David Wright
Not So Much an Elegy
(i.m. Brian Higgins 1930 - 1965)
Six months underground at Birstall where he came from,
Elegies begin to appear in the public prints:
Of dead poets, he knew, elegies are the doom;
Also posthumous, unspendable cash. Higgins
Must have known he could not beat that ironic rap.
I’ve made as much money as ever I gave him,
Writing his obituaries. His manuscript
Remains are being bought by the British Museum
To be laid up for keeps fifty yards from the pub
Where he worked at bumming drinks or a place to kip,
Or trying to con a publisher out of five quid.
He was that bloody menace, a pure poet.
His friends were his victims and most of his victims
Were poets — some better, but none as pure as he;
I mean as uncompromising in their vocations.
It is known the god of poets is Mercury
Who is also god of thieves; he was twice covered.
Like a knife through butter he went through the warty boys;
Not for nothing he called himself the northern fiddler.
Ask George Barker, Anthony Cronin, Dom Moraes.
But, as I said, the elegies are appearing.
Like Higgins, they are outrageous and odd;
Like truth and Hig they spare no room for affection —
‘He was like life’ — and life is partly squalid,
Aberrant, arbitrary, undependable;
His most admired master accused — ‘He stole my ham’
As if it were his thunder, which is probable;
Betrayed into self-betrayal, as I am.
Page(s) 24
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