The Modern Pastoral Elegy

It begins with unspecified “you” and “we”

raising fists of defiance to the void,

the morning we opened the obituary,

a pun on “decompose” you’d have enjoyed.

These crocodile tears shed in rhyme,

in an age too commercial to care,

recall how we met the first time

and the feisty old trooper you were,

you were,

what a feisty old trooper you were:

the snook you cocked at convention;

writing only when the muse was near

your solitary published collection,

Parnassus—A Calling Not a Career,

we reviewed and/or said we admired:

its allusions to myth, its classical power

we found “inspiring” if not “inspired”

and “important” as a euphemism for “dour,”

for “dour,”

important to find euphemisms for “dour”;

your committee work; your taste in shoes;

your alcoholism and/or love for jazz;

your appetite for social issues

that none of the young crowd has;

your impatience with those smart alecks

who expect to have and eat their cake,

and some daringly inverted syntax

the occasional end-rhyme to make,

to make,

occasionally an end-rhyme you’d make;

your insistence upon a thing called “craft”

(perhaps you meant margarine);

how establishment critics originally laughed

at your pamphlets from the Slovene;

how you very nearly popped your clogs

as we fought to get your name cleared;

you were our stag set upon by dogs,

indestructible in duffel coat and/or beard,

your beard,

the indescribable duffel coat and/or beard;

your years of silence and/or second wife

whose whereabouts remain uncertain;

a paean to your flowering late in life

in some council flat in Suburbiton

and your dab hand with a hoover

seasoned with the odd gratuitous clue

(much as we champion your oeuvre)

that we’re better writers than you,

than you,

we’re better writers than you;

the valedictions when last we met—

“Shut the door, comrades, adieu”—

however innocuous when said,

now seem prophetic: you knew;

your despair and/or your courage;

a warning for our planet and times

culminating with a rhetorical flourish

that pans out along these lines,

these lines,

that pads out along these lines:

Something something something world,

something something something grope.

Something something something unfurled,

something something something hope.

Something something something dark,

something something something night.

Something something something lark,

something something something light.