Those good folk who know the worth of books
Have given Anne a new memorial,
A plaque resistant to the coastal storms
That have pitted the original limestone slab
With savage cuts and scars
Gouging deep a once immaculate surface.
The words I could decipher when a child
Transformed into gritty knots of lead.
The new memorial is a plain and simple plaque
That names her father, but not her two great novels,
And thus replicates the original injustice
Against her creativity and gender.
I sit beside the grave and try to come to terms
With how everything that makes a life worth living
Eventually breaks apart. But I can never be a stoic
And accept all that I value has no meaning.
A group of listless tourists, tied to an agenda,
Tick their check lists as they dawdle by.
I suspect Anne Bronte is just a name to them,
The girl who did not write Wuthering Heights.
Anne is the sister too often underrated,
But she was the toughest of her clan,
Speaking sharp and fierce to those folk
Who hate the truth when it is clearly spoken.
Her honesty has brought me to this hilltop
To sit and mourn her youth, but also to imagine
That I can be as honest as she was,
And not to hold my tongue when life gets brutal.
Trevor Joh Karsavin Potter.
First drafts, 26th. - 28th. 2017. - July 11th. - 12th. 2018.
Rewritten June 5th. - 6th. 2022.
I first drafted this poem in Scarborough in 2017, but I was very tired having been working hard at a conference the previous few days so I only managed to produce a very rough sketch. The second draft was still a very rough version and I left it thus until I should feel ready and able to work on it again. Thus five years later I have come up with this much more concise version that I do like, and is more or less the poem that I originally hoped to write.
