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Why?

 

Why?

 

He burned his life’s work

When he started to lose his mind

Or was it retirement that did it?

That all those years

The poetry served as a coping mechanism

To work & home life & homesickness

Processing his frustrations & grief

An antidote to his struggles, hopes & darkness

Was it finally making peace with Ireland & Australia

His lot

Which impacted his family all those years?

It was very much my father

A definite man

To wipe the slate of a life’s work clean

Or was it to do with what would happen to his poems

After he was gone?

All the heartache, the secrets revealed

& so the only poems of my father’s I have access to

Are the dedications to my mother

In the books he gifted her

At birthdays & Christmases

Generally panty wetters or the pastoral

Did he really believe these words

Or were they maintenance works on his marriage

Is that why he eliminated the darker more tormented part of the iceberg beneath the surface?

My father the performer, the lover, the symbolist, the mystery

 

 

Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

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