Guest Poem by Ranald Barnicot

Ranald Barnicot is a retired teacher of EFL/ESOL, who worked in Europe and the UK. He has published original poems and translations in The French Literary Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Acumen, Orbis, Metamorphoses etc.. Published collections: A Greek Verse for Ophelia, and other poems by Giovanni Quessep (Out-spoken Press, 2018), co-translated from Spanish with Felipe Botero Quintana; By Me, Through Me, poems and translations (Alba Publishing, 2019); Friendship, Love, Abuse etc The shorter Poems of Catullus (Dempsey and Windle, 2020). This poem is from Acumen 113.

After a Concert II

But music does not always unite.
Armies clash on through the night,
Ignorant, in aesthetic spite.
Brahmsians, Wagnerians brawl,
Trash composers, concert hall.
Igor Stravinsky’s Spring Rite
Provokes all Paris to riot!
Mods and rockers rev and roast:
‘There’s gonna be blood on the South Coast!’
In music my folks and I were foes
Although we never came to blows.
‘Mozart, Bach… not that “blues”!’
Myself to most tastes am inclined,
Almost a universal mind.