My grandfather, nineteen years of age,

Falls from the pages of the unabridged

Dictionary where I keep him pressed,

A sepia print of him in his second suit,

A double-breasted serge. The satin tie

Flows from a knot held by a silver pin.

His second suit. The first, he bought

With six years of savings, pennies earned

As cabin boy, deckhand, and seaman.

The night he put it on and went ashore

Some shipmate cracked wise about the cut

Of the cloth or the man who wore it, that

Somehow one was unsuited to the other,

The one being too fine, the other crude.

Whereupon my grandfather swung at him,

And one blow led to another until the men

Whirled into a blur of fisticuffs and blood,

Fought until their clothing was in tatters.

So now he appears in his second suit,

Bought off the rack in Hong Kong or London

Just after the Great War. He’s tough

And handsome, bright-eyed, proud,

Daring the whole world to call his bluff,

Cocksure the clothes don’t make the man.