Collection a World Later

On an afternoon in the desert

With a half-moon and half of a wind,

You stumbled upon Derek’s claw-print

In concrete / After the bird has flown,

And, well, it’s a bit sentimental,

His portrait of an old, widowed man,

Dying in a farmhouse At the edge

Of a new estate, but then again,

It was a young man’s poem, and young men,

When not mocking or mad at old men,

Can be awfully sentimental

About melancholy old loners,

Fancying themselves half among them.

Now Derek himself had aged and gone,

Leaving this among his many poems

From a fairly long life in Ireland,

Where he had been well celebrated

Enough and had presumably not

Died as comprehensively alone

As the old man in his young man’s poem,

His claw-print after himself had flown.