Heart Trouble
Where does music come from? Does it come from
Heart wounds? No. Music is at first derived
From minds. It offers mathematics’ thrum
For ears. At Eton teenage Parry thrived
On music and on sport in spite of heart
Disease becoming palpable. Right through
His youth and adult years he felt the smart
Of pain inside his chest, not something new:
His mother died. His father’s second wife
Moved in. She had no time for Hubert, spent
Her love on children of her own. His life
Knew heart pangs early—lived its life in Lent
Though wrapped in luxury. His mother gone,
His childhood was a gray and emptied dawn.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/vintzileos/468326673/
As adolescence broke inside his form,
New family troubles coursed throughout this phrase
Of music in his years, a time not warm
For brother Clinton, punished for his ways
With women and with drugs. How Hubert coped
When there was greater loss than this we know.
His sister, Lucy, died. His brother doped,
Disgraced, expelled, his sister killed by lung
Disease, the boy recorded diary lines
About her loss more troubled and profound
Than deepest movements. Grief borne undermines.
Grief does its worst. Grief struggles to astound
Us through its injuries and scars to love.
Somehow, like Parry, we must rise above.
These two poems are part of a shorter sonnet sequence within this large sonnet sequence called The Encyclopedia Sonnetica. The shorter sonnet sequence is called “A Lively Hope.” I recommend you read this poem where it is set in its sonnet sequence. To do that, search for “A Lively Hope” here in The Encyclopedia Sonnetica, or you may see an illustrated version the entire shorter sequence at
https://classicalpoets.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/A-Lively-Hope.pdf