Now of a night when rain is on the roof
Beside the fire, we sit,
My son's young wife and I.
I watch her face, flat-cheeked inscrutable
As the face of a Chinese mandarin;
Our talk comes fitfully
Like wind blowing in quick, uneasy rushes
Out of space. And there are silences
Between us, deep, unbridgable
As Winter-flooded streams. I know
Her thoughts and she knows mine.
She bows her head remote and inaccessible,
Locked in her lonely grief.
Locked in her love for him the absent one.
But I sit sullen-mouthed, steeling my heart
Against her pain.
"Mine is the grief." I cry.
"Your love with him
Was but the lightning of a Summer afternoon.
While mine lit his first hour and pointed him the way!"
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 September 1945
