Epitaph To My Father Poem by Patrick Dennis

In life I never knew you
except from behind the walls you threw up
to buffet turmoils and hold
the watchful sentry of your soul.

Sometimes, though, on revelling nights you scaled over
and we met like carolling enemies in no-man's-land.
And there we lurked, you and I, like border foe
or sometimes like exiles whose longing to cross
fell on bayonets; and the border spotlights
threw our souls in shame to shadowed earth.

Well, then! Now it is done; never mind.
The walls though drab gave the pull and tension
of art; and echoing melancholic strains
to the within world of prisoners singing them down.
Ours was the dark-age-art of walls.

And now that your tired hurt time is full
may your way be smooth as you ferry on home.
As you go - dip, dip down to the gentle waters
for your thirst; and may all the buffeting barriers
lift like fog on the morning air.

Rest in peace now, you my father,
you who once, like Abraham yearning for stars,
seconded God in service to the deed of life:
and this my bodily self - a soul by other science -
spoken forth as a star or a grain of sand.