My Grandfather's Ghost on Christmas Day

Born in Bermuda
enroute from the Azores,
he came to Fall River,
this boy in woolen knickers
whose chocolate eyes
he would give my mother.
He grew to hate the shackle
of the bell in the mill tower
that tolled the shift changes,
the days, the years, the lives.
He saw all of it ahead of time
in one instant, and wanting
no part of that agony,
he left, at 16, on
a freezing October night,
hitchhiked to Canada,
lied about his age, and
joined the Black Watch.
One hundred years ago,
to the day,
on December 25, 1914,
in the forests of France,
hearing shouts of "Merry Christmas"
in German accents,
he emerged from his foxhole,
walked into the mud
of no-man's land,
And gave a soldier
chocolate and cigarettes,
the same soldier he
would kill with a bullet
the next morning.
Maybe the memory
gave him his rage,
for he was not spared:
The pain and the alcohol tore
everything to shreds —
and the wounds have taken
a century to form thick scars.