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Through the tenements of youth<br />
Nor because he had us<br />
Into dialectal materialism when other kids<br />
Were into Daleks and Maltesers<br />
Or took us to the Socialist Fellowship<br />
On Fridays, making us miss Mike Yarwood<br />
Impersonating Wilson and Heath<br />
With a wig and false teeth<br />
Or filled the house with left-wing papers, pamphlets,<br />
Patter, raging at the news, the government, empire, monarchy<br />
Authority in all its shapes and shadows<br />
The walls and bars of social norms<br />
A teetotalitarian intoxicated by ideology<br />
High on the craic of his Irish father<br />
Stuck in that wild red neck of the woods<br />
That we called home, bereft of hope<br />
But thinking back, that was solidarity<br />
That handclasp for a broken stranger<br />
Hunched in a doorway<br />
The way his father hunched on his arrival<br />
A hundred years or more before<br />
Despairing, defiant, clutching his collar<br />
Yet I remember him walking<br />
Himself one of nine, later sole survivor<br />
Father of nine, father of mine, provider<br />
Not sole, but solitary, pacing<br />
In solitude through streets paved with gum<br />
Carrying The Morning Star<br />
In a hand that would move hot coals around<br />
The fireplace like chess pieces while we pleaded<br />
'Use the poker, Daddy!'<br />
Stepping, striding, whistling<br />
Bunnet pushed back, eyes aglitter<br />
As the evening star stared down<br />
On dead-end lives of misery and mess<br />
And I wish I had been, not son<br />
Or seventh child, as was<br />
But comrade, friend, supporter<br />
Of a living cause.
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