On my grandfather's deathbed,
The one I sleep in now,
Which he shipped back from Detroit City, on a freight train in the
Nineteen thirties, when his father died
From typhus and he became head of the family here in Western Kentucky,
I remember his wavering lucidity
Through a past midnight thunderstorm,
How he asked us to sing
Rock of Ages and
When we had finished said
That was terrible, which it was.
Who could sing,
At a time like that--
His son, my father's bass voice
Quavering as it never did
In church, but there we were,
And then the last words I ever
Heard him say--
How do they count the time?