Intensest Rendezvous, On Encountering a Friend with Little Time

for Mark Green

 

This is therefore the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing.

 

I would be a fool, I thought, in any effort

to greet him at the end of dinner, no matter

what I said or did. But why, why pretend

I didn't see him, then disappear as if

I hadn't been there? "No," I answered

the stare of my clean white plate.

"The darkness cannot have it, not now or ever."

So I walked to his chair and whispered

in his ear: "Hello, friend, courage teacher."

A greeting that changed to prayer, and then

an order inside the air when he responded

with a smile and strong embrace. No more.

before he died in his Dublin bed.

"As should we in life!" I yawped on the heath

between my ears. "Keep the silence,"

the silence cried, so I mouthed the words.