Apprenticeship My father saw, by chance, in a shop window, a chest of drawers he’d made as an apprentice cabinet maker, in a trade he’d long ago put behind him; he didn’t buy it, and was puzzled by my interest; I got some idea of how deeply he detested his history. Understanding (Re T. J. M.) Talking to an old mentor, much loved, now dead, mentor in intellectual manners, not poetry, he said, of a piece of modern poetry we used to quote to each other, and which enlivened our days, I don’t understand it, not altogether, but that doesn’t…