Theatre by Glyn Hughes

2003

Years ago I visited the places,
or some of them, that teach us:
art is for healing. Epidavros was one:
a theatre scooped out of the grass
which I likened to a child’s drawing of the sun —
dried to gold and weighted with light.
There my friend Nicos Papaconstantinos,
dead now, played the messenger in Antigone.
For days we discussed those absolutes of fate
that steer us through tides of thought and will.

Today my grandson patters on the grass,
gambolling in his moment’s need,
and doing what seems to him invented.
Yet I marvel at how I am me in him
and how I can guess what he might do tomorrow.
In deeds which seem willed he uses my eyes.
It was my grandchild stole my fear of death.
Now, though I don’t want to, I
can go content.