You Wonder by Tom Murray
You wonder what the man was like
When Yevtushenko and Ginsberg
And others
Came to sit at his feet.
Did he feel he was sending missionaries
Into the darkest corners of literature?
Or despair as they walked away
Stretching their own poetic limbs?
You wonder what the man was like
When the country darkness closed in
And with others
He walked the world of Erle Stanley Gardner.
Did he smile at the certainty of the path
That led to the villain unmasked and the hero celebrated?
Or despair at how the story of the Langholm
Boy would end?
You wonder who the real man was.
Or if it matters now.
Both Grieve and MacDiarmid are the dust
That lingers barely visible on books
That are read, ignored, praised and damned.
Like the man himself.
Tom Murray lives in Selkirk, is editor of The Eildon Tree, is a widely published poet and fiction writer, currently writer-in-residence for Clackmannanshire.
