I don’t hear much, these days,
about a poet I thought to be
one of our best:
I heard him read once,
in the old literary museum building
of quaint spaces, and topsy turvy staircases,
with stacks of books, and an old studious feel.
He stood, old man with thin shanks,
with the kindest face, and read
in his humility,
and wept when reading
of an old comrade dead,
wept as the lines, the words,
stuttered the memory,
choked with grief in the vowels.
He’d withdrawn into the chameleon
of racelessness, becoming all races,
and none, with knowing-naivety.
I wished I were as he’d become.
Humanitarian. Activist. Poet.
And I heard him read. Once.
- Brian Walter
