And now, Alan

 

And now, Alan

 

Picture Alan, standing tall at the board

unscrubbed, imprinted nails in chalkdust,

blue eyes raking rows of chipped desks

like a croupier, some bets to ignore,

some to meet, some that looked sure,

although, truth is, he wasn’t so lofty,

it was cavernous between him and us

as deep as he was or seemed to be,

it’s like that when you’re pushing twenty.

Here’s to making something of you yet,

before girls who came, went; before debt,

before mortgage and dreams are spent,

he’s edging the room, tossing off quotes,

you know he’s only scratching surfaces,

giving a slight glimpse of antique verses,

how he met a traveler, who told him

of sands outstretched barren and bare.

‘Like as the waves,’ he might be saying

as we’re making towards unknown shore,

rough pebbles to sharpen and smooth,

so do his minutes, counting old iambic,

stressing the unstressed in new romantic,

recounting how once they crossed roads

to avoid Leavis, and this grievous sin,

had in turn left indelible imprint upon him.

How he’d filled stone Dartmoor cottage

with Kaftaned wife and so many books,

with leaves that fall to fill the nooks,

the cracks that through wild winds whistle,

the scrub, the gorse, the wild wild thistle,

quarried grey slate hewn from God’s earth,

the rolling seas of imagination’s birth,

how once she brought cool minted tea

while his words gazed into the heart of me,

never travelled, but wandered time instead:

picture Alan excellent man, long dead

who imprinted dreams into our living heads.