Poem: Here, Then Gone
He wrote more plays than most people read
In a lifetime.
Some of them were quite good said the accrediting minyans
Worthy of prizes and pull-quotes, if not actual
Attendance, or protracted reflection.
(Never mind that most audiences found the dramas over-long and tendentious,
Allusive and dreamy and
Largely about colored folks they didn’t know or care to meet).
He was Important in a way that most Vice-Presidents of Marketing and District Managers
Are not.
He reached for some kind of immortality, a persistent tomato vine, Icarus, mountain climber, long distance runner, graphomaniac.
They put a photo of him on the front page when he passed.
Now he’s gone.
The torrents of words — angry elegiac lovely words — stilled
Yet eternal.
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