Madrigals for a Misanthrope

This is Jack Hibberd’s third volume of poetry (2004).

“Hibberd has a professional’s skill, an amateur’s openness…I should say he is writing threnodies. That seems appropriate to the formality which he finds congenial, the grief at loss which pervades many of the poems, and the spanning of both public and private experience.”

- Peter Steele

Siamese Love

How sweet it is, sweet,
to have loved
and been loved
for a long time.
Like two close trees,
one shortish, one tall,
we stand,
side by side.
Often our branches
caress, rub, touch;
but not quite as often
they thrash.
But down below
it is altogether different:
we now enjoy
one deep stump,
one meshwork of roots,
absorbing, sharing,
osmosing up
in twin towers,
the nutrients of our love

COPY of cover of ‘Madrigals for a Misanthrope’