Thought for the Week: My arm round you
Gerard Benson’s sonnets, 13 and 14, from Bradford and Beyond
Joan Armatrading at St George’s Hall,
and we are in front stalls with the fans
(having sneaked downstairs in the interval).
Joan takes the mike in eloquent dark hands,
begins her first song, cool, restrained. Guitars,
percussion, keyboards ride along with her.
The songs change: some are sweet, some quirky. There’s
that swift staccato burst, that soaring slur
that lifts a high note on an endless breath;
then schmaltzy strings, then energy again.
You’ve had a mournful year. Your father’s death
was hard. Your grief was laced with physical pain.
And there were other anguishes. But now,
just now, we live these songs, my arm round you.
My arm round you because I want it so,
because I love you, and because the music,
which knows all that a human needs to know,
tells me I should; the sound and not the lyric
guides my action. All the world is rhythmic.
A cellist throbs. A fiddler plies her bow.
Joan sings. The hall’s charged with emotive static.
Music hath charms. I put my arm round you.
The tenuous spell is broken by applause
and whistling and whooping, and the beat
alters again, fierce now. And there are wars
outside this hall, and anger on the street,
and there is very little I can do.
Because I can, I put my arm round you.
Gerard Benson
Gerard Benson’s sonnets, 13 and 14, from Bradford and Beyond, were part of the welcome at Yearly Meeting Gathering on the evening of Saturday 2 August by Chris Skidmore, clerk of Britain Yearly Meeting. Gerard was a member of Bradford Meeting. He died on 28 April.
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