I remember you so well.
Hands like shovels, stubble-chinned
and always shrouded with the residue of last nights beer,
Calloused hands that felt like granite on my shoulders
in the random times you held me near.
And still I call you dad.
Sandy hair, so faded in the sun,
Drunk at night, yet off to work before the day was quite begun,
Who exactly was this man I called my dad,
You weren't the best at fatherhood,
But yet you were the best example that I had.
My childhood, - full of rows and unpaid bills,
and leather belts that stung the mind more than they stung my legs.
I learned that pride was stronger than the pain,
I never once gave in and never will, - and when you passed,
I swore than none would ever raise a hand to me again, and walk away
What did you ever teach me, apart from never giving up the fight.
What did you leave me, except the feeling of a loss for something that I never had.
But I saw you bleed, I saw you cry,
I saw the deep, deep pain within your eyes,
and scarce a week before you died,
I saw the truth, and realised how hard you really tried.
There is nothing to forgive,
You gave me life, and then I had to live it on my own,
A worrier at four years old, - a warrior at seven,
A mystic 'till the die I day,
and still I try to find the reason why,
So many people say they live for love,
But still the little children die.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem