1972–2012
Irony the enemy unto death of truth,
history his unflinching gaze, the lyrical
frontal assault his arsenal: not the bird,
not the song of the bird, but the beak,
talons, feathers and wings of the bird.
And wouldn’t you know, today I heard
of his passing, today with my head
buried in the slender body of his poems,
those little fickle songbirds of the South,
their unironic tone, their lyric joust,
their laying bare in metaphor as stark
as paper shacks against a Delta moon.
Today the murmurous starlings are mute.
Oh irony, that everlasting glottal stop.
Wonderful tribute. Economy of language with emotional intensity and beautiful metrics. Jake would have loved it.
Wow. Awesome poem. Powerful and heart-breaking. The silence at the end is palpable; a physical presence conjured. I love this poem for its individual yet universal honesty.