#1833 - Sep, Cleg

 

 

1833

6.5

5.i.25

Sep, Cleg

concert piece for Frederick Septimus Kelly’s ‘Elegy in Memoriam Rupert Brooke’

 

 ‘in that lovely bay, shielded by the mountains and fragrant with sage and thyme’

                                         –  William Denis Browne

 

Kelly was one of a dozen composers who died in the Battle of the Somme

 

 

as you lay dying

Skyros

not yet ashore

 

I wrote this loss

wrote beyond the words

 

to hang the whole sky

with these few chords

like washing, barely worn

 

nor my oar for the wine dark

 

but the words were yours

I copied them

that they not be lost

 

strings and yet

the sea surge with us

 

we would go on

 

imagine among shellfire

or having not quite got that far

in the gas or at the guns

 

all these who could

who would have been

 

a flourish

and all in my head

a sort of soaring

 

I know this rise

just one grief

in the doom of the world

 

I know and I must tell

it’s how the heart swells bursting

for what was thrown away