Ron Mason

Time has pulled up a chair, dashed
a stinging litre from a jug of wine.
My memory is a sluggard.

I reject your death, but can’t dismiss it.
For it was never an occasion for woman
sobs and keenings: your stoic-heart

would not permit it. And that calcium-covered
pump had become a sudden roadblock bringing
heavy traffic to a tearing halt.

Your granite-words remain.
Austere fare, but nonetheless adequate for the
honest sustenance they give.

And for myself, a challenge.
A preoccupation now more intensely felt, to tilt
a broken taiaha inexpertly

to my old lady, Hine-nui-te-po, bless the old
bitch: shrewd guardian of that infrequent duende
that you and Lorca knew about, playing hard-to-get.

Easy for you now, man. You’ve joined your literary
ancestors, whilst I have problems still in finding
mine, lost somewhere

in the confusing swirl, now thick now thin,
Victoriana-Missionary fog hiding legalised land-rape
and gentlemen thugs. Never mind, you’ve taught me
confidence and ease in dredging for my own bedraggled
myths, and you bet: weighing the China experience
yours and mine. They balance.

Your suit has not the right cut for me except around
the gut. I’ll keep the jacket though: dry-cleaned
it’ll absorb new armpit sweat.

Ad Dorotheum: She and I together found the poem
you’d left for her behind a photograph.

Lest you be a dead man’s
slave
Place a branch upon the
grave
Nor allow your terms of
grief
To extend beyond the fall of its
last leaf

‘Bloody Ron, making up to me,’ she said, quickly.
Too quickly.

But Time impatient, creaks a chair. And from the
Jug I pour sour wine to wash away the only land
I own, and that between the toes.

A red libation to your good memory, friend. There’s
Work yet, for the living.