The poem
I, too, have trailed my father's spirit From the mud-walled cabin behind the mountain Where he was born and bred, TB and scarletina,
The farm where he was first hired out, To Wigan, to Crewe junction, A building-site from which he disappeared And took passage, almost, for Argentina.
The mountain is coming down with hazel, The building-site a slum, While he has gone no further than Brazil.
That's him on the verandah, drinking rum With a man who might be a Nazi, His children asleep under their mosquito-nets.