Brotherly Love

Gestingthorpe 2011

I won’t call you eccentric,

Though we are related.

Your house is full of shards

Gathered from feudal fields

Whose names you know:

Cracked pots and cauldrons; rusting scythes

That would have done a revolution proud.

You sit by the window,

Discussing love, divorce,

Beethoven’s debt to Haydn,

And the fusing of plain and mannered style

In Shakespeare’s verse,

As acres turn dark.

I ask what you mean

By filling your garden with rocks,

Glacial erratics:

Remnants of conflicts

That progress ignores.

Feng Shui, you say,

Hand sweeping the night,

As though that were obvious.

Outside, in the moonlight,

A shriek owl responds;

And the long walk home

Appears less travelled

Than before.