First draft of a poem for Rebecca, my niece, a medic and her partner, Olly, who is a musician and who has had to abandon his saxophone for the moment. I spoke to him the other day and said, ‘I wish there was something I could do for you’ and he said, ‘Write a poem for us’. So here it is, two days old.
One Day
There’s a score of a song on the walls of your new house
and I hear the first notes to be played on your saxophone
which, for the moment, lies idle in a corner of a room.
It doesn’t suit you not to play and make people happy.
At our father’s funeral you played Bach, so gentle.
Now the world, as it is, you can’t pick up your instrument
and join with other musicians. You will have plenty of music
in your house! Your children will be creating assault courses,
jungles, over and around old furniture, the settee
you once wanted to abandon, but plans seldom work.
Rebecca will be going each day to the front line
and you will worry. The children will need lunch
but outside there will be the smell of the lilac, the garlic,
and the fox will slink across your lawn at night.
All of these things are music and we wait until we hear you.
And we will, again and again and again.
By Wendy French