Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' 2 June 2026

Below is an old blog that involves a magnificent poem by now gone poet friend Jamie Reid. I had many poet friends but they are all dead. Jamie Reid made me appreciate A.E. Houseman through his A Shropshire Lad. Every time this prolific rose blooms in my backlane garden I remember Reid.

Some years ago my granddaughter Rebecca and I went to the Playhouse Theatre to experience a matinée performance of the Turning Point Ensemble (in association with Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad and the SFU Contemporary Arts) of Erik Satie's Relâche. As we entered I spotted a friend. "Rebecca I want you to meet a poet, he is a member of the Canadian Communist Party." With a smile on his face Jamie Reid said," I am not a member of the Canadian Communist Party. I was a member of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)." Reid handed me a copy of his latest poems. In it I found a poet who had collaborated with Satie in his Furniture Music:

 homage to max jacob

I was severely mistaken in writing to a poet acquaintance that

Max Jacob took his own life.

In fact, it was only and maybe merely his afterlife he took, and he

took it deliberately as a Catholic, which he had become by

choice, not birth.

After converting to the Church of Rome, he joined the gang of

Poets and artists on Montmartre in order to sin disgracefully, so

he said.

It was not for this reason that the Gestapo later arrested him and

put him in the concentration camp where he died of lung

disease. It was because he had been born a Jew.

His conversion therefore completely failed to save his life.

I hope my poet acquaintance, who told me he feels his own

work is most like Max Jacob’s, does not come to suffer a similar

fate.

May he contrive to enjoy all sins untramelled, no matter how

considerable, without feeling any need for punishment, as did

poor Catholic Max.

May I, too, live in hope

to do the same, dear,

merciful God.

From homages by Jamie Reid, January 2009 by permission from author.