1 MAY 2004, Page 36

Summer of 2003

Hearing Jack's saxophone and Will's guitar This June evening, almost the longest day So that up there a single star Dissolves in distant sunlight, there's delay — If only for an instant — of the end I must reach. In this music, they suspend My life, and lift it up, and hold Whatever has grown old, And rinse it clean, and make it new and clear.

And yet their music is as far away, Almost, as that midsummer star to me, However well they play This long light evening, spilling out their free Syllables of skill and being young.

Some dull thing weighs me down, my tired tongue Limps in its utterance, goes dumb Where all the others come Singing and dancing, growing, separately.

Anthony Thwaite