This section features a few poems, some of which have been published recently

Workshop

He returned soon after – pulling the door
a little too hard. The brushes trembled
in their jar. All summer it’s been like
this – light heavy as through water.
I turn aside, drop my shawl. …If I, too,
could make my hands dance, I’d cast him,
perhaps, thirty years younger. A delicate
boy lost in his glass, beside a vase of blue
weeping flowers – or some such thing.
He moves my chin. A touch. I watch a spider
negotiate the dusty rafters – lost in its work,
and steady my breathing. …He was such a darling
on opening night. Those adoring faces, resounding
laughter. Our small table crowded with glasses.

This poem first appeared in South Bank Poetry – Issue Thirty Five in February 2022.
I am grateful to the editor for publication.

Elegy in September

Shock of the bedside lamp—transfiguring
the dark. Sudden white of the egret, still
upon the river. Heraldic, a thing apart.

A private view over public rooftops—
something not unlike a sense of loss.
Sounds the rain makes, then unmakes:

scattered reports first heard in the hilltops—
echoed in the town. A public view over private
rooftops. All that nests in the city’s heart.

September 2022

Returning

Of the fine things,
some time returns:
sunlight playing
through an open
gap in the heavy brown curtains.

(Linen-cream lining;
sleek rail, wooden rings).
Launched on the dark green
sofa’s resistant springs—

to see the dust motes flying

October 2022

After Anna Akhmatova

“Strange – I outlived it” (Willow, 1940)

You came back, all seemed
re-arranged. Familiar cherries
no longer standing. The reddish

glossy bark – a brief synaptic-
flash. Where you moved –
the mirror was heavy, but not the light.

The North Sea is not the Atlantic.

Still, a child now is dreaming | through
the face you held at five.

                        *
The saplings we planted
in late-adolescence – the birch
and mountain ash – are thick-

set now, less easily swayed. Though

the Atlantic is not the Pacific:
the mirror is heavy | not the light.

August 2020

This poem was written for my sister on her birthday. I reflect on poems about trees, here: https://benedictgilbert.com/2020/08/23/like-a-root-in-arid-ground-poems-about-trees/

The Bergermeister’s Daughter (Young Rembrandt’s Love Song)

My steps ringing the flagged square at Leiden.
A hurried sky of quickening cloud – you know
How we Dutch adore the fleeting light.
A touch of brushwork. My long apprenticeship
Of wooden, ungilt frames: these heavy fumes,
My sweet alchemic paints. Out of this
Coarse, oak-green world and harvest fields,
I’ll ring the dark gold light: guilders
For the Burgermeister’s daughter. I’ll tease and pry

His fingers from my Saskia’s shoulders.
That sable, fur-lined cloak. I’ll shape his likeness,
Claim his loss, when – please God – her fingers
Will soften, with the work of man and woman.
And gently stroke her rounding smock. I
Remember, then, my Oma – a baker’s wife.
Still girlish. Her downy cheek abrush with dust and light.

This poem was written for my brother and sister-in-law’s wedding in October 2019 (titled Het liefdeslied van Rembrandt van Rijn).

Starveling

Dog-witched, strange
in lamplight, or half-

torn, ragged moon.
This coaxing fox –

so lean and young: 
starveling of kerb-

stone, and frost
as black as flint

– the savannah and
this Georgian street.

          *       

Hungering, we leaned
like wheat to appease

the hoarded grain.
Then wake to find

the savage gone:   
our tongues as thick

with other names

January 2020

Home Movie (1980)

In Uncle Paul’s old cine super-eight,
The Norfolk summer light an endless loop
Of clucking farmyard, jumping silent frames.

Zanna new-born, Mischa on the gate.                          
I’m wild with the chickens and the goats –
To star in Paul’s new cine super-eight.

Great-aunt Sylvie smoking night and day,
Grandma laughing at forgotten jokes –
In the farmyard’s clicking silent frames.

Then cut to Buba (touching ninety-eight),
All her daughters’ close-up secret hopes –
In Uncle Paul’s old cine super-eight.

In the Shtetl, snow and silence framed 
The dream of Eastern-European Jews:
To reach old age in peace and health. And make

A shawl of more than simple woven prayer.
The year before he died – his tread moves
Sturdy through the farmyard’s silent frames –
Uncle Paul behind his super-eight.

Autumn 2018

I reflect on this poem in a post here: https://benedictgilbert.com/2020/08/01/home-movie-1980/ “Traditional form and family memory” (1 August 2020)

Songs of Expectation (for Louis)

“Love, love, I have hung our cave with roses, with soft rugs…”

Sylvia Plath, Nick & the Candlestick

I. Swingy Lane

You pace the track’s dark limit.
Telegraph poles take up their slack

Long silent weight
Venus is out!        

Skype-close voices break in the firmament,
A small pine wood grows oak-black.

How long puddles shield silvery light –
A sky unquenched

Since Wordsworth’s time:
Only life grows strange.

          *

At home he turns in light –  

Close as this moon
In her final quarter

II. Threshold

Promise of high
voices. Loose rushes
bed the floor.

The village holds
close – hushed faces
cross the threshold.

In time, reap
and harvest
in the field

January 2020

Hurricane Season, After Derek Walcott

“The classics can console. But not enough.”

In time, our eyes come around
To this canvas – 

A young novice,
Turned old master.

Giving his utmost –
Pushing out into sea-green light.

         *

A dark hemisphere clings
At the ribs of the boat,

Holds the season’s turning.

          *

When the hurricanes come
You just have to wait –

What is ours lashed to these islands
Like hope.

Of all people,
We are not above such things.

The poem first appeared in The New European, #189. Thursday 2 April 2020. I’m grateful to the poetry editor for publication.

Website here: https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/home

I reflect on writing this poem in the POSTS section of the blog, “Reflections on the Poetry of Derek Walcott” (23 April 2020). The quotation is from ‘Sea Grapes’ (1976), Selected Poems.

Ela Newborn

“You are the baby in the barn.”

Sylvia Plath, Nick & the Candlestick

Between lip and cup,
The sweetwaters – your voice,
Woke me to a painful thirst.

Winched up, from well and rope.
In casks of dreams,
Your name distilled slow.

The sun-warmed blood,
Your balled fists clutch the long sleep
Of the floating world:

A name to tar over cracks
In the heart’s broken pail,
To balm this small bulging world.

The clean dawn, bridging the Hudson.
The sky stretched tight as a hospital sheet.                                        
At Fifty-Third, urgent cars halt

For the ancient birth.

The sweetwaters – her
Gulps and cries – woke you
To a burning thirst.

This poem was written after my niece was born in a Manhattan taxi cab. An earlier version was first published in Oremus, Westminster Cathedral Magazine, #217, September 2016.

The 15:52 to Cambridge

Neither conservative. And not nostalgia.
Simply a turning away, screening eyes
From what is heart-sick, somehow.

And tongue quite still. (Is this how
Wordsworth turned from the town’s
Blind hoist at furnace mouth –

Toward plain speech? Slaking clean
From the well within). Yet, something still unloving,
Tilting – an ache and lurch –

Winter light blazing haystacks.
Goose-black throat, and down. Its south-
West path, cool tilt

Of solar panels dusking still as water. Flaring –
A wild malaise in the culture. Light smelting: 

Back to the train’s westward curve.  

 An earlier version of this poem appeared in The New European, #165, Thursday 17 October 2019.

Love Spoon

The chipped Welsh Love
Spoon. Nothing

For days:
Then your soft return

9 May 2020

Blog content: © Benedict Gilbert 2022