John Betjeman, Poet

Six distinguished men, soaked to the skin,
others with the ladies following,
a coffin, underslung,
a walk of half a mile along a rough churchgoing path,
the coffin swinging like a cradle,
in driving Cornish rain;
an almost merry funeral,
green and flowered with thought,
full of the memory of laughter

There’s a photo – he's
about two or three years old –
this is a child born
with fear on his face
at having been born
to death; (the cradle
swinging like a coffin) :
instead of looking at the
birdie in the camera, it’s the void he sees.

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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On Not Writing a Poem

and sometimes I’m sitting, quiet,
wondering whether a poem somewhere
would like to speak through me
and it doesn’t

but the stillness as I wait -
that’s good.

Then just occasionally, when
I’m not visited by a poem,
I visit – without planning - Poetry.

It’s a place without a name
where many things meet:
there’s space, and hope,
and possibility, and, out of the present,
a future growing..
and something that’s not less, or
not less bright, than gold;

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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