Poetry Man

to the memory of Charles Causley (1917-2003)

Who comes here from Scapa Flow

And the murdering sea

Stung into elegy, ballad, lyric,

Chord and harmony?
It is the poetry man.

Who names children summoned home

By the sound of curfew bells –

Zoe and Betty and Joey flying

Down the Cornish hills?
It is the poetry man.

Who stands in assembly, drawing

Songs from the junior choir

With his immaculate silent hands

And their insistent fire?
It is the poetry man.

Whose voice speaks in the classroom

As I repeat his lines,

His poems electricity

Down the children’s spines?
It is the poetry man.

Who turned to the wall and left his town

Empty of verse,

Poems scattered in his books

Like gold from a purse?
It was the poetry man.