As the light fades ever faster,

And the temperature drops

– I am recalled

To this dialogue with the dead.

My grandfather, Jack, had his

Last pint of mild in this pub

I am sitting in before

Embarking for France in 1914...

And his first one back in September 1918:

2018 Jack - alive in my heart - always known, never seen -

Not a line of his writing have I , not a wisp of his hair

Now be-suited businessmen and women sit there

Sit playing with their phones,endlessly twiddling.

They wouldn’t know a pint of best mild

If you threw one in their well-scrubbed

Faces.  Sometimes I am possessed by

Jack’s spirit: his anger at injustice and his ability

To see through hypocrisy and gob-shitery. Fuckery

Of all sorts and conditions, by all sorts and conditions...

When the day fades into night...

And I'm free at last

To see into the past

With Jack's multiplying eye.