A poem for Justin

A very, very sad occasion on Thursday: I went to read a poem for a friend who was killed in an accident on April 9th. One of the most wonderful poets and people I have met in Cambridge, Justin Wand is greatly missed and the event was a fitting tribute to a wonderful man.

Here's the poem I wrote for Justin. The ghosts of absent friends are always with us, it seems.

Justin

I’m sure we must have said goodbye outside a pub one night
or by the traffic lights on Norfolk Street, though now I try
to think of it, I can’t recall a single time. And if I’m asked

to name the evening when I saw you last, I’d say
that you were laughing at my three unshaven mates,
dressed in drag, acting up in a bar too good for us.

Or I’d say you were wearing a slim top hat - the kind
magicians save for disappearing acts - and knocking back a beer,
checking your watch, the time much later than you’d thought.

Or else you were sitting in a worn red seat in the back row
of the 1960s theatre, long after the play had finished,
thinking of Chaucer, the words still forming in your mouth.

Or I’d remember none of this at all, just you: the cautious writer
who I didn’t know enough, black-jacketed
and climbing on your motorbike,

pulling the visor of your helmet down,
lifting a hand to us as you revved the engine, accelerated hard
towards wherever it was you knew you were going.