Lines for a Lockdown: ‘your vast/library of the unsaid’

From Blackrock

Here’s to you, ghost father, alive or dead, 

your surname’s reserved seat, your vast 

library of the unsaid;

to your one image, slip of the past

in blurred grey and white;

a soldier, sitting with my mother, 

your smile sleepy, hers bright

as the ghostlight blowing your cover;

to the curse or gift you bestow:

abstraction, my soft spot for absences; 

cloudwatcher, seawatcher, open to the slow 

shift of light, the waves’ always present tenses;

to the given, darkening, Dublin Bay almost black 

except, nearby, where a wave splits a rock.

by Mark Granier

from Ghostlight: New and Selected Poems, Salmon Poetry, 2017.