Terence

you were nine months old
and cute in your photographs
and the doctor
(who was an eduma-cated man)
refused your parents
a bed for you.

There was nothing wrong
he told your brickie dad
just a baby's
little cough. ( As in smoke-stack

land, as in pea-souper world, as in
good soldiers, like your father, name and number,
always obeyed officers.)

This was 1952 and just before
that terrible day
when they dared defy
that important man

(your mother was a cleaner
with shaky hands, having lost
a thumb on a guillotine press)

and took you up
to the big bare and brick
edifice of cures and death.

It was pneumonia

they said, and you died
within a day.

I grew up

with your ghost on my shoulder

as if you were writing me

always there
           'If Terence had been alive
today he's have been ....'
            my never known frère
my brother.