Gathering

          for Norman Morrissey, with apology to W. B. Yeats

Whatever parts of ourselves we could summon
we have brought to this reading
in your honour, dedicated
to your scattered poems –
lovingly gathered now, distilled
until they seemed inevitable, destined
in a way so few words are. We understood

that we had to start at the finish
every time, and retrace
your steps. Every strong reader knows
that is the only way to approach
a poem: leaning against the door
at the top of the winding stair of another’s words,
then turning back, slowly descending.

Compelled by that brittle music, the way
you transmuted suffering into song,
how could we not
turn and be led down the ladder
into the broken ground where you stood
when you found them? You told us

how you would be transfixed by something
you saw by chance on the side of the road you travelled
on your motorbike, day after day.
Before the reading, a friend described one poem,
preserved in your handwriting, that still bears witness –
your hand shaking so, he said, it’s hard to read those
flashes of recognition, records
of a moment you sucked to the marrow as you went.

And so we finished at the start, as we should:
tracing the movement
from shoulder to straining wrist as you set down
these impassioned fragments to find us
and gather us back into this moment, singing.

 - Jacques Coetzee