This is a relatively new poem, written about one of my grandfathers. I barely knew him, but a while ago I got one of those DNA kits as a Christmas present and as a result started to research my family tree. At the end of it all, not only was I disappointed to have no sign of any Viking ancestry, but I felt I knew my grandfather even less.
It’s always been something that held an interest to me. Both my mam and dad come from big families and so, growing up, we were surrounded by aunties, uncles and cousins whenever there was some kind of ‘family’ occasion. However, for any number of reasons I never felt that I really knew them that well. Being quite a shy kid probably didn’t help.
We lived in a different part of Newcastle to the rest of the family and so didn’t see them on a day to day basis and then as I got older I was busy with friends and different interests. Going away to university didn’t help my cause either; if anything, it made me stick out like a sore thumb! When I finally moved away from the North East entirely, I pretty much drifted away from all but immediate family.
The relationship with my grandparents on both sides was difficult, to say the least. With this grandad, he died when I was very young and there always seemed to be a reluctance on my parents part for them to take us to see our grandparents. If I’m honest, it doesn’t look like they were at all interested in us and I literally can’t remember ever meeting my grandma. However, I do have one extremely vague recollection of my grandad which is where the poem comes from.
'The old tyrant'
If I close my eyes, I still see him
from exactly the same vantage point, every time.
A dot of a man, his appearance betraying every terrifying snippet
I'd ever heard.
Brown shoes, dark trousers, midnight blue raincoat
and a black trilby hat, shadowing his features,
making those eyes even darker, so that it felt like he looked straight through me
as he crept closer, a shining silver coin grasped in bony fingers.
The childcatcher had come, bearing gifts.
Then, with a pat on the head, he was gone.
Everything else is mystery, legend,
even your name uncertain.
"The old tyrant", my mam would say with just a hint of a smile,
"a villain", but maybe an entertainer, singing and dancing
on the West End stage, if that was to be believed,
the cold, hard presence passing your distance
through the generations,
many leads to your life, but never a final destination,
many strings to your bow,
but barely a finger print of recognition left behind,
the untraceable ghost, continuing to haunt
despite the fact that none ever really knew you at all.
When I was very young my parents ran a business. As part of the business we had a shop and a market stall, I think. My dad would be away buying crockery – plates, cups, bowls etc – in Stoke-on-Trent for the business (that’s what we sold…everyone needs stuff to eat off, right?) and my mam would be running the shops. As I was a poorly child (yes, heart nonsense even at that age!) I’d often find myself in the shop.
One day, when both parents were there, my grandad paid us a visit. I was perched on a stool in a corner of the shop, like some gaunt, pale kind of mascot and he came in, spoke to my parents a little bit as far as I can remember, and then made his way across to me.
As the poem says, he just came over, pressed a coin into my little hand and then left. That was the only interaction that I recall. No talking, no affection. He might have smiled, but I can’t remember.
Growing up, I picked up nothing but negativity around him, which comes out in the poem. Apparently, he wasn’t the greatest dad – although times were very different back then – and was very tough on his children, one of them my dad. When it came to seeing his grandchildren, he just didn’t seem to be interested. Well, not in this one anyway! So, I’d hear the types of descriptions that come up in the poem, labelled at him time and again.
When I came to research my family tree, he was just as big a mystery as ever. I’d been told that he was ‘a dancer and singer’ on stage in London by my dad when I was a kid, but there wasn’t much evidence of that. In fact, what he actually did remained a mystery and I uncovered bits of evidence that he had possibly led a bit of a double life a times. I won’t go into it because it’s obviously quite personal, but also because it left me no closer to knowing a great deal about the man!
So there we go; my grandad, man of mystery and little affection or it might seem, any kind of feeling whatsoever!
I hope you enjoyed the poem.
Middle Age Fanclub 