lonely_me
22-12-04, 09:09 PM
''You're father's dead''...my bald headmaster said,
His shining dome and brown tobacco jar
Splintered at once in tears. It wasn't grief...
I cried for knowledge which was bitterer
Than any other grief. For there and then I knew
That grief has uses -- that a father dead
Could bind the bully's fist a week or two;
And then I cried for shame, then for relief.
I was a month past ten when I learnt this;
I still remember how the noise was stilled
In school-assembly when my grief came in.
Some goldfish in a bowl quietly sculled
Around their shining prison on its shelf
They were indifferent. All the other eyes
Were turned towards me. Somewhere in myself
Pride like a goldfish flashed a sudden fin!
Edward Lucie-Smith
His shining dome and brown tobacco jar
Splintered at once in tears. It wasn't grief...
I cried for knowledge which was bitterer
Than any other grief. For there and then I knew
That grief has uses -- that a father dead
Could bind the bully's fist a week or two;
And then I cried for shame, then for relief.
I was a month past ten when I learnt this;
I still remember how the noise was stilled
In school-assembly when my grief came in.
Some goldfish in a bowl quietly sculled
Around their shining prison on its shelf
They were indifferent. All the other eyes
Were turned towards me. Somewhere in myself
Pride like a goldfish flashed a sudden fin!
Edward Lucie-Smith