The weather in the window this morning
is snow, unseasonal singular flakes,
a slow winter’s final shiver. On such an occasion
to presume to eulogise one man is to pipe up
for a whole generation - that crew whose survival
was always the stuff of minor miracle,
who came ashore in orange-crate coracles,
fought ingenious wars, finagled triumphs at sea
with flaming decoy boats, and side-stepped torpedoes.
Husbands to duty, they unrolled their plans
across billiard tables and vehicle bonnets,
regrouped at breakfast. What their secrets were
was everyone’s guess and nobody’s business.
Great-grandfathers from birth, in time they became
both inner core and outer case
in a family heirloom of nesting dolls.
Like evidence of early man their boot-prints stand
in the hardened earth of rose-beds and borders.
They were sons of a zodiac out of sync
with the solar year, but turned their minds
to the day’s big science and heavy questions.
To study their hands at rest was to picture maps
showing hachured valleys and indigo streams, schemes
of old campaigns and reconnaissance missions.
Last of the great avuncular magicians
they kept their best tricks for the grand finale:
Disproving Immortality and Disappearing Entirely.
The major oaks in the wood start tuning up
and skies to come will deliver their tributes.
But for now, a cold April’s closing moments
parachute slowly home, so by mid-afternoon
snow is recast as seed heads and thistledown.
Simon Armitage ~ 2021
There’s so much to love in this but I find this line especially touching:
Last of the great avuncular magicians
they kept their best tricks for the grand finale:
Disproving Immortality and Disappearing Entirely.
I recently came across Donald Howarth’s obituary and was very sorry to hear about his death. I wanted to write you, but when i looked for your email address, I discovered that I no longer had it. I have been wondering what is happening to the house at 9 Lower Mall. I have such happy memories of the years I lived there. I hope you are well. Joel Fletcher (fcfineart@verizon.net
I am merely a reader, a consumer of books for amusement and personal instruction, not a professional reviewer - and that is indeed a worthy profession, an important literary craft - so these posts are merely meant to be one person's reading responses, not scholarly reviews.
Early on in this blog I began rating the books I talked about on a 1 to 10 scale; it was meant to be a quick way to communicate my personal degree of satisfaction/pleasure (or the opposite) in each reading experience.
To emphasize: These are very personal, completely arbitrary ratings. These are merely meant to be a measure of the book's success in meeting my hopes and expectations as a reader.
5 & higher are what I consider as "keepers", in various degrees. A 10 indicates that I can think of no possible improvement. Ratings under 5 are rare & I struggle with giving those, but in all honesty sometimes feel them appropriate for, again, undeniably arbitrary and very personal reasons.
Each book is rated in its own context, NOT in comparison to the entire range of literature, which would, of course, be an impossible task.
Leaves & Pages 
♥ ♥ ♥
Very moving.
Thanks for publishing this moving tribute. – I hadn’t come across it.
There’s so much to love in this but I find this line especially touching:
Last of the great avuncular magicians
they kept their best tricks for the grand finale:
Disproving Immortality and Disappearing Entirely.
What a lovely poem! The last lines are applicable here–we had snow on Monday.
I recently came across Donald Howarth’s obituary and was very sorry to hear about his death. I wanted to write you, but when i looked for your email address, I discovered that I no longer had it. I have been wondering what is happening to the house at 9 Lower Mall. I have such happy memories of the years I lived there. I hope you are well. Joel Fletcher (fcfineart@verizon.net