The Sonnets of Christopher Whitby

Sleeping Child

As I carry you

cradled in my arms,

I picture refugees

and feel the dead weight of you

against my heart.

Waking Child

When you wake

you often cry,

and as I cuddle you,

I wonder:

is it loss or relief

that so stabs your heart?

’She Was Rushed into Hospital Last Night’

It’s one of those sharp,

optimistic

spring mornings,

but only fear

is rising

to light the day.

A Promise Made

When she was ten,

she blithely said

that if she died

and I still lived,

she’d haunt me

in my dreams.

She does,

she does.

A Refusal to Mourn the Death of a Child

If I were

to choose a memory,

it would be

when lion and tiger

first came to tea.

They’re shut away now,

like everything else.

[Note: if these 5 together seem to tell a story, it 

is only imaginative and actually the third was

about my mother.]

Well Now

My mother sometimes used to say

how much she still

missed her father,

a man I scarcely knew.

Now as she braves widowhood,

I too drop a stone

and do not hear a splash.

Like Father, Like Son

Visiting my mother

last night, dog tired,

I fell asleep in my father’s chair.

I wonder if she thought

he had come back

from the dead.

Daddy

When I was two

my father carried me outside

and showed me the moon, bright and full.

I fell in love, and miss him still.

Growing Up

When I fell,

Daddy would catch me,

always. Then one day

he wasn’t there

and I fell all the way.

Balm in Gilead

Her faith,

the Rector said,

stood fast

until the end. 

But I know

that she died

of complications.

Neighbour

This is the 

first time

I’ve worn a suit for her.

With respect,

my hands drift past

the black tie.

Model Railway

With figures on the stations all to scale,

the trains run dead on time.

A jolt runs through the rolling stock:

the cattle trucks in line.

Rapunzel

It was well known

that one flick of her head

could send a would-be suitor

flying fifty yards.

The night I tried my luck

the window ledge was almost in my grasp

when with a sudden flash of blades

she gave herself a bob.

En Passant

I’ve walked from Porlock,

thought I’d just drop by.

The news? Oh nothing much,

nothing of 

importance.

You?

[If this seems opaque, think Coleridge and Kubla

Khan.]

Elegy

Is’t come to this? The bright day is done,

The wine of life is drawn and the mere lees

Is left this vault to brag of. A noble mind

Is here o’erthrown, perplex’d in the extreme.

O let him pass. In truth, men must endure

Their going hence even as their coming hither,

The end crowns all and we owe God a death.

His life was gentle and the elements

So mix’d in him that nature might stand up

And say to all the world, ‘This was a man,

With all the virtues that attend the good.’

We are such stuff as dreams are made on

And our little life is rounded with a sleep. 

And so, good night sweet prince, 

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

[Not strictly a sonnet if you follow the 14 line

‘rule’, but begun during my father's last few days'

struggle with Alzheimer's, and as I did not then

have my own words (and in many ways still

haven’t), compiled (cobbled together) from

words by Shakespeare.]

James Douglas Whitby

2.10.1920 – 6.7.2005

And finally on the next page, a sort of manifesto, extracted from my Preface to In Small Measure (2011)