Westminster Abbey Service, Sunday 2 November. Reading of Jonty Driver poetry

Here, reprinted with the permission of Jonty Driver and Rev David Chivers is the text of the service mentioned last month. If you'd like to see it in the format in which it was published, I can e-mail it to you as a .PDF file if you let me have your address.

Westminster Abbey



2nd November 2014
FOURTH SUNDAY BEFORE ADVENT



Evening Service 6.30 pm



conducted by The Reverend Chris Chivers Priest Vicar

with Brian O’Kane ’cello







REQUIEM—TOWARDS ALL SOULS’ DAY

with the poetry of CJ “Jonty” Driver








All stand as the officiant enters.



All sit for the INTRODUCTION:



For I am but a stranger with you: a wayfarer, as all my forebears were.

Turn your gaze from me, that I may be glad again: before I go my way and am no more.



 Psalm 39: 14–15



Welcome to Westminster Abbey, where tonight we meet on the eve of All Souls’ Day,
when, in the light of those words from Psalm 39, we acknowledge our mortality in a
commemoration of our loved ones who have gone to their rest and seek to find strength
to face the pain of loss we experience in life.



November is in fact a month of memory. Those of us of a certain age and from this
country will perhaps have learnt a playground rhyme, ‘Remember, remember the fifth of
November, gunpowder, treason, and plot. I see no reason why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot.’



How to remember so difficult a moment in our history—which set Christians,
Protestant and Catholic, against one another—without descending into divisiveness is a
complex thing. But that we remember such moments of violence is confirmed by our
remembrance next Sunday of all those who have died in conflict since the First World
War which began exactly one hundred years ago.



Memories for all of us are powerful. They shape and remake our reality. This evening we
acknowledge this by giving space for our own memories through the combination of
poetry and music. One sequence of poems by the South African-born CJ Driver, often
known as Jonty Driver, weaves its way around the first ’cello suite by Johann Sebastian
Bach. Inspired by those words from Psalm 39 with which we began, and which are used
in the third movement of the Requiem Mass by Johannes Brahms, Driver explores a
recurring dream at the dawn of the day in which many of those who have died and
meant much to him present themselves as an ongoing presence. From this dream Driver
charts a journey which is a Requiem for them and which spans the generations past and
present in such a way as to invite us to consider the role that memories of the people in
our lives play for us individually and corporately.



Of the music for this journey, little is known about its origin or purpose. No one seems
to know why Bach’s ’cello suites were written or for whom. But their single melodic line
structures—all using dance forms—may perhaps complement Driver’s dance of
memories, encouraging us to explore the interplay of life and death as the dance which
shapes our whole experience, as it shaped the presence of God in Christ in our world.



Let us pray:

Lord of the dance, open our minds and hearts now to know the presence of your dance in
our lives. Help us to use this space to enable faith to seek the understanding to
experience your healing touch, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.


BEFORE SUNRISE



 There are ghosts in the garden mists

Like moving statues, or trees on the march,

Or wraiths of seaweed. And there is silence

 Like the dead walking in a dream.



 I dream constantly of the dead.

Into my sleep they come walking, walking,

In this frozen dark of mid-winter dawn—

 The blank-eyed ghosts of Africa.



 I peer from my bedroom window,

As if I were a drowned man looking out

At undersea translucence, refracted

 Through this awkward English light.



 There is no wind, but still the mist

Weaves at random, and seems to make the trees

Step back and forth, side to side, to and fro,

 Like crowds before they start a march.



 The dead are walking out of sleep,

And once again I see them staring, all

Those seekers from the dark, frozen-faced.

 I fear it might be me they want.



 This is the child who drowned himself

In half-a-foot of water, this the boy

Who stepped in error from a mountain-side,

 Here’s one who swallowed drink and pills;



 A girl who cut her throat for love;

The man the gun-men got, through his own front door,

And here the one they hanged for planting bombs,

 And this the death-cell hero.



 And then my own, the ones I love:

My uncles, both killed in the war up north;

My brother, died of cancer, far too soon—

 The friends I lost before their time,



 The farmer and the auctioneer,

She who fell to the sea from a great height,

The steady ones who chose to stick things out,

 And those who had no choice at all.



 And, most of all, you my father:

I did not think I’d see you walk this path

Out of my dreams, with a stone-set face,

 To chide your son for choosing wrong.




 We make the choices that we can,

But make them only once. You too knew that.

I cannot help it if you disapprove.

 It’s I who live with what I chose.



 Old son, it’s Judgement Day at last.

You chose, all right. It’s choices that we’re here

To judge: I and all the rest. You made them;

 We judge, the dead you answer to.



 How whitely glistens the hoar-frost

In lower branches, and how finely spun

The lace on the naked beech and beech-hedge.

 The night is trapped in frozen webs.



 The cold is in my bones. The dawn

Lies heavy on the dead flowers and lawns.

The College bells are muffled in the mist;

 I cannot tell which hour they chime.



 Behind me someone stirs. It’s day,

Or something which approximates. Outside,

The mists retreat, the cars begin, but, still,

 It’s time for me to make reply.



This is the beach where I spent my childhood

(Spent my childhood)

This is the house on the beach

I was as free as a sandboy

This is the sea where I swam so bravely

(Swam so bravely)

This is the school where I learned my lessons

(What good teachers)

This is the church where I said my prayers

This is the cell where the policemen held me

(Oh so safely

Oh so safely).



Prelude from Suite I BWV 1007 Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)



LOVE-SONG IN TWELVE FRAGMENTS



 1. In lifts sometimes

 I still see dancers

 Standing with their feet

 At right angles.




 2. So short-sighted

 Without your glasses

 You walked right past me

 Because I’d changed shirts.



 3. Night-walking

 To stand outside

 A lighted window

 Which may not be yours.



 4. The police-car slows;

 The trick is

 Not to hesitate.

 I always walk this street

 At half past three.



 5. Long days

 On Clifton Fourth Beach,

 A couple in a coterie,

 Brown and skinny

 Sleek with sun-oil

 Too broke to eat

 Not needing to, anyway.



 6. In bed at last, you wept,

 But made me go on.



 7. At the railway station

 You cried so sadly

 I thought at last

 You loved me too—

 I did not realise

 You were crying

 For what was passing.



 8. The last letter my father wrote

 Before he died

 Was to welcome you

 Into the family.



 9. If I’d known then

 What I know now

 Things might have been

 Different—

 So one says,

 Forgetting one knew then

 What one has forgotten now.




 10. It took a friend

 (Of yours, not mine)

 Finally to tell me

 I was wasting my time,

 And yours, and hers.

 I had never liked her.



 11. Sometimes still,

 Even after half a lifetime,

 Someone’s head will turn

 In the particular way of dancers,

 A fraction slower than the shoulders,

 Or a chin will tilt

 And short-sighted eyes focus,

 And my stolid heart

 (In its fashion)

 Dances.



 12. In the city,

 Kaku, beloved,

 Raining.



Allemande from Suite I Johann Sebastian Bach



‘I SHALL KEEP MY MOUTH AS IT WERE WITH A BRIDLE.’



For a time, it seemed thoroughly the best thing

To keep my mouth shut. I looked to the dead

To be my judges, since what they had said

Made so much more sense than the immediate.



I said I believed in God, but my God

Was a version of justice. I cried out

As if God could hear only when we shout,

But I didn’t get any kind of answer.



I have no desire to be young again,

Yet no desire for death, nor to be old

And sensible. For too long I have told

The young what I myself fail to avoid.



So what I want to know is just how long

Have I got—not detail, not to the day

Nor hour, just a stab at when I shall say

My last good-night, fail to rise from my chair,



Spill the last glass of wine down my shirt-front,

Or hear my daughter say, “I’m a bit fussed…,”

Or watch the doctor mouth, “I think I must

Tell you…’’, or the nurse whisper, “The biopsy…’’.




An hour a day in the gym, on the roads,

Weights into miles, yet everything alters

And slackens, my gut sags and heart falters,

My memory sags too, and my desire.



What few words I have glitter like fools’ gold.

Tell me at least how to measure the days,

How to be patient, how to learn the ways

Of assuming wisdom and serenity.



There is no comfort to be had in age,

Unless the mind slips backwards down the slope

To a child’s shattered fragments, there is no hope

But the quick exit, bemused by morphine.





Now I am told my old friend is dying

And once more the words are taken from me.

I walk the roads around his house blindly

And cursing. He greets his death with grace.



The doctors offer him a few months more;

He turns them down, smiling; since the exit’s sure,

Why search for something further? There’s no cure.

He may as well die with his eyes open.



So he plans his funeral exactly,

Like a well-taught lesson: what we shall play,

What sing, what read, though with a shrug he says

He’ll let the priest add some well-worn prayers.



He’ll invite only friends to the funeral;

He will have none of the obsequious,

No representatives. He will free us

From the need to attend if we’re busy.



After all, he’ll be busy himself,

Away on a long - one might even say,

Infinitely extended - holiday;

He’s busy with dying; it too takes time.



So he invites himself to stay, though only

If it really suits us. He brings old wine

And a new book, and sits down to dine

Though the cancer means that food disgusts him.



But he will die at home if possible,

With a few friends to guard him. If they’re tight

That’ll be their business. When the last light

Burns out he won’t be around to mind them.


One shouldn’t feel sad for this kind of end,

But I mourn his passing, and miss his friendship,

The funny letters on ballet and books,

And the straight talking. Amen, old friend. Amen.





To You I turn, O heavy-handed God,

To You I turn again, who eats our hearts

Before we’re even old, who tears the shirts

From off our backs, to get us well-prepared



For punishment. For years I lived in peace

Without You, so why should I need You now?

Is there all that much which I still don’t know.

I’m not a child who needs Your comforting.



I rage at this undesired intrusion,

This trespass of my privacy, this gross

Uncalled-for interference, this loss

Of space. You have taken me from myself.



What have I done that You should pity me?

Am I a sojourner again, an exile?

Just another name on a dusty file?

I cannot bear the thought of still more death.



The wind has tugged all day at this frail shack

On stilts above the river. One would think

Now that it’s dark the wind would at last sink

A notch or two, but still it moans away



Like a mad patient. The distant surf

Mumbles disorderly music. The more

I turn the pages, the more they ignore

All sense, all purpose. I have lost my way.



There’s nothing I want for, nothing I want.

I have had so much, yet I hunger.

I am blessed in love, yet live in anger.

In my strength, I rage at decrepitude.



I have learned nothing from experience;

There is no one who hears one word I say

And what I write tonight I shall destroy

Tomorrow. Only the wind has a voice.



Courante from Suite I Johann Sebastian Bach




HALFWAY TO HEAVEN



‘Let not my slippery footsteps slide…’



In the margins

Fence and hedgerow

Field and wild wood

Long forgotten

Soon concealed

Falls the footpath

Down the hillside

Halfway somewhere.



Nowhere going

Nothing knowing

Silence only

Almost lonely

Striding streamwards

Trudging hill-high

Downland going

Upland slowing.



Inland seagulls

Storms at seaside

Fallen willows

Streaming bridges

Winter ploughing

Frost has broken -

Hazy greening

Edges vision.



All on purpose

All designed

Manmade landscape

Nature’s lordling—

Thus we journey

In our walking

Heaven’s wayfare

Halfway homewards.



It is one of those days when you might almost believe in heaven:

Early spring, well before Easter, and when you look across the fields

It’s as if the harrowed lands had been washed with water-colour

Or the sun had a green filter—cold still, so you half-wish for gloves

But don’t really need them. Most of all, it’s the birds which let you know

This is spring, not late winter: too busy to be alarmed, until

You are near them, and then the blackbird’s shrill chink-chink-chink as he flees…

But this is nearly all love-song, which should be sad, though it isn’t—

Wren, robin, mistle-thrush, song-thrush, bull-finch, gold-crest and fly-catcher,

And the wood-pigeon’s noisy aerial sidestep as he dodges

Upward through the trees.


England just before spring; sojourner’s home, and content to be here,

Sky still misty, not yet bleached into summer and its bluey-white,

Field-fare and red-wing with their instinct for leaving, and the breezes

Bringing a taste of salt up from the furrows and dykes of the marshland.



And here on the by-way a farm-hand walking back from early work

With a bag on his back, a greeting, a word about the weather,

Then resumes his trudging to the footpath bordering two counties,

Six hundred years or more in the making, often the least likely

Although one learns after a while where a wayfarer would have walked,

Not that streaming valley but the slight rise to the even older road

Which takes the high-way to the coastline before the harbours silted.

We shall come to heaven in time, probably down an older road

Than we remember, when there slip into our heads words from childhood

So often repeated we suppose we must have thought them ourselves.



Although, at times, we seem in doubt

Which way to walk,

It’s you who always chooses darkling lanes

Below the arching ancient hedgerow trees

While I will choose the upland way

In hope to glimpse across the bay

Sunlight on the blue-grey seas.



Although, at times, we seem unsure

Which way to go,

Then each will take the other’s longed-for road;

I choose what I am sure you would decide,

And you will choose for me

The upward climb to view the sea

Past the point where hills divide.



But always, love, we do not choose

To walk apart,

For you to go alone the sheltered way,

Or me to struggle up the steeper side.

We take the path that we

Suppose the other wants to see:

Love agreed and choice denied.



Sarabande from Suite I Johann Sebastian Bach



THREE ELEGIES



I WAR-GRAVE



Brown’s Wood; a cemetery in northern France;

And unnumbered numbered graves. It’s the scale

That’s so hard to take in, the hill on hill

Of white and wooden crosses, named, unnamed.


We’ve often meant to stop while going south

On summer pilgrimage, but always found

The lure of sun and beaches dragged us past

The little roads which bring one to this place.



I’ve come at last to view a single grave:

My father’s father, Private Harry Driver,

Killed in nineteen-sixteen, aged thirty-two;

Survived a fortnight only, at the front.



The regimental history merely states

Most men were lost advancing down a road;

“Took many casualties” is the phrase they used,

Though “many murdered” might have been more truthful.



We find the section, then the row, and then

The numbered cross and grave. I check the slip

To make quite sure. It’s my grandfather’s grave.

Is it from this death that I began to grow?



And what’s the sense of this, I ask. To come

To where the body lies (now dust of dirt

Or bones beside) a continent from home

Of someone whom his own son hardly knew?



I stand beside his grave to say a prayer

For Harry Driver, and the rest like him,

On whom the guns were trained before they moved

That morning down the deadly sunken road.



I cannot make the slightest sense of all

These deaths. If God exists, He must have shut

His eyes, or else would intervene to stop

This slaughter. But God cannot hide His eyes.



II A BALLAD OF UNCLES

i.m. Charles Terry Gould (d 1941)

Astley John “Jimmy” Gould (d 1942)



Jimmy was a gunner: Lieutenant Gould,

 A vicar’s son, handsome,

Tall and wavy-haired, distinguished

 In uniform.



His brother Charles—the older—an airman

 Who drove a tatty car (he tied

Its bonnet on with string), a lad

 With girls beside—



And bedside too, his sisters blushed to say.

 When wartime came, they both

Kissed the parents, their sisters too,

 And went up north—


And then went west, the pair of them, a year

 Apart. Jimmy always said

He’d live beyond the war, but Charles

 Knew he’d be dead.



He told his crew there was still a fault

 In the little ‘plane he flew;

Three times he took it up to check,

 The fourth he flew



Into a mountain-side. And Jimmy fought

 On, riding with his troop

In search of tanks in the desert,

 To set a trap



That’d hold the rear while the rest ran from Rommel.

 He’d say, Give us a start,

We’ll outrun any Eyetie, and most Germans.

 Luck fell apart



When shells fell in the trench he had chosen.

 He died of wounds next day

On a hospital ship at Tobruk

 Out in the bay.



III ‘IT’S FIFTY YEARS…’



It’s fifty years, almost to the actual day,

My father walked along this beach with me.

The dunes have changed, but it’s the same wild sea

Where Dias’ Rock juts into Bushman’s Bay



Like a fist. He’d come back at last, from war

Up north, and then a prison camp: a priest,

Huge and gentle, whose photograph I’d kissed

Each night for years, until I hardly saw



My father’s face above the uniform. But now

I had a father in the flesh, and knew

He’d be around for years, till I too grew

As big, and strong enough to lift a boy



One-handed to the rocks above the surf,

Where broken waves ran, clash and cross, and swirled

On hidden shelves of rock, until they curled

Back fierce and upwards in a blue-green curve.



We must have fished; he would have smoked his pipe

And read; and I think I must have found a pool

Of sea-anemones, and hermit-crabs, a school

Of small translucent fish which swooped too deep


For hands to catch. I don’t remember more

About that day, except the windswept walk

Along a beach, and waves. If there was talk,

It wasn’t of the war, or camps, for sure.



I think of him today, a silent man

Who walks this curving beach, and sometimes smiles

To see his son try matching strides, for miles

On stubborn miles, until, one day, too soon,



The father’s gone, and all my answers, too.

I walk this beach alone, and watch my stride

Get shorter, till it merges with the tide,

And wish I knew more than I find I do.



Minuet from Suite I Johann Sebastian Bach



LOVE-SONG IN OLD AGE



I walked outside

And saw, with surprise,

As if I had new eyes,

You in your chair, reading,

Stretched out sleekly

In the sunshine,

Young again.



And you looked up

In the hard-edged sun

And said, “You look so young

Standing there watching me;

I was dozing

In the sunshine

Like a seal.”



To the old you

I said, “O my dear,

I see now that you wear

Your years like finery.”

And you replied,

Smiling, that time

Beguiles us.



And then the sun

Shifted sideways slightly

And you laughed lightly,

You in your chair, reading,

And I watching,

And we were both

Ourselves again.


In the flotsam you may find—

Surprise—what still surprises:

Jewels, jetsam, detritus

Of seaweed and shell, broken,

Half-broken, whole, imperfect,

Whirl of the waves retreating

Etched on the sea-sand briefly,

Whorl of the innermost shell

As pale as the rock-pool sand,

Intricate wind and the waves

Sculpt sand-dune and (so sudden)

O what silence is falling…



Gigue from Suite I Johann Sebastian Bach



LATE NIGHT: WALKING



Late at night I wake; I’m still downstairs;

The lights are on, the doors are open wide,

The screen is blank, the novel on my knees

Open at a page I do not think I read.



The house is silent; just a modicum

Of night-breeze flicks the curtain’s lower edge

And fills the room with scent, honeysuckle

Jasmine, roses. I cannot hear my wife—



She must have gone to bed, and left me here,

And now I’m hardly fit to shift myself

From out this awkward comfy rocking chair;

My knees are older than the rest of me.



At the garden door I stand, staring out

At scented summer night. There’s too much light

To see the stars, but even if I could

I do not know my way around this sky.



An owl is tracing maps below the house,

From tree to lake to copse, and back again;

Unlike this ancient exiled sojourner,

He knows precisely where his place should be.



You’d think, with so much here, with so much here,

I’d be content at last. Who’d ask for more

Than summer nights like this, in garden rooms,

And wife and children safe and sound asleep?



Suddenly I see, walking up the lawn,

My father: big, familiar as myself,

His face half-hidden in the dark, but stiff-kneed

Shamble exactly as it used to be.


I’m still asleep; this is another dream—

My father come again to visit me,

In England, as I longed for him to do.

“I saw you standing in the light,” he says,



 “It’s strange how much alike we are; I thought

For half a moment that it might be me

Standing in the doorway there.” It’s my son,

And not my father. I’m awake. I knew.



This is the one who walks at night. “You’re late,”

I say, and he replies, “You were asleep

So soundly in your chair, mouth open wide,

Like an old man. I bent to hear you breathe,”



As once I too would kneel beside his bed

To make quite sure he really was alive,

And say a prayer, although I knew quite well

What little chance there was of prayers being heard.



I do not tell him who I thought he was—

He’ll have time enough to know, when he’s old

And struggles up from his chair to look out

At summer night in an entranced garden



Where sons and fathers merge in one patterned

Circumstance of summer scent and northern light,

Of owls who pace their close dominions

To make a map of home. I live here now.



Upstairs my wife is sound asleep. My son

Stands by my side, to watch the shadowed lawn

And hedges. I am at home in England,

At home as much as I shall ever be.



Lightly my strong son hugs me his goodnight

And I reply in kind, my height to height,

To flesh my flesh, and of my father’s, too.

These garden ghosts have friendly eyes.

 Goodnight.



All kneel or remain seated for the PRAYERS:



Ever-living God, we remember all those whom you have gathered from this life into the
peace of your presence. May our remembrance of them bring us this same peace and
inspire us to re-member your world, for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.



We look to the fullness of the kingdom as we say together the prayer your Son taught us:



Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will
be done; on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us
our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into
temptation; but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the
glory, for ever and ever. Amen.


Song 46
All stand to sing the HYMN:







Mem’ry is filled with meaning for us all:

it shapes our lives and loves; can make us whole.



Lest we forget the dear ones we have lost,

their insights—each is stored and treasured most.



Present to us is memory’s rich store

of fears and hopes, of sins, of what we are.



Nothing is lost, and when the truth’s unveiled,

acceptance we may gain, we may be healed.



God calls us all to walk this costly road

and know, with him, we’ll mend the world through love.



Song 46 82 NEH Chris Chivers (b 1967)

Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625)

Organist of Westminster Abbey 1623–25



All remain standing for the READING:



Jesus said, ‘What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it? It is like
a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree,
and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.’

 St Luke 13: 18–19



The BLESSING.



May the God of memory kindle in your minds and hearts the seed of his love and use you
for the growth of his kingdom, and the blessing of this same God, Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, be with you now and evermore. Amen.



All remain standing as the officiant departs.



A retiring collection will be taken. It will be divided equally between the UNHCR: Appeal for refugees in
south Sudan, disadvantaged young people, and the work of the Abbey. If you are a UK tax-payer and would
like to take advantage of the Gift Aid scheme please ask for a Gift Aid envelope.





Details of all Abbey Services are available at the Abbey website:

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Hymns covered by Christian Copyright Licensing (Europe) Ltd are reproduced under CCL no 1040271 and MRL no1040288.
Scripture Readings are from the New Revised Standard Version. The poem Requiem was first published by the Belgrave Press
in 1997, and re-published in So Far, Selected Poems 1960–2004, published by John Catt Ltd and Snailpress in 2005. It is
reproduced with permission.