WEBVTT

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Our good friend, Jon Anderson
the poet died in October.

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And I tried to write
an elegy for him.

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And it didn't work
out very well.

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So I put it aside.

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But then I took
the leftover lines

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that hadn't worked and
wrote a poem called

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"The Death of a Lyric
Poet," which is not really

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an elegy for him, except
in a kind of generic sense.

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"Death of a Lyric Poet"--

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this is all made up stuff.

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It's not any real person
or any real place.

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In fact, I've made
all this stuff up.

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It begins at a funeral.

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"The villagers
spiral up the hill

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and gather just below the
tree, near which the one epic

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poet lies, dust beyond memory.

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The priest spreads the ashes
and recites the simple ritual.

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And a few mothers
distribute sweets.

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The children are delighted.

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The strange man, their
teacher finally gone.

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And the land can rest
again for years to come.

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The street of winter will be the
road, path of birds, the river.

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The constellations
in the local sky

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will be forgiven their
unpronounceable names,

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though many children will miss
the tales of might and wonder

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buried in those names.

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And at night, some few children
will look up and silently

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recite our galaxy is white
as snow forming in a cloud,

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with its hot halo glimmering
in its arms of light

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ending where they begin.

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Afterwards spiraling
down the hill,

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some few men take from
their pockets, a lemon.

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And some few women linger by
the gates chewing on onions.

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And for who knows
how many years,

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his ink pot and
egret feather will

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lie unclaimed in a stone box
on the bench beside the well."

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I didn't know I had a cough.

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It's my wife's fault.