no total stranger she who brought the news
of your impending death I thought
I’ll sing then sing to salvage all
the things I know as yours before
  
the gates of hell I take the book
of forgetting on my lap and start
to fish you up from this dead script
more foreign still than any tongue
  
just like the time you tried to pull me out
of a hole in the ice under a bridge
panicked and ended in the drink yourself
I can’t escape this song
  
come father strap my skates on now
I’ve almost got my boyhood wellies on
come strap my skates on now
the ice is thin like your exhausted face
you stare at me through watering eyes
rise up from that thick woollen grave
and strap on my skates
the water will see us fly above it
  
mother brought us happy to the shore
where our first trip began with her
in our thoughts over transparent black
over careful watch out snags sticking up
  
frozen bream fish fingers I joked
trying to break the ice with
childish humour with childish hands
but you were with your wife sick at home
  
and almost in your place of birth the farms
blanketed winter-white over dumbstruck
grass green grass which once had known
the soft soles of the feet that now
  
alone with me without a girl raced over sad water
better than anyone else even mother
these ditches and fields knew you
this village with its churchyard full of familiar faces
  
the golden cock the sharp steeple
close to the farm where you
taught yourself shortwave and snare drum
where your father saw you galloping
 
no saddle bareback on the horse
the spade cut the ground early for him
who leant me his name three times
when I was too young to be called a father
  
come and strap on my skates
I’ve got the tight green wellies on
strap on my skates
the ice is thin as the temporary distance between us
now that I can look at you dry-eyed across the line
strap my skates on one last time
or climb once more into the pen
and let the paper see us flying racing
howling over ice
  
tell me again about the time you kicked
your music teacher who’d hit you hard
and gutless on the ear with a bunch of keys
right between the legs a so-called fainting fit
  
refused point-blank to apologise
authorities always pissed you off
at home where between the crooked and the straight
you ploughed your own deep path of pity
  
heavy as stone the lack of forgiveness balled
in your gut when you couldn’t wear the cross
round your neck and your mother no longer
had a heavenly home to wait for you in
  
strap on my skates father
this world is what’s real
between her and me you were the bridgemaster
summer has set in now my skates
are greased in the cellar
before us whirligig beetles dance on the water
the water is blue like slate
so beautiful so dark