Father’s Dark Ship (after Hesiod) - Kris Hemensley

Dear brother
                    I can’t sing you a song
about the ways of the world just now
since I’ve tied my mind in knots
examining the mystery of father’s life
and can’t help seeing you & I
in the same strange oscillation
between clarity & obfuscation.
                                                 He’s become
so much like a dark ship
clinging to the dark lip of the harbour
on a night made darker
by what’s judged to be the failure
of the voyage that I feel
he’ll sink without redeeming
the promise of a single dream.
                                                If a son
could really be father to his old man
what wouldn’t we do to find him a place
between the hills & the sea with neighbours
who’d refuse to countenance his misery
for whom the darkness is only ever
prinked with stars under which it’s customary
to sing the songs of youth
which pointed the way once
to the ends of the earth
& back again?

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Kris Hemensley (born 1946) Australia (born in England)
Source: 20 Poets. Selected poems. Cordite Books Series 1 & 2. Edited by Kent MacCarter, Cordite Books, 2017