Patrimony

My grandad tended to old men when young,

The kind who’d spent a lifetime in the pit

And come away with bruises and black lung

And purple dermal chunks of coal and grit.

Just so his father, prisoner of war

Then casualty of blue austerity;

Just so my father, labouring before

The furnaces by night and day—for me.

Now my achievement’s lauded as the best:

To get inky fingers in a Cambridge college

And pilfer the noble classes’ ancient knowledge.

I think again of coal-dust in the chest.

If he who fell at Passchendaele had seen

My suit and gown, would death have seemed a dream?