Gilbert Herbert,
IL
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Free Verse
To a friend, on
the death of his daughter
1986
What can I say to
you…
This is the way it
is,
the loss so sudden
that there’s no pain
at first, only disbelief,
and a driving, futile
need to know, endlessly
asking what, and how.
Then anger comes,
rage
against man, fate and god,
mostly against oneself,
guiltily the questions change
from what and how, to why.
There are no answers,
this is the way it is.
Anguish abides,
ache layered on ache,
boundless and corroding,
endless ebbing and swelling
tidal waves of pain.
There is no easing,
this is the way it is.
Turn towards
tomorrow,
yesterday’s sorrow endemic,
survival the imperative, live
for those you love, now
infinitely precious.
Yet, memories remain,
this is the way it is.
Normality of a
kind,
through a diminishing-glass,
not quite life-size,
some colours filtered out,
life’s music muted.
Nevertheless – laugh
you must, and love.
This is the way it
is.
The Time Traveler
1991
My late mother, God rest
her soul,
was born more than a century ago,
in that momentous time in which
the first electricity power stations
went on stream.
She was as innocent of
science
as Thurber’s aunt who, so he wrote,
feared an empty light socket as
a source of electricity leaking out
upon her head.
My mother’s lifetime
spanned from this,
technology’s most tentative beginnings,
until the day when, sitting in her lounge,
she could enjoy her Beethoven and Brahms
in stereophonic sound.
She lived to see upon
the TV screen
(with eyes to which her failing sight
had been restored with laser beams)
the conquest of space, and men who walked
like gods upon the moon.
Within the seclusion of
her home
this quiet and unadventurous soul
calmly accepted the shockwaves of change,
and explored more new worlds than
Columbus dared to dream of.
The emigrant
1994
In
Paris replanned
in Haussmann’s day,
trees full-grown
were uplifted from
the familiar earth,
and planted along
bold new avenues,
rich in promise
of abundant shade.
Here they struck
deep roots anew
flourished afresh,
green with leaf. |
To uproot
oneself
to shift the hearth
to foreign soil,
s transplantation
more painfully achieved.
One is a stranger
in a strange new land,
under alien skies,
not quite in exile,
not quite at home.
A good new life,
perhaps, but somehow
less than whole. |
Forest
requiem
1996
In the martyr’s
forest
at the edge of the town,
on the path which leads
to the killing field,
all is tranquil now.
Birds sing their song,
and the insects hum,
and the tumbled twigs
soft-crackle underfoot
at Vilkomir
But on that black
day,
when thousands marched
on the sun-dappled path
in the canopied woods,
with the sound of birds
and the insects’ hum,
was all tranquil then,
did not silence shout
its threat that day,
at Vilkomir?
Or did soldiers’
boots
and the lash of whips
and the baying dogs
and the children’s cries
drown out the birds,
still the murmuring quiet?
Was beauty masked
from fearful eyes
in the pain-filled forest
of Vilkomir?
When the shots rang
out
the birds rose up
in frightened flight,
their fluttering wings
like fluttering hearts;
and the trembling leaves
fell as a shroud,
turned the forest floor
blood-red with shame,
at Vilkomir
A kind of
immortality
2007
As the
poet said:
‘Now is the time
for the burning of the leaves.’
The leaves on oak and elm
change colour, wither,
release their grip on life, and flutter to the ground.
We who are in the late autumn of our lives
are sad witnesses to the human equivalent
of that natural process of decay and death.
With every passing month, or so it seems,
With ever growing frequency we are called
To yet another graveside of an old beloved friend,
as one by one they fall, like desiccated leaves,
from the tree of life.
As the
poet said:
‘If
winter comes, can spring be far behind?’
Within seemingly dead trunks
life-giving sap arises,
from the structure of bare branches fresh growth appears
as sterile winter makes way for canopies of green.
In a wondrous way so it is with us, for
beyond the seeming terminality of the grave
our children, and then our children’s children
in the springtime and warm summer of their days
bind up our narrative with theirs, as they celebrate
the continuity of life.
Mind and matter
2009
I may not be schizophrenic
but I'm definitely in two minds
about the tally of my years.
When I think about the ‘me’
who lives inside my head,
that ‘me’ who still writes books,
solves Times cryptic crosswords,
and enjoys the winter sunset,
a glass of Scotch in hand,
that ‘me’ who still appreciates
a bikinied girl,
and the sporty panache of an
XK Jaguar convertible,
then in my mind’s eye I’m still
a functioning, forward-looking
adult… maybe pushing forty.
But never mind the
fortyish
‘me’ who lives inside my mind..
My treacherous mirror reveals
a much older person, stooped and grey,
baggy eyes and blotchy skin,
an unrelenting image which conspires
with trembling hands, unsteady legs,
erratic heart, shortness of breath,
and an ache in every joint.
Wait, young man, my body
says,
learn from me the true arithmetic
of time, those four score years
and more that have gone to fashion
the man you are.
About Gilbert Herbert, IL
This is
Gilbert Herbert's first appearance in Sketchbook.
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