The thunder roared and I swear there was lightning blazing across the sky. A summer storm. My old man was taking the boozy Welshman’s poem literally and he wasn’t going gently anywhere. My younger brother and I sit (or stand, I can’t remember) on either side of this hospice bed as Robert Wylie fights for every breath, his toes curled to ninety degrees to hang on to the stress of life. He makes a sound like those horses he used to back that struggled in last.
“Fray Bentos, son. Fray Bentos” meaning they were only fit to end up in a tin of that proletarian fare.
Three score years and ten plus one. Not fair for a Glasgow man who did not drink and smoke himself to the grave. Not fair for a man who treasured life so much. Modern jazz, history of art, philosophy, politics, poetry, and all the rest. A life fighting against the pricks (and what pricks some of them were). A life in and on the extreme is what has led him here, a struggle to the very end.
Rest in peace, old son. You were more loved than you knew.
Tribal Markings by Robert Wylie
No regrets about throwing
Cut-throat razors in the air,
And catching them in my teeth,
Such has been my life-long remedy.
For the itch of boredom.
True, the risk is there
To miss, just that once,
And I would have minutes to reflect.
But better bleeding swiftly
As the result of error
Than plodding the safety road
Where the grass is the same colour
On both sides of the dry-stone dyke.
I have the tribal markings.
Denoting my creed.
A notch on cheek, and jowl
When I haven't got it quite right,
Where the blade has missed the throat,
But has left its impression,
Nonetheless.
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