Thursday, October 8, 2009

National Poetry Day

The theme of NPD is heroes and this morning on BBC Radio Jersey I read a poem I wrote about one of my local heroes, Gerard Le Claire. Several listeners have asked to read it, so here it is:

In Memory of Gerard Le Claire

He tried so hard to look older:
glasses, goatee, gruelling missions
to the world’s end on shoestring budgets;
fresh-faced for all his pains, as if some shaman
had slipped him an elixir, at lectures
they would think a schoolboy had come to the dais.

Imagine him at sixty, walking the shoreline
between South Hill and the Dicq,
with crows’ feet, at last, and his hair silver!

Loving this place, he loved the world more -
‘The local is global’ - et cetera:
rivers in the wrong places,
downpours drumming on the sea,
the earth crazed like old china …

‘We must meet up for a beer,’ he’d say,
pumping my hand, and we had years to arrange it:
this table with its view of the sea,
a cargo ship crossing St Aubin’s Bay,
and two glasses, one empty, the other full.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

National Heroes Day!
What a pity it wasn't held on the 28th Sepetmber - Jersey Reform Day - so that we could have remembered several hundred Jersey heroes - men and women.
Shall the Town be proposing a memorial to them in time for next year?

Debbie said...

Well done Simon enjoyed your recital.

Anonymous said...

So you are still promoting yet another memorial to somebody killed violently in war!!!

Can't you grasp the greater value of people who campaign peacefully for peaceful purposes - why must you constantly seek glory in ritualised violence?

Gerard Le Claire must be more worthy of a memorial in the 21st century than Major Peirson surely?

Anonymous said...

Its not poetery but its not nice when public are putting there dogs excreta in your private bin,I nearly threw up because of its pong, WHY have you Take away all the public bins???
A really annoyed tenant of David Place grrrrrr

Anonymous said...

we need more rubbish bins in town Simon...................you keep taking them away???