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 where your love

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 Hamburg,

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