Lear and His Daughter
 
He was asked to play King Lear, and nightly now
crashed cataracts of anger, loving it,
the late and sudden swell in his career.
 
His only daughter, who kept house for him,
found him, in breakfast sojourns, querulous,
the evening’s bile still drying on his lips.
 
Most afternoons, she went to her charity shop,
sold books and blouses, raising hospice funds.
 
And in the evenings, television’s box,
until the rattling key at one, the sighs,
the outblown cheeks, the patriarch’s return.
                                 
Robert Nisbet

If you have any comments on this poem,  Robert Nisbet  would be pleased to hear from you.