Our good friend, Jon Anderson the poet died in October.
And I tried to write an elegy for him.
And it didn't work out very well.
So I put it aside.
But then I took the leftover lines
that hadn't worked and wrote a poem called
"The Death of a Lyric Poet," which is not really
an elegy for him, except in a kind of generic sense.
"Death of a Lyric Poet"--
this is all made up stuff.
It's not any real person or any real place.
In fact, I've made all this stuff up.
It begins at a funeral.
"The villagers spiral up the hill
and gather just below the tree, near which the one epic
poet lies, dust beyond memory.
The priest spreads the ashes and recites the simple ritual.
And a few mothers distribute sweets.
The children are delighted.
The strange man, their teacher finally gone.
And the land can rest again for years to come.
The street of winter will be the road, path of birds, the river.
The constellations in the local sky
will be forgiven their unpronounceable names,
though many children will miss the tales of might and wonder
buried in those names.
And at night, some few children will look up and silently
recite our galaxy is white as snow forming in a cloud,
with its hot halo glimmering in its arms of light
ending where they begin.
Afterwards spiraling down the hill,
some few men take from their pockets, a lemon.
And some few women linger by the gates chewing on onions.
And for who knows how many years,
his ink pot and egret feather will
lie unclaimed in a stone box on the bench beside the well."
I didn't know I had a cough.
It's my wife's fault.