This is a powerful collection of poems,
I will share a couple that particularly touched me:
After the Funeral
(for Sally Thorneloe, in memory of
Lieutenant-Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, killed in Afganistan, 1 July
2009)
Seeing you lost in that enormous hat,
Your face rigid with grief, I thought
of how
In love with life you used to be, so
much that
'Happy' seemed a word kept warm for
you.
Seeing you stunned there in the
camera's eye,
Forbidding your chin to undermine your
lip,
I knew the knife in you was asking why?
And ceremony
couldn't answer it,
Thought they were
trying desperately to give
History's unspoken
underside a face,
A frame, words and
a reason to believe
The afterlife is
ordered – like the place
In which, beside
his flag-draped coffin, you
Acted, like him,
the role you'd been assigned to.
Caring More than
Caring
(for Dewi Stephen Jones)
So, we will not
meet, we'll never sit
Filling in the
silence, smiling bravely,
Chatting about the
weather, sipping tea,
As if time's
passing mattered not a bit
And age's roughcast
could be faced with wit.
Nothings will not
be handed on politely,
To lighten hours
that otherwise might be
Heavy with language
caring won't admit.
My not visiting,
your not wanting me -
What could bring us
closer to understanding
The unsaid rules of
truth and poetry?
Not playing well is
sometimes more demanding
Than playing to
win, where winning would be lying,
Where losing is a
kind of setting free.
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