 years dead.

And I mused; there are times when our memory wends

Through the future as if on its own -

That I, out of date before my pilgrimage ends,

In some new-fangled bar, to dead loves and dead friends

Might drink like Old Billy - ALONE!!!

Beautiful, huh!!!

And I'll blog the other ones too - about growing old and fearing the last - if Jane manages to find them.