elegy

137d

Poet, the flowers are open
even when we are dead…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “At the Funeral of Robert Garioch”
published in DEER ON THE HIGH HILLS (Carcanet, 2021)

Robert Garioch (1909–81), one of the greatest figures in 20th-century Scottish poetry, died #OTD, 26 April

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781800170940/deer-on-the-high-hills/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #elegy

Iain Crichton Smith
At the Funeral of Robert Garioch

Something about the April day
touched me
as they slid your coffin onto the trolley
in the Crematorium.

More and more often it troubles me
this wind my sails have missed
which is still around me
fluttering the bluebells.

‘The Lord’s My Shepherd’ we sang.
It was time for the burning.
The minister blessed it
dressed in his white gown,

his voice fat and voluptuous,
his enunciation pure.
You slid down into fire
in your yellow coffin.

In half-way April
the breeze was vulnerable
straying among the warble
of the first birds.

Poet, the flowers are open
even when we are dead
even when the power has gone
from our right arms.

The flowers open in flame.
The coffin slides home.
Fugitive April becomes
a tremendous summer.

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