John Barnabas Leith  

poet, U.K.

John Barnabas Leith was born in Minehead in the West Country of England in the cold winter of 1947.
Having been educated in the British Public School system, he became a Baháší in 1966 and has been deeply involved in Baháší life ever since.
He has a short attention span and has had a range of jobs: trainee accountant, teacher of English and History, an alcoholism counsellor in the Shetland Isles, a publisher, magazine editor, and graphic designer.
He is currently the Secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahášís of the UK. Married for over 30 years, he has three grown-up children and two grandchildren.

Writing poetry is squeezed into a busy life.


ABOVE HASTINGS

It was Hastings, she said,
On the sea front
In the spray and daggers of a
stabbing gale.
Or was it in the summer hullabaloo
Of students and discos?
I was sixteen then,
Climbing the cliff path.
I could have gone up by the railway
But I was young.
Fierce desire drove me up
Into the sun and cloudless sky above
Hastings.

It was Hastings, she said,
On the covered promenade,
That I searched and waited for that
razoring gale
To blow me back to my springtime.
Now I am twenty-three
And watch the cliff-side
Slipping past the funicular windows
As I climb into the hilltop mist
To meet her that was,
Above Hastings.

(1983)

Arts Dialogue, March 1996, page 12