Dead Poets: Recalling Them In November

Friends, my friends of so much
Time gone, of languages
Brighter than mackerel,
It is beyond bearing that you are dead.

No, I bear it most days too easily.
But there are moments when a drop falls
And sends tremors over my bason, at 8 a.m.
When light comes up behind

Our hill and reveals flaws in the
Window-glass shaped like comets or
Skulls: to think of you warm, of you gone
Is a cold air all round me then.

So many. And in so many ways
Of course myself I mourn, my
Own ash thrown on to that
Frosty grey lawn.

Geoffrey Grigson