LOST VOICES

These old, cold meeting rooms and deserted chapels are derelict now.
Hiding behind weeds and raw, self-set trees,
Just waiting for someone to come along and buy them.
Turn them into flats or offices.
Not nearly as much fun as a gaggle of people
Singing those great old hymns and songs
That solaced and supported whole generations.
Those dauntless songs and psalmodies that made the white opaque lampshades,
Wide and lovely as floating tents, tremble and sway on the wings of melody.
Now, a lullaby, now a trumpet call of men marching to destruction
Or to share in the lonely and terrible deaths of others.

Here is the tiny kitchen, with the battered aluminium kettle
Rattling against the rusted taps,
Waiting to fill the giant teapots for throats dry after all that singing.

There is the strip of linoleum, torn and dirty on the worn out floor
Still showing its faint brown pattern. 
A skirt of torn cotton hanging from a broken wire
No longer hides the clean cups and saucers
In the deep wooden cupboard, nor protects the plates, big and small,
Stamped with the name of this once much-loved place.
All gone, except a broken fragment of pot with a few faint words remaining.

Standing amongst the cobwebs, the torn pages of old music
Almost playing themselves in the dusty silence,
I hum an old remembered song of such power and beauty,
All the lost dead and all the forgotten living
Ring out their strong and lovely voices in joyful chorus.
Sharing this last remembrance before it is gone for ever.

                                                    ©2019 Gwen Grant

BARE EARTH

Sometimes,
It can be hard
To believe in flowers,
When every flower
Leads us to believe
Love itself loves us.

Surely,
This cannot be true.

Yet, why else
Would a patch of bare earth
Create such beauty
Out of nothing?

      ©2021 Gwen Grant.

Sometimes, we see the reality of relationships
and sometimes, we don’t.

TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT

If, carefully,
I made a blue Chinese junk
And put it at your feet
Very tenderly.
Would you take it into your hands
And keep it safe.
Or would you breathe upon it a small wind
To make it float away from you.

Or would you,
Very gently,
Maroon it on a waterlily
And let it rot.

      ©2017 Gwen Grant

This poem came to be written because I’d been thinking about a
music teacher we had at school.  He was a very diffident man who
had to try and teach some elements of music to a crowd of children
for whom, by and large, music was a closed book.  He stuck in my
mind because I liked him and liked what he was endeavouring to
do.  Of course, a couple of years later came rock and roll, the
whole world of music opened up to us and then we were all
music, music, music!

       MR ESPALIER

Mr. Espalier, our music teacher,
Took himself very seriously,
So we had to take him seriously, too.
He would sit at the piano, strike a key,
Muse, ‘Top C’, do you see?’
Then launch into a melody so beyond us,
Only every now and again would a phrase catch our attention,
Stopping the tapping of pencils on teeth,
Lulling us into a silence that made us stop and listen.

But Mr. Espalier was full of surprises,
One day swinging into music that followed us home,
Curling all around the council houses,
Weaving in and out of the pink ‘Peace’ roses
Flowering in almost every garden,
Dogging our heels, scaring the unwary,
Banging on front doors and demanding entry.

We flung the doors wide enough, of course,
For every note to march straight in.
Until, like Mr. Espalier, this friendly, beaming stranger,
Demanded our full concentration before it would begin,
Almost carelessly, to give us its family name.

It was Dave Brubeck and Fats Waller,
Moody blues man, Muddy Waters.
Chopin and his mazurkas,
Ravel and Woody Guthrie.
Honky-tonk, rock’n’roll and Gospel Mahalia.
Sibelius, with the drowning beauty of his ‘Finlandia.’
‘Ophelia!  Oh, Ophelia!’
Silky Peggy Lee and lovely ice-cool Ella.
Stravinsky in the Spring and Arnold Schoenberg
Whose every chord sent a flurry
Of exclamation marks flying through the air,
Filling every child there full of astounded questions.
Then, ‘Stand to attention, you lot at the back,’
For here comes Elgar,
As this glorious new family member
Claimed our hearts once for always and for ever.

It was probably then that Mr. Espalier’s class
Of soul-hungry children,
Whose family name had always been, ‘Rejection,’
Decided to grow roses when we got older
To honour him.
                                         ©2012 Gwen Grant