Guarnerius

She was prepared to believe
The fraudulent label – it was her father’s violin.
But they said, ‘You must learn the piano
First.’ She crossed her fingers
In the name of Guarnerius. Guarnerius is in heaven.
No kin to the keyboard with its ready-made notes,
She reneged – they would impose
A kind of nunnery discipline.
She climbed instead the domestic Eiger face,
Doing the thousand things that have to be done.

Incommunicado

Sensitive,
Rest on the beach:
The simple sea, the vaults of rain.
How it wants to chime:
Incarnate, carnal, carnage.
Knowledge erodes the bones
Like acid, like light.
Lapsed in sense, focused in sense,
The poem is called Blood Wine. God does not stir
In his coelacanth sleep.

W.G. Shepherd’s second book gathers his poems since Sun, Oak, Almond, I (1970). A strong sense of fantasy and humour plays its part in this collection, which ranges from the intriguing experiments of ‘The Antonine Poems’ to the plain and moving narratives of ‘Memorials’, and the compact, restrained and powerful versions from Horace and other ancient poets. In all his writing Bill Shepherd tests the resources of his poetic language with wit and skill.