{"id":66,"date":"2020-02-06T13:10:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T13:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2020\/02\/06\/a-poem-for-thursday-68\/"},"modified":"2020-10-26T20:53:41","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T20:53:41","slug":"a-poem-for-thursday-68","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2020\/02\/06\/a-poem-for-thursday-68\/","title":{"rendered":"A Poem for a Thursday #68"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Photo by\u00a0<\/span>Andrew Ridley<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0<\/span>Unsplash<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Tony Harrison is an English poet, translator, and playwright. Much of his poetry is inspired by his working-class childhood. He said that he “wanted to write the poetry that people like my parents might respond to.” This poem is so sad but so beautiful.<\/p>\n

Though my mother was already two years dead<\/i>
\nDad kept her slippers warming by the gas,<\/i>
\nput hot water bottles her side of the bed<\/i>
\nand still went to renew her transport pass.<\/i>
\n
\n<\/i>
\nYou couldn’t just drop in. You had to phone.<\/i>
\nHe’d put you off an hour to give him time<\/i>
\nto clear away her things and look alone<\/i>
\nas though his still raw love were such a crime.<\/i>
\n
\n<\/i>
\nHe couldn’t risk my blight of disbelief<\/i>
\nthough sure that very soon he’d hear her key<\/i>
\nscrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.<\/i>
\nHe knew she’d just popped out to get the tea.<\/i>
\n
\n<\/i>
\nI believe life ends with death, and that is all.<\/i>
\nYou haven’t both gone shopping; just the same,<\/i>
\nin my new black leather phone book there’s your name<\/i>
\nand the disconnected number I still call.\u00a0<\/i>
\n
\n<\/i>
\nLong Distance II<\/i>
\nTony Harrison<\/p>\n

Reese <\/a>shared a soliloquy from HenryVII <\/i>this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo by\u00a0Andrew Ridley\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash Tony Harrison is an English poet, translator, and playwright. Much of his poetry is inspired by his working-class childhood. He said that he “wanted to write the poetry that people like my parents might respond to.” This poem is so sad but so beautiful. Though my mother was already two years dead Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas, put hot water bottles her side of the bed and still went to renew her transport pass. You couldn’t just drop in. You had to phone. He’d put you off an hour to give him time to clear away her things and look alone as though his still raw love were such a crime. He couldn’t risk my blight of disbelief though sure that very soon he’d hear her key scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief. He knew she’d just popped out to get the tea. I believe life ends with death, and that is all. You haven’t both gone shopping; just the same, in my new black leather phone book there’s your name and the disconnected number I still call.\u00a0 Long Distance II Tony Harrison Reese shared a soliloquy from HenryVII this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poem-for-a-thursday"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2523,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/2523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}