As a young man I worked for a while with someone who had, he told me, once shared an office with A.J.S.Tessimond (1902-1962). I expressed suitable awe at the idea of sharing an office with a poet (I did not think it worth mentioning my own endeavours in the field), but had to confess that I was aware only dimly of the name, mainly from a poem about cats featured in some school anthology. I’ve finally after all these years got round to chasing the name up, and found among others this poem about the parent-child relationship, somewhat reminiscent of Larkin’s famous verses on the subject, but less brutal, if still fairly harsh: one senses that a reluctance to wound is at war with the desire to analyse, with the latter winning out.

Of course, the main point of parents has always been to give children someone to blame when their lives turn out not to be perfect, and it is amazing how early this process can start. I remember how when my two eldest sons were four and not quite three I had to break it to them that one of their grandfathers had died. The four year old took it philosophically; the two year old, a child of a very different temper who had not encountered the idea of death before, was absolutely furious with parents so irresponsible as to bring him into a world where this sort of thing could happen, and indeed might one day happen to him. ‘You should have told me not to be born!’ he howled with all the indignation that a two year old can muster, which is quite a lot. I could only apologise.

The Children Look At The Parents

We being so hidden from those who
Have quietly borne and fed us,
How can we answer civilly
Their innocent invitations?

How can we say ‘we see you
As but-for-God’s-grace-ourselves, as
Our caricatures (we yours), with
Time’s telescope between us’?

How can we say ‘you presumed on
The accident of kinship,
Assumed our friendship coatlike,
Not as a badge one fights for’?

How say ‘and you remembered
The sins of our outlived selves and
Your own forgiveness, buried
The hatchet to slow music;

Shared money but not your secrets;
Will leave as your final legacy
A box double-locked by the spider
Packed with your unsolved problems’?

How say all this without capitals,
Italics, anger or pathos,
To those who have seen from the womb come
Enemies? How not say it?

A.J.S.Tessimond