Tonyrefail

A tiny sad oblivious house in which
I sit, the only one that's still awake,
At work next to a plastic christmas tree
Writing a love song to my father's home.
I'm watched by tired tragic photographs;
Grey uncles and forever-pregnant girls,
My cousins, who'll be scarred by thirty-five,
Their faces leather, lined by gypsy blood.
These too-close walls saw a half-century
Of births, divorces, coughing fits and tea.
It makes a bitter reverie to think
My ugly virgin aunt was all alone
For five decades, until her factory
Job helped her find a stubbly gap-toothed mate.
Tonight my nan told us a sickening tale
Of burnt throat, and burst eardrum, of kidneys
That she had never known she didn't have,
And faulty thyroids, acid-filled stomachs.
My granchie, upstairs, coughs himself to sleep,
Lungs filled with years of tar and coal mine dust.
Tonight my father's parents in decline
Scare me with their sad subsiding frames—
Tonight I mourn my family's long lives,
Their poor ground-down stupid stoical souls.