Another poem about the power of books, this time from Kit Wright’s Ode to Didcot Power Station (Bloodaxe Books, £9.95).
Tennyson, whose great poem Ulysses featured on Thursday, provides the starting point.
A DEDICATION RESTORED FROM 1860
Poems by Alfred Tennyson
Of 1859:
Blue, battered boards; indented gilt;
A loose and flapping spine.
~
The first day of the new-turned year,
She penned this affidavit,
A bright inscription that revives
The ghost of her who gave it:
~
A New Year’s gift from a loving wife
To her fond and affectionate husband.
~
It’s gone forever from the world,
That tender, measured kind
Of intimate formality,
Long fallen out of mind,
Long fallen out of mind.
~
And I know nothing of the man
And wife thus linked, or rather
Know just that when he died she gave
The book to my grandfather . . .
~
Who drowned beneath the Bay of Biscay
When my Dad was ten,
And therefore was a mystery
And is one, now as then.
~
So I am glad to find what lay
So long without detection:
A testament of ancient love,
And fondness, and affection.
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