Christmas at the Home (v2)

(I submitted this poem a couple of days ago and got two really great pieces of feedback. I've taken them into consideration, and this is my second draft. Think I'm still quite a way off where I want to be with it - especially in the fifth and seventh stanzas - but I do prefer this one. I'm thinking of renaming it to Good King Cameron... I'm aware that I've posted quite a lot here recently, I'll try to slow it down after this submission.)

.

The torches in grandfather’s eyes dimmed.

A wind passed them and they strained

to keep lit in this purgatory of stale piss and soft cries

where two dozen rubble souls in their restless sleep

are reduced to moans and useless sighs.

Dad told me to shut the window in case I let the gale in.

.

My grandfather wore his paper crown,

long ceasing to ken his kin,

yet in between gulps of unseasoned chicken and stony peas,

he cast the brass band a glance of acknowledgement.

“Fenland’s finest, the carers tell me”,

dad said jovially, pretending he’s not wholly worn thin.

.

The trombonist sweat in front of the

yellowing radiator,

granddad sat unaffected by its stifling emission

basking instead in the thickness of his bed sheets,

as if the dawn were an omission

from Christmas Day, time calcified by uncaring creators.

.

In a print-pocked mirror, I saw dad

and his aging reflection

in an uncomfortably damp armchair surrounded by

ghosts in the periphery; their scared, charred faces scrubbed clean.

Selfishly, I obscure my wet eyes,

convincing myself that the stink led to this emanation.

.

I could see that my dad was frightened too,

canals in his forehead carved

with a scalpel his own father unknowingly forged.

Granddad Cameron slumped, tamed with water in his absence.

He envied the oven smoke when it curved

out of the barred window into the fens; a patient discharged.

.

We lobbed questions towards emptiness;

the wails from the telly room

punctured the short gaps between music, a shrieking staccato.

The patriarch in his glory took the scalpel,

cutting little pieces of imago

then for precious memory to stow away and keep entombed.

.

Good King Wenceslas peters out

to a fizz of scant applause.

Dad and I pecked Cameron’s waxy cheek and rose to leave,

hoping that a kiss would be enough to withstand

the looming hailstorm of frozen grief

making its way to sands resting at the head of fragile shores.

.

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