'Last of All Last Words Spoken Is, Good-bye'

Memory is often an obligation, an expression of gratitude and fondness. It can be faulty, of course, especially with age, and it pays to double-check the important things if you intend to share the memories with others. I’ve just learned that a guy I hadn’t seen in half a century has died. We worked together in a restaurant in 1973-74. We were the tallest employees and frequently got our hair caught in the spirals of fly paper hanging from the ceiling in the kitchen. He was a poet of the Ginsberg/Corso school. I favored John Berryman. We mocked each other repeatedly but no one got angry. I remember him singing “Black Water” by the Doobie Brothers. It’s remarkable we got the job done while consuming so many drugs – one of the advantages of youth, I suppose.

The poem that comes to mind would not have pleased my friend. He was as ruthless as I when it came to verse we didn’t like. Young people can be viciously dismissive but we never took it that seriously. Here is Walter de la Mare’s “Good-Bye” (The Veil and Other Poems, 1921):

 

“The last of last words spoken is, Good-bye -

The last dismantled flower in the weed-grown hedge,

The last thin rumour of a feeble bell far ringing,

The last blind rat to spurn the mildewed rye.

 

“A hardening darkness glasses the haunted eye,

Shines into nothing the watcher's burnt-out candle,

Wreathes into scentless nothing the wasting incense,

Faints in the outer silence the hunting-cry.

 

“Love of its muted music breathes no sigh,

Thought in her ivory tower gropes in her spinning,

Toss on in vain the whispering trees of Eden,

Last of all last words spoken is, Good-bye.”