As fadeth Sommers-sunne from gliding fountaines
The daily press keeps up-to-date obits
Cooling in morgues and is piously prepared
For the claim that any day may be one’s last.
Dictators, famous shortstops, felons, wits
Intimately recline in darkly shared
Beds of fine print, their leaden, predestined past.
But you, dear friend, managed to slip away,
Actually disappear in the dead of winter
More perfectly than Yeats. As at a show,
While we were savoring all your skills, the play
Of your words, your elegant, serious banter,
You cloaked yourself, vanished like Prospero
Or Houdini, escaping from cold padlocked fact,
Manacles, blindfolds, all our earthly ties,
And there we sat, the master illusionist
Leaving us stunned in the middle of his act,
The stage vacant, expecting some surprise
Reentry from the wings to a rousing Liszt
Fanfare, tumultuous applause, a bow
And a gentle, pleased, self-deprecating smile.
There comes no manager hither to explain.
Words fail us, from the weak and fatuous “ciao,
Bello,” to the bellowing grand style,
As we shuffle out to the shabby street and the rain.
You are now one of that chosen band and choice
Fellowship gathered at Sandover’s sunlit end,
Fit audience though few, where, at their ease,
Dante, Rilke, Mallarmé, Proust rejoice
In the rich polyphony of their latest friend,
Scored in his sweetly noted higher keys.
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