At the end he went gentle into the night
despite Dylan and his own resilient spirit.
When I heard I wrote
‘He’s dead’ on a piece of paper
of the sort he liked.
I wrote those words at home
on a fine morning
and later re-read them in a park
by starlight filtered through old fig trees
beside my favourite harbour cove.
There is so much that remains a mystery
in those words ‘He’s dead.’
The starlight that I read by
came from ten billion stars
dead ten billion years and in his head
a hundred billion neurons
had lived in complex and luminous community
urging him to breathe, pulsing his blood
and generating love and thought.
Years on I see how his departure
freed me more fully to journey deeper
into my own heart’s country,
yet there from time to time
I hear and see messages
like light from dead stars:
a familiar voice, a stranger’s smile,
a greeting from a leprechaun,
the silent witness of a hawthorn
standing sentinel on a hill.
Or grace from a statue
of the Virgin Mary weeping
over potato famines, plagues,
endless wars and infant deaths:
or in pubs - the laughter,
smoke and ribald song -
the smell of mist and gentle rain
falling on green, green fields.
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