The Sonnets of Christopher Whitby

A Picture Seen When Browsing in a Bookshop

They stand in line, their shaven heads

an affront. Loose limbed, but ill at ease,

a few glance at the camera. The rest

watch mutely as an officer strides by

with purpose in his boots. The trees behind

stand guard in mocking stripes of light and dark

beside a building housing God knows what,

for these, the caption tells, are woods near Buchenwald.

A lifetime on, the focus is the man

unseen behind the lens. What was this for?

Admin? A souvenir? Or did he plan

to show the kids this part of Daddy’s war?

And this disturbing thought keeps edging through –

that I’m compelled to share his point of view.

WW1 War Graves, Equancourt

The stones seem to ruffle in the breeze

but no vision comes. I really cannot grasp

the enormity of what happened here.

The fragments of old film, the books,

even the poetry do not prepare

the heart or mind for standing here,

as if in trespass, with no cataclysm

of my own to measure out this loss, this waste.

It looks ‘complete’, from two VCs to died of wounds

two weeks after armistice, just turned eighteen.

And yet there’s more. In the visitors’ book

from nineteen ninety-five an entry reads:

‘Dad, my children have helped me to find you

at last.’

Technical Rehearsal

He’s dying. As he calls me to the mark

I know he’s dying – and I know he won’t

give up. They never do, these lighting crew.

They’re always last to leave and yet they don’t 

need drama, passion in the way we do, 

we shadows of the stage that fear the dark.

Effect, and change, effect. Creation’s fuse

rekindled, shaped and put once more to use.

Don’t know his last name. Doubt I ever will.

So here lies... John, who lit his last scene on –

who knows? Effect, and change, effect, until

the final cue, then pack the gear and gone

to light some other stage. Well here’s to you,

to the last can and shutter, here’s to you.

Bar Talk

The world is full of widows. You know that?

Here, take this wedding photograph for one

example. That one’s gone, and him, the fat

one at the back, and them two, but the sun

still shines on all their wives. Does that seem fair?

I tell you man to man that we’ve been passed

the bunch of shorter straws when you compare –

as women say, men don’t know how to last.

And him – my son – he’s good as dead, you’d say.

Poor mutt left both his legs and half his brain

beside an Afghan road. I’m on my way

to visit, but there’s no-one home but pain,

nor will be... Sink one more? Hey, make it two, 

but then I’m out. There’s... something I must do.

Through a Glass Darkly 

(3 Nativity Sonnets)

1. The Fourth Magus

Another star? And why should that mean more

than the last, recorded in the books

we all have read? Our peoples being sore

afraid, did the world mend its ways or looks,

or (may he rest in peace) to borrow my

old tutor’s hat, what evidence was there

that men improved, grew good, that God on high

brought peace on earth or changed things anywhere?

You’ll go? In curiosity or trust?

No matter, you will see what you will see

and reach your own conclusions, as you must.

The wonder will be if you all agree.

Yet bring me word. If you do not, well, so;

for if God’s kingdom comes, shall we not know?

2. Joseph

Caught between God and Caesar, that’s me,

not to mention Herod, and our Liz

who’s also had a boy, as like to his

father... as any little angel ought to be.

I know what people think. But it’s a fact

that Liz is past the age, and who would swear

that Mary lies? Still, it’s safer here where

only sheep and oxen talk behind our back.

The son I’ve always wanted, eh? May be.

But will he carry on the trade and take

good care of us when we are old and make

us proud and be our boy? These strange guests see

something else. Well, in time he’ll find his voice,

but if this is God’s child, we have no choice.

3. The Shepherd

Find my sheep, he said, find my lost lambs. Well now,

I says to him, that’s easier said than done.

You know how many wolves there are? And how

they’ll lie in wait for hours for just one

kill? Forgive them too, he says, they know 

not what they do. Oh yes they bloody do, I say,

or him as made them does. Forgive? You show

us how. He stopped, quite still, and then just turned away.

Now when he was a babe, the magic rolled

all over us. We heard the angels sing.

We thought the time had come, you know, as told –

God’s peace, wrongs righted, all that sort of thing. 

It didn’t happen. Something did. But planned?

Well you tell me. I still don’t understand.

The Best Poems

The best poems are not creative

but archaeology. You dust away

life’s debris from something nagging you it’s there.

I think this is a hand. But as you scrape,

you find it is a foot, though not where you

expected. Should I move it where I think

it ought to be? Or leave it, a testament

to how this body’s lain these thousand years?

A shaper of words. A remover of silt,

more like. Dig too hard and you churn away

dry roots and dormant seeds to find your gold.

Take a soft brush, and you will write

what, in a sense, has always been written,

but never seen entire before.

[First published in Blood Line, Blinking Eye Publishing 2007]

The next page contains what I call Sentiments: very short poems trying to capture a moment or an emotion.