The house is one bare room <br />And only tea is served. <br />The old man, mild, reserved, <br />Shuffles into a gloom <br />Where mattresses are laid. <br />I sip, grateful for the cool shade. <br /> <br />His small son watches me, <br />Approaches, pertly smiles. <br />I know that thirty miles <br />Without a house or tree <br />Surround their crumbling shack. <br />I drink again, relax, smile back. <br /> <br />Water? And the boy’s mother? <br />Both seem impossible – <br />Yet here my glass is full; <br />If I ask for another <br />The boy brings bitter tea <br />Then grins gap-toothed and begs from me. <br /> <br />And love? Impertinence <br />To ask. I could not grieve, <br />Born here, to have to leave: <br />But he, a man, years hence, <br />His life elsewhere, may weep <br />With need to see his father sleep <br /> <br />Again, as now he does, <br />In careless honesty – <br />Too old for courtesy – <br />Oblivious of us. <br />I pay, and leave the shade, <br />The dark recess these lives have made.<br /><br />Dick Davis<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/desert-stop-at-noon/
