! Silent About That Night Poem by Michael Shepherd

In later years,
seated around a huge fire,
crackling and spitting on a snowy night,
the best beer in Europe frothing from the jug,
they'd ask him, jocular like but curious with it,
how it felt to be remembered
just once a year, all over the known world
for that one night long ago?

' 'tis strange really: he were a right sod to work for afore that -
never a word to me, as if I didn't be there;
but that night, it were strange -
it were the moment he stood there looking out of the window:
there were summat in the room -
wish I were a writer, like,
to say what it were...

we've never spoken about it, mind,
but we both know it's there unspoken, like..
we haven't had a bad word between us ever since...
that's what I'd like to write about,
that's the moment...'

silence for a time, as they looked into the hissing fire,
those woodcutters and their mates;
then put their coats on, trudged out
into the snow 'where the saint...'

well you know the rest...