ELEGY FOR SLIGHT ACQUAINTANCE.(poem)(Brief Article)(Poem)

 
   People will vanish into the fold of light 
   but still will live along the memory-plane. 
   Why are they live there then? Brain-dross? Pointers, 
   the stars whose tiny glitter ushers us 
   from ego to some rare whatever? 
 
   Today I learned that Major David Cleary 
   was dead aged fifty-four, from cancer I would guess. 
   He won a Military Cross in Aden where 
   he got some injured fellows through sniper fire. 
 
   But that's outside my life. It is the senior 
   at our boarding school I have in memory 
   where he was tall and fierce and reticent, 
   with fair hair combed back like the blown grass 
 
   of Viking pastures. And when I lived, 
   lowly, observant in those common rooms 
   of spite and ego, I could (but warily) 
   warm to this prefect, this long-shanked Dave, 
 
   who on sportsfield walked with bandy legs, 
   and fearlessly blazed at scolding housemasters 
   to win for us small privileges. Equally 
   from the dark of the boot-room he might uncoil 
 
   to cure an attitude with headraps, swift, 
   ...