All Is Farewell

2

December 1, 2014 by Laird

Goodbye, Mark Strand. Thank you for the greatness of your poetry. I found your work at a time when I was wandering the wilderness; your words were a light peeping from a window and through the darkness. Your ending signals another within me. Goodbye is a rehearsal of sorts.

Drawn by a light in a window, I followed a path through the wood. Begun nearly twenty years ago, the path has carried me to a great clearing beneath a night sky where all paths eventually converge and then disappear. When I glance over my shoulder, there is only the forest, black and shapeless and impenetrable, except for that flickering light, hanging as a beacon to other travelers in the dark.

I’ll keep moving farther from the labyrinth of forest, across the grass of the field that rolls on until it curves against a starry horizon. You and Roger and Michael and Sylvia and CE and the others, the many others, are out there somewhere, accelerating as tachyons into the ultimate.

Farewell, Mark Strand, and thank you for the light and the path. I will follow, slowly and with a purposeful stride, from here and to the end, always catching up.

NY Times on Mark Strand

Photo via NY Times

“It is true, as someone has said, that in
A world without heaven, all is farewell.
Whether you wave your hand or not,

It is farewell, and if no tears come to your eyes
It is still farewell, and if you pretend not to notice,
Hating what passes, it is still farewell.”  –Mark Strand