Atheist

"I suppose I am an atheist,
I have no faith, I fear.
I rather think that when you go
You're just no longer here.
No dreams, not up and wandering,
For certain no heaven and hell,
No bloody tyrant in the sky
Threatening vengeance should you die
Unafraid and infidel.

I have to say that I am not strict
In this my disbelief.
In truth, I pray that I am wrong
And my time in the dark is brief.
And I hope, like you perhaps,
That death is a nice surprise
And God is not a ten-year-old
A-cackle at his toy scaffold,
Pulling wings off butterflies.

Strange I should be sceptical still
After one bad dream I had,
Where my father, who was dying,
Came in nightmare to my bed
And tried to wrest my soul away
And banish me to the endless grey
Of his own day with the dead.

I cried out in three-quarter sleep
And his spirit at once drew back
And disappeared forever
Deep into the black.

I had mistook my father's wish,
Inside my spirit wept,
For he wanted just to kiss me,
Once more, as I slept.

And all the things we might have said
Were lost as his poor spirit fled,
Sad that he had hurt me
Where love was meant instead.

The shutters of a dream came down
And, waking with a start,
I recalled a frail divinity
Condemned to walk infinity,
The portrait of my terror
Ever printed on his heart.

I shook myself and dismissed it all
As but some impish muse
Investing me with sturm und drang,
Suddenly the telephone rang,
My mother had bad news.

'Your father's gone, your father's gone,
He went just a minute ago,
Sitting up tall and straight in bed.
I thought you'd want to know.'

This tale is wholly accurate,
I dissemble not at all.
At the moment of my father's death
My father came to call.

And if I could have one wish granted
As my time comes to an end,
'Twould be to see that man again,
Not some god I cannot pretend.

To clasp him tightly in my arms, 
To look in his laughing eye,
To give my father the kiss he sought,
Once before when time was short
And he came to say goodbye.

But I never was that lucky,
I'm sure that I'll just die."