Calmacott’s Brother (part one)
The Folly
Calmacott’s Brother
Calmacott’s Brother (part one)
Maybe we were not fit
Not fit to live nor fit to die
A sower’s superfluity made as the parable’s seed
An abortion or a sturdy weed…howsoever Heaven wills it
Struck wherever we might fall
So the waters close
To see you slumped there in your seat
Grown peevish in your temper
Grown thinning at the temples
I think we must have been a pair
of caricatures in the cartoon’s waiting chair
Unmarried brothers
And aren’t they queer, those two
Need dusting like the furniture
Remember though
A ringleader… Henry, me!
Yes, a ring, a token, a magic lamp to light the way
So you would see clear
They only execute the ringleaders
Then how does a man of imagination
Find himself fingered
Smile at this, the hay fork that ran me through
Was destined, when they sent me home
I was the one who knew
Remember us as lads
The flooded shaft, the pithead sealed up
Where gypsies, so was always said
Took shelter by a secret way they’d made themselves
We never found it in our play
Well, it was the last month of the war
All of us out of doors for a bonfire
That you must recall as well, as you’d come down
Invited
I shook your hand…and so we parted
It wasn’t like us to embrace
Calmacott’s Brother (part two)
(2017, Stephanie Foster)