From the Neanderthal by Adam Thorpe

Author:Adam Thorpe
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446498156
Publisher: Random House

PLAYGROUND ACCIDENT

My son’s forehead’s snickered across

yet again by thread; like tiny flies

the stitches have settled for days, but a year

and a half is the scar’s reign,

according to the doctor.

All his life remains

to bounce off where it’s hard enough

(this time a gate) for boys of eight

to bloody themselves, for grown men to wail.

Where the font-shell’s sacred water

made him cry that day in church,

I press the lint. He’s brave, now.

I remember the stain his birth made

on the carpet, its rose preserved

long after his head had been washed

of the perfumed afterbirth

that streaked it. He admires his wound

in the mirror: walking back from school

this evening, he was feinting (I saw)

with a rapier cast from air

and God knows where he was, then.

I think of war and all that wars

have done so far to our families’ pasts –

his hurt is his, not mine,

but what I bear less well

than dabbing at the flesh of my flesh

lightly split by iron

is the thought of the unknown

iron that remains:

of all this head must pass.

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