Proclamation For My Father In 1965 Poem by Terence Winch

Whereas time has caught up with me and the boiler
broken down again, and day after day it snows and snows
and there I am, with my shovel, in the dark
cold night waiting for day, and wishing I was in New Jersey

with Ethel and P.J. & Marion having a drink and taking in a play.
Maybe later eating oysters at the Oyster Bar
and dancing until four at the United Irish Counties Ball

Whereas I am now sixty years old and don't feel so good
much of the time, like right now, while fat Father Hammer
just turned fifty and I know is getting set to fire me
but I've been here for fifteen years and am ready to go

my own way, into the secret America I never knew before.
The banjo-playing lesbians, the depressed school teachers
who tell me Paddy, Paddy, Paddy, you're our man

Whereas I feel it all coming apart, the hard years
in this country, the loves gained and lost, the tough jobs
the gigs, the booze, the dearly departed friends
the wife whose absence never ends

while I never mend, always sensing the ghosts so near.
The thing you most fear in life all boils down
to your own invisibility, there for all to see.

Therefore be it resolved that tomorrow will be eighty
degrees and sunny. My children will visit me. My grandchildren
will sing me songs. The Bronx will float on the clean, sweet air
of paradise. I will feed a basement full of cats.
The future sprawls out like a drunk on a bed.