I read that his father - who had six children by three different wives - was a pretty dreadful father
He may well have been, and the fact that he got on the phone to Oxford to plead his son's case after he missed his A level offer does not sit well with me at all. I do feel obliged to say, though, that although his first marriage ended in divorce (no idea about the circumstances) his second marriage ended when his wife died at the early age of 62. This poem is very touching.
Cancer
This poem was written by Michael Young about his wife, the writer Sasha Moorsom, who died of cancer in 1993.
Her sumptuous legs, promising so much,
Arresting other men's eyes to their appraisal
Kept me awake at night with hot imagining
Made me cry out from voluptuous dreams
Until one night she allowed my hand
To stroke them kindly and make them mine.
Her arms were other branches from the same tree
Stretching long and luscious from the same trunk.
I could blow my way up and down this downy surface
Like a tender zephyr
Bending down a thousand brown shoots
Before they sprang up straight again.
Now her arms are become twigs.
No longer concealed by those soft curves
Bones life never allowed me to see
Have disclosed the scaffold that was always waiting there
Her skin glows no more
Even the hairs do not bend to the breath.
Now the steroids swelling up her legs
Have made her flesh weep water
Enough to wet the carpet and my eyes.
But when I rub her thin thighs with oil of lavender,
Left to my own appraisal I love her more.
Behind the bones, alongside the crumpled skin
The same large brown eyes, larger now, shine out
As brightly as 35 years ago
When our souls first were joined together