Threnody for the Bombardier

They ordered him home, sent him to sit in his 

mother’s house in a horsehair chair, to shake and stare 

across those thousand miles. There he sat in quaking silence 

to wrestle with what no one could guess.

I knew him not, nor he me. No sitting on a daddy’s knee, 

no walks in the woods, no talks at all. Only the bottle, 

his, not mine. I’m told sometimes there was hitting, 

not me, but her. I didn’t see. 

He was sweet, before, they told me, before the war,

before the bombs they trained him to drop,

before the lives they required him to take,

before he did his job, then could do none after.

My father was gone, a ghost to me 

long, long before he died.