HEREDITY Poem by Louis De Paor

There's no denying
the blood that goes through me
from my mother's side,
leaving one snarled tooth
in the roof of my mouth,
an itching-post in the field
of my thoughts, an ogham stone
that shouts me down
with its unintelligible alphabet.

I put my swollen thumb
under the tooth of knowledge,
and the stone speaks up
from the underworld of my thoughts:
You were always a black sheep
like all belonging to you,
hard words like grains of sand
in the corner of an eyelid
shut tight as an oyster.

When a blade of light
prises it open,
there's a tooth askew
in my son's mouth.
It shines like a pearl
in his perfectly crooked smile.