Literature & Spoken Word Community | Southbank Centre

Keith Shadwick was a jazz musician, music critic, author of numerous books on music and a poet. He came up with the original idea for the staging of Southbank Centre’s ‘Ancient Mariner’ – premiered this July at London Literature Festival. He died of cancer a year ago. Here is one of his poems, written one summer in Italy.

‘at Umbertide’ – by Keith Shadwick

at Umbertide
the purple of the primroses –
aromas delicate and close
in the still noon sun.

I sit in the veranda’s shadow
the breeze on my bare back
skin cooling
seeking in each tree leaf a pattern of decay
each mountain
an imperceptible crumble

each heat haze
a question as to the day’s conclusion

the fields
green & khaki below
verticals and obliques
patrolled by birds of prey
a kestrel hunting field mice
amid hot air spirals

around the house
wasps work at destroying the wooden beams
supporting each veranda
the terraces slowly undermined
as bird cries echo across the hill
into the plain below
measuring its limitless expanse
& leaves drop from darker trees.