The Langford Lads bring Ancestor John to Trurra
(A poem written by JHS Member Bert Biscoe and inspired by this years AGM)
No poet from anywhere
Could ask for more –
For time devoted to talking,
To walking the romantic shore,
Than a pair of descended cousins
To speak The Rescue’s lines,
To fill this Trurra library
With an art which sweetly defines
The bounded patch, the gift,
Which only a true poet finds
Tramming wonder in the ordinary,
Stoping Heaven in Cornish mines –
And standing, this pair, shoulder
To shoulder, by Lucretia’s stone,
With a Lord so sweetly benign
As to render no angel alone –
Each stanza forms a prayer,
A sermon of the mind,
And each poem spoken
Offers insight to the blind –
There is no roundel or statue,
No plinth in Camborne Square,
But words in walls of car parks –
See! Faith’s candle guttering there!
For Harris’s Miner Poet’s hoard
Discreetly weights a library table
And cousins strike an ascendant chord,
A mural of pride on Bolenowe’s gable –
O! ‘Come to Grass’ to preach the word,
To write for peace in frenzy’s world,
Of Lucretia upon a knee, beside her grave,
As Beauty’s lyric banner unfurled –
Perfection must be a lesser craft
Than sentiment and striving for good,
And sitting before a dreaming fire
Taking pity upon its kindling wood,
And standing in storms of Revelation
Upon the Calvary of Carn Brea
With Apocalypse and Salvation
And a Spriggan to show the way –
O there can be no better posterity
For a poet’s silent unopened book
Than to lie with faith on a library table
With a Society inviting hearts to look,
And a line, a stanza, a medal, a journey,
A lyric captured by a daughter’s grave –
Every soul in need of verse
Revives with light, with welcome’s wave.
Bert Biscoe 2026
