Breakfast, 3rd July 2009

Turning to the paper’s middle pages

I’m reminded that forty years ago

those men were sent in such a fragile craft

that President Nixon rehearsed a speech

to tell us they wouldn’t be coming back.

Buzz had brains of a rocket scientist

and the courage of a fighter pilot;

Neil Armstrong was a leader with the faith,

I think, of an archbishop and Michael

Collins could wait alone knowing some things

can’t be helped.  And you

I hadn’t expected to see you

on the front of the newspaper.

I had always thought that you’d come back

laughing with stories and Pashtun carpets

to hide the sadder moments, maybe,

a sense of disquiet, well perhaps,

but I thought you’d be back from Helmand.

I still have the Billy Bragg cassette

you lent me at Sandhurst; you liked

Philip Larkin. Humanity

was a faith we shared; observation

a gift we both practised.  I wanted

to borrow some of your other gifts

but you could not offer them.  And now

what I never had isn’t there –

just your face, no, I mean your faith,

at breakfast.

2009