The Gamekeeper’s Son
Unfortunately, Julian,
you’ve missed the First World War.
His history teacher, Mr. Perks,
owlish, gentle, self-contained,
welcomes him back from his illness.
The boy’s attention has to leap
from Sarajevo to the armistice.
But now, back in his corner desk,
the window open to the summer,
he is most entranced by the bees.
They have a hive nearby and they,
like the ones his father tends,
have been mounting there, late spring
and into summer, their advance
to a honeyed autumn. Their buzz and hum
are, to the boy, a song, a rhapsody.
And missing quite from Julian’s innocence,
are the flares, the pain, the guns’ dark thud,
of those fifty bloody months of war.
Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet who is published widely in both Britain and the USA, where he is a regular in journals like San Pedro River Review and Third Wednesday. In Britain he appears frequently in magazines like Atrium, Black Nore Review, Prole and The Journal.