POETRY

Silent Sky

Peter Porter b. Brisbane 1929, d. London 2010

The sky is silent. All the planes must keep

Clear of the fine volcanic ash that drifts

Eastward from Iceland like a bad idea.

In your apartment building without lifts,

Not well myself, I find it a bit steep

To climb so many stairs but know I must

If I would see you still alive, still here.

The word is out from those you love and trust –

Time is so short that from your clever pen

No line of verse might ever flow again.

Your poems were the condensation trails

Of a bright mind’s steady rush of soaring power,

Which still you show. Though plainly you are weak

In body, you can still talk by the hour.

Indeed we talk for two, but my will fails

Before the task of wishing you goodbye.

There’s all our usual stuff of which to speak:

Pictures and poems, things that never die,

And then there’s history, which in the end

No one survives, not even your best friend.

No one like you to talk about Mozart

Bad-mouthing Haydn: how the older man

Forgave the coming boy. No one like you

To bring it all alive, the mortal span

Of humans who create immortal art:

Your favourite theme. I ought to tell you now

That I will miss you. But I miss my cue,

Unless it’s tact, not funk, that tells me how

To look convinced this visit need not be

The last at which you’re here to welcome me.

If I am mealy-mouthed, though, you are not.

You say you hate to eat because it feeds

The crab that’s killing you. I could well ask,

If only to find out what fear it breeds,

Whether you dread your death now that it’s got

A grip the morphine can’t shake. That would be

For me, however. Better to wear my mask

Of good cheer and insist Posterity

Cherishes you already while you live,

And there will be more time, and more to give.

Ten weeks? Ten poems? Scarcely, it transpires,

Ten days. The planes can fly again. The phones

That never stopped are saying you are gone.

We try to give thanks that you made old bones,

But still I see the beach at Troy, the fires

For fallen heroes. This is an event

Proving for all the great work that lives on

A great life dies, and leaves an empty tent –

An aching void to measure our time by

As overwhelming as a silent sky.

--- Standpoint, June 2010