Someone (not Freud, but Jones) said that you're never grown up until you bury your father. Therefore I'm a vulgar minor fraud. I was 56 when he died in New Zealand, with Maoris jumping round, thanking him for God, and my brother singing, and the preacher praying, and my sisters crying. But I was saying: O, Dad was buried earlier, much earlier. It's 44 years of death since I was left alone; don't you see the blood above the lintel, the myrtle and hyssop splaying Congo - Ghana - London - Swansea - Glasgow - Dublin - Berlin - Auckland - Auckland - Auckland? The Ten plagues. The First-born. So you know, as I give this benediction, why the wine in the cup tastes good? Gloria in excelsis! Baruch a'tad adonai. Aleluyah! Cwm, cwm Rhondda. Bread of Heaven? Sons, I suppose, must be taken, in the end of this geneology, as the coming to manhood - so here they stand: Mervyn Todd Justin Ben and a daughter, Mandy, found, more or less, in the bulrushes. (I was her man, but I done her wrong). Feed me till I want no more! But what are these tears doing here? Here? Now? How does a Dad become? Ioan Davies 29.v.1995
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