Norman Nicholson(1914–1987)

Halley's Comet

My father s a w it back in 1 9 1 0 ,

T h e year King Edward died.

Above dark telegraph poles, above the high

Spiked steeple of the Liberal Club, the w h i t e

Gas-lit dials of the Market Clock,

B e y o n d the w i d e

S u n s e t - g l o w cirrus of blast-furnace smoke,

My father s a w it fly

Its thirty-seven-million-mile-long kite

Across Black Combe's black sky

And what of me,

Born four years too late

Will I have breath to wait

Till the long-circuiting commercial traveller

Turns up at his due

In 1986, aged seventy-two,

Watery in the eyes and phlegmy in the flue

And a bit bad tempered at so delayed a date,

Will I look out above whatever is left of the town—

The Liberal Club long closed and the clock stopped,

And the chimneys smokeless above damped-down

Furnace fires And then will I

At last have chance to see it

With my own as well as my father's eyes,

And share his long-ago Edwardian surprise

At that high, silent jet, laying its bright trail

Across Black Combe's black sky