Rap for a Reader (John Brown d. 2010)

John Brown RIP

At John’s funeral his great nephew Rowan read a “rap” composed for John. It was a moving, memorable, affectionate rich tribute to John and we can offer no more fitting tribute here than to print it in full.

Rowan makes his living from “rap” and music, he is known as Dizraeli.

UNCLE JOHN

Solid in solitude with his dreams and his memories

A resolute raft, ploughing the seas of the century

Chin set, he settled and barely admitted tenderness

for friends, Romans, and country walks with his weathered stick.

I remember John among the gorse of the Cornish cliffs,

Calling to his boys, with his voice free from ornament;

“Val! Asti!”

A smile broad as a house hides

In his cheeks, and only shows itself as an outline.

I remember John sat in the chair that he sat in,

Reading a hardback, as squared as his passion

As Greek ghosts gather at the back of his mind

And the wallpaper yellows with tobacco and time…

I sit with him. I like the way the quiet makes my head buzz

Silence my twelve-year-old self doesn’t get much.

It tingles my blood and it settles my bones;

Uncle John Time, slow as Old Testament stone.

Coal goes in the scuttle

Tobacco in the pipe

It isn’t any trouble if you stay for the night

But the forks live there.

Realign your chair when you stand!

And God help you if your manners aren’t right.

To me, at sixteen, he breathes fire, dust and history

He lives Redruth and Pompeii just as vividly.

Lord Governor of his interior economy

In a cold bath, with the Roman Empire for company

John keeps time on a chain in the pocket of his waistcoat;

It falls and it rises at his say-so

So innovation is as unnecessary as a wrist watch

              … and here am I, trying to explain hiphop

It doesn’t matter: family is family.

John keeps photographs of us on his mantelpiece

And now, at twenty-seven, I’m proud to have been

a face among the many in that gallery

where Coal goes in the scuttle

Tobacco in the pipe

It isn’t any trouble if you stay for the night

But the forks live there.

Realign your chair when you stand!

And God help you if your manners aren’t right.

Coal in the scuttle

Tobacco in the pipe

It isn’t any trouble if you stay for the night

The forks live there.

Realign your chair when you stand!

And God bless you.