Dick Davis
Edgar
Edgar
(i.m. Edgar Bowers, 1924 – 2000)
A few things that recall you to me, Edgar:
A stately 80’s Buick; hearing a car
Referred to by a coaxing soubriquet -
“Now come on Captain, don’t you let me down”.
French spoken in a conscious southern accent;
An idiom calqued and made ridiculous
(“Eh, mettons ce spectacle sur le chemin”).
“Silly,” dismissive in its deep contempt,
“Oh he’s a silly; an amiable silly,
But still a silly”. Or the words I first
Encountered in your captious conversations,
“Tad”, “discombobulated”, “cattywampus”.
The usage that you gave me once for “totaled” –
“Oh cruel fair, thy glance hath totaled me”.
Most recently, in Cleveland’s art museum,
The French Medieval Tapestries brought back
Your unabashed reaction to their beauty,
And how, for once, you’d stood there almost speechless,
Examining Time’s Triumph inch by inch,
Enraptured by its richness, by the young man
Proud in his paradisal place, until
You saw what his averted gaze avoided -
The old man, beaten, bent double by fate’s blows,
Driven from youth’s charmed, evanescent circle:
And how you’d wanted to be sure I’d seen him.
