O, how I miss him

when I hear that music:

the music of the very soul!

How on earth did he do all that

with mere words, our benefactor?

 

Making Kings and Princes human

and Man himself noble once more:

inviting everyone to come close

and taste eternity? And then

to do it again and again and again?

 

From one instant to the next,

unhurriedly and with optimum

clarity, the wedge of intellect 

worked into the knot of passion :

leaving us devastated, humbled.

 

There cannot be such another.

This boy became a Colossus.

Forget the remote Avon town;

the remote hamlet in normal sleep.

He became our harbinger of dawn.

 

The same dawn that we

habitually sleep through:

all of us, (and now so many),

and now we may lose him

and lose ourselves altogether.

 

Once encountered,  face to faceless

face and uplifted by his grace,

who would not miss him therefore?

And yet so very many

have never, never heard that music.

 

The declarations of love and intent,

the consequences of missing

the mark, the profanity of war:

tears and laughter, all in forms

and expression that exalts.

 

Yet, what can or do we do?

We forget and we remember.

We forget to teach and to listen

and we let inactivity

or the hectic, dangerous vices

 

engulf our so-called waking,

and master our sleeping souls.

Take any production of a play,

there is always at least a single actor,

one performance that counts;

 

one that, accidentally almost,

escorts you to the threshold;

shows you, and all your brethren,

that somewhere in the common self,

we were once the stuff of angels.