for Oliver Bernard
“I have chosen my plot” said the old poet,
cold and ill after a long hard winter
“next to the man who made our first kitchen
and levelled the draining board with a spirit level so that it wouldn’t drain.”
He laughed, and I heard the man I first met
shaded by the apple tree that should survive us both;
a gentle man, modest, reticent,
not tall, with a lived-in face
and eyes that lit when he smiled,
a great teller of anecdotes.
“I have written some poems” he said.
And now he is dry, waiting for spring,
the spring of green leaves and courting birds
or that of the soul sought by the Sisters
he has not visited all this hard winter,
and if I prayed I would pray –
not for the deliverance of his soul:
surely that must be certain? –
but that we meet again
over pints or an uncorked bottle,
laughing at the follies of our kind.