Poetry
George Herbert, pictured, led a quiet life. He wrote poetry and would have been surprised that some of his poems are known around the world and still sung as hymns. He died in 1633, aged 39, while a parson in a rural hamlet.
Here are a few of my poems.
Winter Gale
With a song of sighs and sobs
skeletal trees sway to
the rhythm of the wind
which, fitful and capricious,
flings brittle arms and twisted twiglet fingers
down to muddied earth.
Strewn haphazardly,
by Nature’s infanticidal acts,
they lie, severed from life,
waiting for burial or burning,
while high above,
their stricken sisters,
with soughing songs of sorrow
dance on,
to the music of the wind.
In Bodmin Jail
In Bodmin jail
Incarcerated
In darkness
In chains
In tears
Inferior
Inadequate
Inconsolable
Insensible
Insane
Inhuman
Inglorious
Injustice
Inevitable
Interminable
In jail
Do not pass Go
Ever
Full Moon
Strange solid orb of
rigid rock and dingy dust
- abandoned, bleak and barren
You shine
in meek magnificence
and gentle luminosity
on our bewildered Earth.
Your silent circle
hangs,
unflawed in its fullness,
like finest porcelain
on the ebony dresser of the sky,
and gazes
with translucent serenity
and sympathy
on the dense solidity
of our dark night.
