This man

 

(who doesn't photograph well,
just as my dog Oscar was unphotogenic)

greatly resembles a lover I had
for three - or more - years

just after I came out as a sort-of-a-not-quite-a-bona-fide-sort-of-a-homo

when I was forty.

This man is a great poet.

When I was a child on a big 

bigoted island

where no-one was black,

I prayed God to please make me black.
(I later learned that the great writer Jean Rhys did the same.)

Later on, I prayed God to make me go dead,

and stood out in the dank Irish cold

hoping to catch TB or Rheumatic Fever.

I still am ashamed of - dislike - 

the now-mottled pinkish-gray

of my almost eighty-year-old skin.
I never had, never missed a father.
He probably was white. Maybe Canadian. A white shite
who had a quick shag one  Second World War New Year's Eve

with my (I'd say she was, in her humble way, holy and) virgin mother. 

I wish - despite that damned fucking useless God - forever

that Shane McCrae

had been my father - or, failing that, my lover
if only for one hour of one day.

I knew of his existence (thanks to the Great God BBC)  only yesterday!
I'm absolutely sure he would not want to hear from me.