{"id":387,"date":"2011-09-23T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-23T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=387"},"modified":"2011-09-23T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-23T11:00:00","slug":"jonathan-taylor-on-didos-lament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/jonathan-taylor-on-didos-lament\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan Taylor on Dido's lament"},"content":{"rendered":"

For My Father<\/span>

… but Purcell\u2019s Dido\u2019s lament \u2013  <\/span>

When  I am laid in earth,<\/span>
May my wrongs create <\/span>
No trouble in thy breast;<\/span>
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate,<\/span>

\u2013 never seems to finish,<\/span>
and the five-bar basso ostinato<\/span>,<\/span>
recurs again and again,<\/span>
closing like a trap on the Carthage Queen,<\/span>
remembering what she wants forgotten,<\/span>
the 3\/2 rhythm persisting,<\/span>
long after the record has finished,<\/span>
chaconning my footsteps<\/span>
towards the C.D. player<\/span>
and the Eject button,<\/span>

which can\u2019t eject the <\/span>ostinato<\/span>
from my head, and can\u2019t stop me<\/span>
remembering the Queen\u2019s fate <\/span>
encased within it \u2013<\/span>
the slit wrists, the betrayal, <\/span>
all that <\/span>Aeneid<\/span> balls-up \u2013 <\/span>

And I know what the circling ostinato<\/span> tells me:<\/span>
that, despite those seven last words,<\/span>
her fate is to be remembered for her fate,<\/span>
to be immortalised for nothing else;<\/span>
and I know too that grief, <\/span>
the ground-bass to all our memories,<\/span>
all too often memorialises by mistake<\/span>
the fate, the last illness, the how,<\/span>
and not the who or what.<\/span>




*Jonathan Taylor<\/span> is author of the memoir Take Me Home<\/a> (Granta Books, 2007). He is also Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at De Montfort University and co-director of arts organisation and small publisher, Crystal Clear Creators<\/a>. His poetry collection will be published by Shoestring Press in early 2013.

<\/span>This poem was first featured in New Walk Magazine<\/span><\/span><\/font>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For My Father… but Purcell\u2019s Dido\u2019s lament \u2013  When  I am laid in earth,May my wrongs create No trouble in thy breast;Remember me, but ah! forget my fate,\u2013 never seems to finish,and the five-bar basso ostinato,recurs again and again,closing like a trap on the Carthage Queen,remembering what she wants forgotten,the 3\/2 rhythm persisting,long after the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}