For John Henley Heathcote Williams
15th November 1941 – 1st July 2017
At 83 one suspects you would have been a little more
Bird-like; hair as a nest, eyes, dark diamonds,
As you ate your porridge and nuts and dried fruit,
Masticating the world, while ushering calligraphy
Across chaos; extricating reportage from the ruins
While freeing each ghost from gnarled roots.
Becoming more sanguine as Sage, mirth-maker
And Magus; poet of procedure both mundane
And arcane. Inspirer still. One man anarchist army
And General, mustering private forces to wreck
Weapon and rule through quatrain. And so I have come
To laud you again, because of the bloody specialness
Of you, and because, while a writer, you are now
Also that thing in all books; the source of magic
Unfound, and yet eternally searched for, on either shelf,
Or in rumour; a league beneath and a piss-pearl
That something better than us duly took. A long,
Yet bright mystery tapering away into shadow,
Or a volume of verse bequeathed to us by a denizen
Of far stars. The Author of an Alien’s book, or an Angel’s,
Or a God’s for that matter, or indeed a daemon,
Scratching away at the sacred to ensure that even
The air swells to scar. At 83, you’d be sat in St. Bernard’s Road
Fuelling frenzy and sculpting each stanza as Rodin
Muscled thought. You would have been the true
Immortalist, H, distilling shit to spill secret. So, live again
In this poem and in all of the other ways you’re still sought.
Happy birthday. Blow bluff and all falsity from us.
Come back, John Henley. Time and tide publish portent
And your new and endless book can’t be bought.
.
David Erdos