Faces over Time

She gave me birth, he fathered me;

he turned down the Croix de Guerre because his

donkey got one too;

she descends from Joan of Arc’s bad brother;

I held her still bloody from her mother;

he died a few weeks back, and at his

funeral I saw him and her, and

those two bickering;

he’s bigger than me now, but his first school shirt

still sits in my drawer;

she is still as beautiful as when I

caught her then, unaware of a lens.

 

Us, our children, our parents and theirs,

sisters, brother, nephews, nieces: all adorn our

dark hall, framed against time but still

silently fading.