Lament for Ben

(to Schubert's Trio Opus 42)

Is life, this life, his life

now lost, was that a dream,

And death, a dream too?

Whose sleep, whose dream

Are we who live?

This death, his death

makes all of us die too.

His life was ours;

His death is ours;

We grieve, for whom?

We grieve for ourselves.

May Bach and Purcell

Bend down to this bier

But let music sing

to sing their song

Their song, their song

Though poetry's dumb.

In this waste, this grief

these notes alone lend us

yield us

give us

some relief

though brief

though brief

RONALD DUNCAN

The Aldeburgh Band

Somehow a mouth-organist

has got into the flue

of the gas stove in the Baptist Chapel.

Every minute or two

she draws a plaintive chord

that dies as the north-easterly

roars in the stack

and the blue flames leap.

But it's in the gazebo

painted star-white,

all the benches wet with mist and fret,

that I recognise what's happened:

when the timpanist plays hide-and-seek

and beats his tiresome tom-tom

in whichever cubicle I’m not,

I soon see or, rather, hear

the whole ragged band

is billeted piecemeal

around Aldeburgh.

So, for instance, the fat man

with the alpenhorn

has found his way into the massive

stone head of the sea-god –

Aegir, president of the flint-grey waves

– and he keeps bellowing in my ear

every time I pass him.

There's a pretty lutanist

behind that lattice window

on Crabbe Path;

whenever she leans out,

she runs her light fingers

along the modillion.

And the contralto with the treacly voice:

there's no escaping her!

She's always under sail, beating

up and down the windy High Street,

decked in globs of amber.

But where's the maestro

– some say magician?

Is he locked in the foundation

or under the long-eared eaves, still

tuning in?

The Aldeburgh Band:

did he have a hand in this?

Those who tell don't know.

Those who know don't tell.