a day when the sun keeps breaking through/clouds that bleed light in jagged rims of gold/contrails streaked like messages/in a crisscrossed sky/a plaintive quality to its inbetweenness/its indecisive springness/clear and poignant/as the plangent bell tone of terry hall’s voice/(his face blank and deadpan as the foil in a comedy duo)/on an old episode of top of the pops/the sound of a slightly sulky child/called upon in class when unprepared/petulant/with an edge of melancholy
meetings arranged, they say, never work out
I say we’ve proved them wrong without a doubt
I can’t remember now just what we said
I never could have guessed what lay ahead
as I ran towards you up the stairs
did a voice in my ear cry, “beware”?
even now I’m surprised you recall
such a short time it took me to fall
pretending that my heart still lay elsewhere
when in truth I had long ceased to care
for what I thought I’d never replace
’til in my heart you left him no space
you say, you wonder what was it I saw?
I say “oh, I don’t recall anymore”
my first impressions have been left behind
replaced now by feelings and more lost in kind
sure that you know but you never can tell
when I think I understand you so well
shakes me that you were a constant surprise
or so you appear in my eyes
tempting to think now it will all be plain sailing
old enough now to know there’s no such thing
Just a beautiful song from the album A Distant Shore, released in 1982.
posthumous praise pours out
with all the bittersweetness
of too little too late,
a cascade leaden with regret,
a familiar call and response,
the side effect of death is appreciation.
now the solar flares
of overdue recognition
burst from every page and screen,
scalding you with their importunity,
obituary, tribute, overview, résumé.
resentment stirs for
the bandwagon jumpers,
their feet still trailing
in the dusty wake
of a beleaguered talent.
the johnny come latelys who
bask belatedly in the reflected glory.
daring to claim him now,
prepared to be generous now he’s in the grave
and no longer the thorn in the side of the establishment, they gladly cut him the slack so rarely afforded him alive.
I hold a long island
iced tea party in my head.
I do this in remembrance
of grant at first avenue.
hearing a certain song now resonates inside your heart
as if it really held strings;
and your eyes begin to leak the grief
that is drowning you by degrees.
your record collection
a roll call of the dead.
it carries the same unexpected pathos
as the accidental discovery
of something banal or mundane
– a note to the milkman,
for ‘one extra pint, please’, a recipe or an address –
in the handwriting of
a deceased parent, so familiar and now so seldom seen.
they will never put pen to paper again.
he is an imperfect
reflection of himself,
in a stream disturbed
by a thrown pebble,
his edges ripple out
in distorted concentrics,
unrecognisable,
a song played
at the wrong speed.
the softest soft focus
on the bleached out face
of the famous old folk singer,
her features, once so strong,
so definite, half erased
by highlighting,
as if in mid-dissolve
to the next shot.
insubstantial
as a wraith
when she used to be
so vital, so present,
grounded as a tree,
an earthiness to her
that connected to the stars
and sun and sky.
now she is stripped
of personality,
rendered generic,
blonde and ironed out,
almost to the point
of invisibility.
her song remains
her monument,
vibrant, trenchant, true,
her stairway
to immortality.
