As the wind blows ever faster,

And the temperature drops,

– I am recalled

To my dialogue with the dead.

My grandfather, Jack, had his

Last pint of bitter in this pub

I am sitting in before

Embarking for France in 1914,

And his first one back in November 1918.

2020 Jack - alive in my heart - always loved, never seen -

Not a line of his writing have I, not a wisp of his hair;

Now be-suited businessmen and women sit there

Endlessly playing with their phones, endlessly twiddling,.

They wouldn’t know a pint of best bitter

If you threw one in their well-manicured

Faces.  Sometimes, I am possessed by

Jack’s spirit: his anger at injustice and his ability

To see through glib hypocrisy and gob-shitery. Fuckery

Of all sorts and conditions, by all sorts and conditions;

When the day fades into night

And I'm free of pain, at last

I see into the past

With Jack's clear-sighted eye.