Why do you fear me?

This is the sketch you drew
of my father
using charcoal
and waste paper

It was 1941
you were 15
wearing unmatched shoes
and sitting in the
effervescing bomb crater
where your family home in Shepherds Bush
had stood
just 15 minutes before

They sent you to the corner shop
to buy matzo meal, cabbage and
dill weed
you would have taken your place
by their sides
as their eyes rose in unison
to greet the thunder of perpetuity
if you had not been way-laid
by the memory of a face
of insufferable beauty
woven by the orchestra
in your cerebral cortex

If you could carry on
after that
if you could survive
with just a grocery bag
and the soundtrack
of the distant laughter of siblings
who had been reduced to
cordite and verisimilitude
then why do you fear me so?

Are my eyes so much like his -
replete of piety
and moral turpitude
is my smile as execrable
are my lips as thin and passionless
has my face become
our war?