Elegy For A Lost Friend
(Note to the reader: I never intended to write something as angry as this, but to get something from out of my system so strong, I felt I had to…. My apologies if anything within this poem sounds offensive….)
We were children at school. It was 1975 we met.
I recall it so clearly, how could I forget.
You were lovely, you had it all, you were wild,
We had a ball.
And later you had wit, and intelligence so much
And how glad I had found you, had found you,
What luck.
The years went swiftly and we parted for Uni,
Some years we lost, but regained the time
As professional careers beckoned,
Our friendship returned so fine,
And to the Olympian heights of Oxford you went,
Living a fantasy, Evelyn Waugh-esque life,
Never knowing that it would become your eventual downfall,
Because it was there you met your wife.
I never liked her, nor her family, nor liked her desire to hunt.
I’d always seen her as pathetically hollow,
Had she been a pool you would never have drowned,
She was simply that shallow.
But you besotted, and love renders the wise blind,
I saw her destroy you, love, destroy you over time.
You parted in 1992. She’d taken enough, she didn’t need you.
Returning to Oxford with another fool in tow, I was so angry.
The years of drink then took its toll. I saw your career fold,
It was all so painful, no story could have told,
The truth that lay behind her lies. I cannot think of anything about her,
Except for the word ‘despise’.
I tried to stop what you had done, reverse you back,
Back from where you had originally come from.
But I lost the war, I lost the fight,
For you had gone, my friend, you had lost life’s brilliant
Light.
I last saw you in the nursing home. It was over a year ago, a while
I know.
The looks now faded, your brilliant mind lost,
A day is confusion; the past has dearly cost.
Your eyes that sparkled have lost their lustre of wit,
And all for what? Some silly bitch? A pompous, pseudo upper-class git.
In sportswear you sit, smoking in silence, as I tried to speak.
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poem by Amy Gerrard
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