for my father
The sun set in the glass.
Did you know what was coming
when you crouched under the stairs
and listened to the bombs
drop on London?
Did you know what was coming
when your guardian travelled down
to see you
in the grand surroundings of Christ’s Hospital,
Vaughan Williams’s shock of white hair
in the chapel,
and shuffled off
in the growing darkness
to catch the last train home?
This was love,
wasn’t it?
Did you know what was coming
when you stuck it out
to become an officer
and were put in charge
of men older,
more savvy,
than you were?
Is this when your appreciation
of Bach
began?
Did you know what was coming
when you shared a bedsit
with your mother
and became determined
to better yourself
by listening to all of Beethoven’s symphonies
from the library?
Or when Eddie
took you to the terraces
at Brentford
(“make way,
he’s only a littl’un”)?
Did you know what was coming
when you measured up
to my grandfather
and married Mum
(early colour photos
of us pottering in the garden,
you look dashing in them)?
Clearway Promotions,
Claygate Dramatic Society,
Cancer Research Campaign
– you built yourself up.
You drove us
in the dark
to foreign countries
where they spoke funny languages,
you put us in tents
a stone’s throw from the water
(we would need those stones
to weigh down the corners
when the storm came along).
You took your responsibility
very seriously
and instilled it in us.
You could be bloody-minded
– I wouldn’t have wanted
to cross you –
you grew in stature
and yourself became a Samaritan
to those in need.
You were widely respected,
you were somebody,
an ugly sister, Bob Cratchit,
you had a sense of humour,
and that twinkle never quite
left you.
You liked in the early evening
to stand by the drinks
– yours was a G and T,
Mum’s was a sherry –
and while smoking a Silk Cut
to tell me what was going
through your mind.
It helped you to lay it out,
you were not one to leave things
to chance.
And so,
when we sat on the terrace
overlooking the Black Forest,
you poured sunlight
into my glass.
It was something new,
something I hadn’t tasted before,
and this gave you a great satisfaction.
I don’t know what we talked about,
you probably reminisced about your time
in Germany,
the dunes of Sylt,
but I have glimpsed that sunlight
ever since:
on the ghats of Varanasi,
on a starlit night in the Sinai,
sitting with Bedouins,
in Piornedo,
on a Sunday with a hangover,
on the rocks of Lakatnik.
I will keep it with me
for when the stormclouds gather,
it will be the stones that weigh down
the corners of the tent I inhabit.
And I give you a drop of the golden liquid
for your onward journey.
You have realized now
that the demons are insubstantial,
their only weapon fear
of what doesn’t exist,
and the easiest way
to unravel a knot
is to slice it.
You are breath and water,
creation itself,
the sound God made in the beginning.
You can sing to your heart’s content,
join in the chorus,
as when you sang an aria
from the Messiah
to the doctor
with a sheet over your lips,
except that now you are voice itself,
running water,
a ribbon that God laid
on the earth
to give us life.
Jonathan Dunne
Sofia, 24 December 2025
Stones Of Ithaca 