Son of My Father

The grey comes, the fog, the once sharp mind is blunted,

a hunted look is behind eyes of fading blue.

Perhaps he’ll be as blind as Tiresias,

though I expect no prophesy, however arcane,

from his age-slackened lips.

It starts, in parts, in forgotten things

once known by heart;

in the answer no

to shared family myth

and kinfolklore.

How can he rage,

if he does not know the light is dying?

The raging must be mine,

futile though it is.

I look at him and see the future,

he looks at me and sees the past,

though he does not recognise his son.
 

Who steers, fears

the rocks and dangerous currents

of forgetfulness and oblivion,

of shame and infantilism.

Lash him to the mast,

leave his ears open to the siren,

whose song makes no more sense

than he does.

We are all steering through

the Scylla of senility

and Charybdis’s calamitous infirmity.

There is little hope of landfall

in any kind of Ithaca.

The last vessel is Charon’s ferryboat,

some believe there is another shore,

those who pay, believe in something more.