The wind blows ever sharper,
as the temperature drops,
– I am recalled
to a dialogue with the dead.
My grandfather, Jack Prince, 
could no longer gather
the brightest of life’s strands together
he'd lost too much in war.
Nothing can compensate these young men,
millions dead before their time,
their bravery and their genes lost
to all further generations.
We slink again into ordinary life
with a monkey on our backs,
& iron in our soul,
these lost boys shall never grow old.

Jack drank his last beer in this pub
before embarking for France in 1914,
and his first one back in November 1918.
Jack — alive still in my heart — always loved, never seen –
not a line of his writing have I, not a wisp of his hair.
Now be-suited businessmen and women sit here
endlessly playing with their phones, endlessly twiddling,
they wouldn’t know of Jack’s sacrifice
if you threw a grenade in their well-manicured
faces. Sometimes, I am possessed by
Jack’s spirit: his anger at injustice and his ability
to see through glib hypocrisy and all manner of fuckery.
Now as day fades into night
and I’m free of pain, at last,
I see into the past
with Jack’s clear-sighted eye
Bid him a fond goodbye.

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