John Field

Born beneath cathedral bells,

he heard their morning and evening Pathetique.

The cheerfulness of their clanging metals

came gusting to his doorstep.

The boy from Golden Lane

with an ear for melancholy.

The idol of Paris, Vienna, St Petersburg.

The pensive maker of the transcendent nocturne.

Moscow congratulated him

for his lullabies to soothe the nineteenth century.

Night after night the privileged and prosperous

came to hear and applaud

John Field who made piano-chords

sound like the rise and fall of breath,

who when he played seemed to bend

and whisper to his easeful melody.

GERARD SMYTH

Field

Think of those artists who will never

escape the shadow of one they had

the bad luck to precede, who did

it first but not quite as stunningly

as the name we now remember. John

Field, for example, ‘inventor of

the Nocturne’, who nodded off while

Chopin opened the five-bar gate

and walked all over him.

JOHN GREENING