Goodbye Now My Brother

Trapped you were in your sinecure

Mounted like a specimen in dutiful assumption

Almost bear-like in stature and defiance

Blank until you owned incredulous night

—

We believed in one another, but hiddenly

Between each other, our secret from ourselves

There was a specified iota of respect

Birthed in our heritage of neglect

—

Both of us became blank slates

Beneath the burden of ruptured love

Both knew the dark withdrawals of affection

And those hollow stares of disjunction

—

We both played; I was the Midshipman

You were the Lieutenant

Our play was the play of the sea

Our ships were cardboard boxes and a fallen tree

—

We shared a room of bunks and green linoleum

You named all your pets the same

And later you would not name your cat

For you the honesty of abstraction reigned

—

And as we grew, we adapted and shone

You shone with the coldness of intellect

And yes, you lit many minds with your wit

It was abstruse and strangely lifting

—

I have found the memory of your humour

And shared its special nomenclature

I have discovered you once more within its resonances

And re-established our connectedness again

—

You led and I followed a set direction

Which you plainly enunciated for me

The early books were tough, the later tender

As my mind expanded and flowered

—

But finally before the flowers could fade

I rose out of my own imagination

And decided to fly and pollinate

I became free of you as I came of age

—

From that point our connection was kept secret

And our respect for each other lay deep within

It lay in the lustrous knowledge of early conflict

It lay in our unshared experiences of harm

—

But now I grieve for you my brother

Grieve for the conversations never held

Grieve for the warmth we never entered

Grieve for the lack of any farewell

—

I grieve that you fell among strangers

With people that knew you so little

I grieve that your friends were left without you

With their knowing of you so unsettled

—

But I am heartened by the legacy of meaning

That you have enabled us to find

To grant so many people gladness

In transforming knowledge in their lives

—

I am heartened that your name in blazoned

To the foreign land you served so ably

I am joyful that your name is laden

In a sea of meaning and enjoyment

—

Your legacy will paint a thousand pictures

In the minds of men and women far and wide

And our connectedness will light the night-time

For a hundred, hundred, thousand years

—

Goodbye now my brother and goodnight

These are surely not phrases you would have liked

But you still might have found amusement in a certain line

And utilised your wit to play with it

—

Goodbye my brother who could not share feelings

Farewell and make your journey through the night

I know your spirit is still playing

And in the heavens you will find the light!