One Poem by Adele Ogier Jones

 

Poets on St Cecilia’s day

 

Why is it that the odes,

The anthems, hymns, and songs

And that tale for pilgrimage, written

For November’s day, each by a man

For her, far back in sweetest history

Which would be sweet if death

Were not the highpoint.

 

There is but one I find

A woman with libretto

Ursula Vaughan Williams

Wife to Ralph, with her Cecilian ode

Written for another masculine

Because he asked her, Herbert Howells

And so, she wrote a word to light us,

A song for morning’s joy.

 

Why can’t I find another woman poet

Writing for Cecilia

A line or two reflecting

On the Trastevere girl

Who lived where men then built

Once more, a house atop that place

Where musicians once had played

As her beating heart sang

Strong that wedding day.

 

No Chaucer, Dryden, Alexander

Pope, nor Auden with an anthem,

No A D Hope with one more song

Hidden at that jungle point

Where Assam meets Tibet.

Let me call mine sonnet then

In unconventional mode,

Written for a woman who, if truth might tell

Loved her Valerian though they kept it secret,

And so, the fables pass on through the ages,

Hidden passion’s love

With music all their own.

Adele Ogier Jones - Writing creatively as Ogiér Jones, Adele appears in numerous anthologies including The Trawler 2020 (published by the Gloucester Poetry Society) and e-journals such as Burrow (published in Australia). She has five collections of poetry, with the latest, Following Rivers in Trees published by Ginninderra Press, Port Adelaide (2022).