WEBVTT

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This is a poem for
the late Dudley

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Fitts, which I wrote just after
his funeral in Andover, Mass.

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He was a good friend and I
admired him on all counts

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as a scholar, as a translator,
as a poet, as a man.

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This is "For Dudley."

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"Even when death has
taken an exceptional man,

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it is common things
which touch us,

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gathered in the house
that proved a hostile.

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Though in his desk there
lie the half of a sentence

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not to be finished by us who
lack his gaiety, his Greek,

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it is the straight back of a
good woman which now we notice.

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For her guests hunger, she
sets the polished table.

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And now the quick sun
rounding the gable

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picks out a chair, a
vase of flowers which

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had stood till then in shadow.

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It is the light of
which Achilles spoke.

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Himself a shadow then, recalling
the splendor of mere being.

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As if we were perceived from
a black ship, a small knot

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of island folk, the light
dwellers pouring a life

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to the dark sea, all that
we do is touched with ocean,

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yet we remain on the
shore of what we know.

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We say that we are behaving
as he would have us--

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he who was brave and
loved this world,

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who did not hold with
weeping, yet in the mind,

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is in the shut closet where his
coats hang in black procession.

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There is a covert master.

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When he's moved to turn to him--

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the exceptional man,
telling him all these things

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and waiting for the
deft lucid answer.

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At the sound of that voice
is deep specific silence.

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The sun winks and
fails in the window,

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light perpetual keep in."

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