Alert to nuances of mood and gesture,
to surfaces and the charm of accident,
oblivious to his own complexities,
he was the king who had been exiled,
set adrift in a series of dream events.
He knew magic when it happened.
Freed from time and other fundamentals,
the word webs he spun dazzle all of us,
his fictions masquerade as recorded facts.
He made music unique to this place,
had access to the realm of the sacred.
He knew how to make magic happen.
Men are not sounds, nor sounds men:
he spoke his lines and created theatre,
made it hard to ignore his presence,
or the silence as complete as darkness
when he fell over into paradise.
We know magic when it happens.
© Rupert M Loydell